This is the time of year when people come up with excuses for not getting vaccinated against the flu.
But there’s one big and simple reason to get immunized. "Flu vaccinations save lives," said Surgeon General Jerome Adams at an event to kick off flu vaccine awareness in Washington, D.C.
If that’s not enough, NPR’s Allison Aubrey has a few more.
You – yes, you – are vulnerable, whether you’re young or old.
Getting vaccinated helps your family, neighbors and colleagues at work, by reducing the spread of the virus.
Even if you catch the flu (the vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective), the odds are you won’t get as sick if you've been immunized.
Heavy drinking can lead to alcohol-induced amnesia.
That memory loss can be total or it can be spotty.
However it happens, a bystander, or even the inebriated person, may find it difficult to say if blackout drinking took place.
In that state, you can do things you can’t recall later on. But you don’t have to have passed out to have had a drinking blackout.
“The real problem with blackouts is that you don't remember,” Boston University’s Dr. Richard Saitz tells our colleague Richard Knox at WBUR's CommonHealth. "And so you can't learn from your behavior unless someone tells you that you did something terrible."
When we’re sick, we seem to know what we want: antibiotics. And if we don't get them, our doctors' reputations may suffer.
A study found that patients rated themselves happiest with their doctor's visit when they got an antibiotic after seeking care for a respiratory tract infection, such as a common cold, whether they needed the drug or not.
And patients' ratings of individual appointments can affect their physician's overall patient satisfaction scores.
"It is very problematic because it creates an incentive for physicians to do things that are not medically necessary in order to drive up their satisfaction ratings," Dr. Kathryn A. Martinez, an internal medicine researcher at the Cleveland Clinic and an author of the study told NPR Science Desk intern Rachel D. Cohen.
It might be helpful to exclude reviews from respiratory tract infections appointments from providers' overall ratings. "The incentive is too great," Martinez says, to prescribe antibiotics during these visits.
Finally, remember last week's story about the sea lion who smacked the kayaker with an octopus? Well, it turns out to have been a New Zealand fur seal that actually did the deed, according to a couple of marine mammal specialists familiar with the scene of the assault.
They told us New Zealand fur seals have very pointy noses and obvious whiskers compared with the blunt noses of New Zealand sea lions. We’ve updated the story to reflect the new information.
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