By Thomas E. Mitchell, Jr.
Though the nation—and world’s—attention is riveted on the COVID-19 pandemic and the new vaccines that will eventually end it, local medical professionals like Dr. Kevin Izard encourage residents not to let their guard down, and to get vaccinated.
Not against COVID-19! But against a more familiar foe: the common flu.
“The vaccine (for COVID-19) is just now coming out,” said Dr. Izard, a physician at Paladina Health in Milwaukee. “It will be six months before everyone (in the state of Wisconsin and the nation) is given a shot.”
Plus, flu season is just now reviving-up, with February being its peak month.
“But we have the flu vaccine. If everyone gets a flu shot, it would clear up confusion between the two (viruses).”
While the flu vaccine is safe and effective, and strongly recommended for people six months old and older, there are people who are at greater risk of becoming seriously ill if they get the flu. Those include:
- Children under 6 months old
- Pregnant women
- People 65 years of age and older
- People with chronic health conditions, such as asthma or heart disease
During a recent interview, Izard stressed how difficult it is to tell the difference between the flu and the coronavirus. “The symptoms are similar, though COVID-19 is more deadly and pervasive.”
Izard especially wants Wisconsin’s communities of color to heed his message. The doctor is the face and voice of a state-wide education and awareness campaign called “Be an InFLUencer,” created by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS).
The recently launched campaign aims to improve flu vaccine rates among the state’s communities of color. Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous communities have had—historically—the lowest vaccination rates in the state. Consequently, these communities have the highest flu rates.
Izard said Black residents in the state are half as likely to get the flu shot. Last year, only 26% of Black Wisconsinites got vaccinated.
The “Be an InFLUencer” campaign includes social media on several platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, as well as broadcast and digital radio ads, including in Spanish.
“We hope to eliminate some flu cases by getting people (especially people of color) vaccinated,” Izard said about the campaign’s goal. The doctor said preventative practices for COVID-19 are just as effective in combating the flu: wearing masks, six feet of separation from others, washing hands and—if possible—staying home if you have flu symptoms.
Izard said so far, cases of the flu are lower than usual at this time. “What people are doing to not get COVID is working for them in not getting the flu.”
Another silver lining, said Izard, is the low number of children getting colds at the start of the 2020/2021 school year.
Izard said the biggest challenge of the campaign is persuading minorities, especially Black people, to get a flu shot, despite the historical racism in health care and medicine, such as the exclusion of Black Americans from drug trails and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments where Black men of that Alabama city were unwittingly given the sexually transmitted disease to see how they would react to it.
He also noted concerns among many Black Americans that they would be denied equal access to the vaccines. There is also concern among many Americans—regardless of color—that the new vaccines were rushed out to the public, and that corners were cut in its development and testing, thus unsafe.
It’s for those reasons many people say they will not get the vaccine.
But Izard expressed confidence in the COVID vaccines’s safety and believes they would be distributed equally to all communities. His charge now is making sure communities of color get the one vaccine that matters as much as the one for the virus that’s made millions ill and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans: the flu shot.
For more information and answers to common questions about the flu and the flu vaccine, go to www.dhs.wisconsin.gov. The webpage also includes a link to the “VaccineFinder,” so people can find where the vaccine is available near them. The DHS has also created a “Be an InFLUencer” fact sheet with data and other details about preventing the flu.
The “Be an InFLUencer” campaign is funded through a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Leave a Reply