Stay healthy by staying home

#MiddleburyCT #Seniors #RSV #Flu #Covid

I’ve been lax lately in terms of my health. I admit it. While I haven’t been at music concerts among thousands of people or riding packed subway cars, I have been going to stores during the daytime when the aisles are full. This was especially true during the holiday shopping season. It’s time to stop that – again – and start staying home, again.

Respiratory syncytial virus (also known as RSV) is on the rise where I live, and likely elsewhere. Only a few months ago the CDC was advising pediatricians to keep the standard RSV shot they usually give children and save it for the babies that were most vulnerable because supplies were limited. That does not bode well for getting a handle on the spread of RSV. And it’s certainly not an illness seniors want.

And then we have Covid … still with us and never really went away, despite the number of people in stores who are not wearing masks. Seniors don’t want that one either.

Finally, there’s the regular, garden variety seasonal flu. The version of the flu shot for seniors this year is a high-dose quadrivalent, which covers two A types as well as two B versions. So we should be protected if we have that shot, they say.

While we were locked down because of the Covid pandemic, flu nearly disappeared. This is because we were staying home, we were washing our hands, we were wearing masks if we had to go out and we were social distancing – all things to protect against Covid, but it also worked to protect against flu.

I for one am going back to my safety protocols. With three viruses out there right now, I’m better off going back to Zoom calls with friends and the delivery of groceries. Why take a chance?

© 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.