Chicago Millennial Proposes it's Time for Millennials to Lead the Way in Flu Vaccinations

At the start of 2020, millennials officially became the largest living generation. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for Generation Y to take a leadership role in helping peers and others make informed decision about their health, particularly as it relates to the flu. But they are off to a rocky start.

Millennials seemed to be the least informed group when it came to knowing influenza's health risks, with 86% of those surveyed getting at least one fact wrong and 31% getting them all wrong, according to an American Academy of Family Physicians survey. Two months into the 2019-2020 flu season, 55% of millennials had not been vaccinated. One of their top reasons: "they didn't have time." It's an excuse that Generation Y is twice as likely to give for skipping the vaccine compared with Generation X and three times more likely than baby boomers.

This could change if they started getting vaccinated in large numbers and demonstrated that they were taking responsibility to protecting the nation's health.

Taking part in this initiative is YMyHealth, www.ymyheallth.com, a digital health resource created by a native Chicagoan for and dedicated to Generation Y, which has connected with an infectious disease specialist and a 30-something physician himself, Dr. David Serota, and 20-something, vaccine supporter and COVID-19 vaccine trial volunteer, Skyler Tracy Mener.

"While the flu may be less deadly than COVID-19 for young people with few medical problems, it's far from harmless. Influenza can cause high fevers, fatigue, and even respiratory failure. It can also, less commonly, affect the brain and the heart. So, if we choose not to get the vaccine and contract the flu, these are the potential health risks we are facing. Similar to COVID-19, people with the flu can develop severe lung inflammation called acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which can lead to permanent lung damage or death," according to David Serota, MD, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in the division of Infectious Diseases.

According to Skyler Tracy Mener, a student studying social work in Pennsylvania, "Vaccines have helped protect people against potentially deadly and life-altering diseases including polio, mumps, measles, rubella, tetanus, chicken pox, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and smallpox. It's really important for people in their 20s and 30s to get their flu shots. It doesn't matter that they are young, they can still get the flu and it has the potential to be deadly."

While healthcare professionals recommend getting a flu shot every year, it's especially important that millennials do their part in getting vaccinated this year to help reduce the burdens on the healthcare system.

The concern is that the country will end up having what's been called a 'twin-demic.' It means a very bad scenario where we would have a rise in COVID-19 cases and a severe flu season at the same time when both viruses already have overlapping symptoms.

"We expect to see a fall surge in COVID-19 cases as the air dries and people spend more time indoors. Any little thing we can do to reduce the number of patients with respiratory infections and sick people, in general, who need health care will be important," Serota says.

To recognize the difference COVID-19 and the flu, COVID-19 is more easily transmissible (aka. spread) from one person to another, than influenza. On average, the symptoms of COVID-19 last longer than the flu. COVID-19 also affects more organ symptoms and seems more likely to have long-term effects on the body. Most people who get the flu will fully recover and have no long-term problems. On the other hand, COVID-19 is still so new that no one knows what the long-term consequences of the virus are or what proportion of the people who get infected will experience these long-lasting effects.

"If you keep up the physical distancing, masking, and hand hygiene measures we all know and love from COVID-19, these will also reduce transmission of flu," Dr. Serota advises.