Staying safe when the enemy is invisible. Photo courtesy of Health & Sports Co-Editor Aidan Field.
Tigers, flu season is just around the corner and there are many ways students can prevent getting the flu, whose victims are often San Luis Obispo High School Students.
Getting the flu feels really bad, and will cause students to miss out from school and fall behind. Not to mention they’ll feel sick, have a high fever, and/or potentially die. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic, many forget the actual danger that flu season has.
“It’s easy to forget that influenza takes between five thousand and fifty thousand lives a year in our country,” said registered nurse and CIC Infection Control Practitioner Daniel Field.
If students don’t want to get sick, here is how they can prevent getting the flu:
- Get a flu vaccine every year
“The Centers for Disease Control estimates that over the past ten years [the flu shot] has prevented over fifty million people from getting sick and saved over sixty thousand lives,” said Field.
The best way to prevent getting the flu, is to get the influenza virus shot every year. The virus is constantly changing so if students only get it once it won’t be as helpful as getting it every year.
“The flu shot is super-safe, super-quick and easy to find at pharmacies and doctor’s offices. Getting the it both protects you, and makes it harder for the virus to circulate in our community and harm others,“ said Field.
- Wash hands
The most simple and easy way to prevent getting the flu is to wash hands. Hands pick up the most germs, because it is what is used to touch most things and it will pick up germs from everything touched and can enter the system through the mouth, eyes, or anything that is open.
“I wash my hands everyday,” said junior Ethan Johnson.
- Avoid close contact with people.
Just like students did with COVID-19, they can distance themselves from certain people and avoid touching people in big groups or in public places that they know will be dirty. Everyone has germs on them and when they are around a lot of people germs can spread very easily.
- Cover mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing
A very basic way to stop the spread of germs is to cover the mouth when coughing, and cover the nose when sneezing. Everyone knows these as ways to be polite and to stop spreading germs, but a lot of people also forget to do these to stay safe.
If students are consistent and practice these methods of preventing the spread of germs, their chances of getting the flu will become very low. Especially at SLOHS with a total of 1600 students, germs can spread very quickly.
All students are capable of helping to stop the spread of the flu and they all should.
