Fact or Myth? If you get the flu vaccine too early in the year, your protection will wear off before flu season ends.
Answer: Myth
Some physicians already have their first flu vaccine shipments in, so people who believe this myth may be holding out when they don't need to.
The flu vaccine -- once understocked and reserved for the people most at risk -- is now readily available and recommended for everyone, so some doctors receive their shipments as early as August.
"I have now heard, this season, several times already, a concerned expressed that you can get vaccinated too early -- that you should wait until November because your protection may not last through February," when you are statistically most likely to get the flu, said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt Medical School.
But the vaccine lasts for at least a year, he said.
Schaffner said he has heard this expressed more among older patients. While he said that the flu vaccine may not respond or provoke as good a protection in those patients, it's not foreshortened.
"You can get vaccinated right now, and your protection will persist," he said.
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