First Posted: 2/11/2015
SHAVERTOWN — This year’s flu season in the Back Mountain is a moderate one, and likely already on its way out, according to local medical professionals.
Dr. Patrick Kilduff, D.O., of InterMountain Medical Group, Shavertown, said although the typical flu season has a potential of running from the beginning of December through the end of March, it reaches a peak somewhere in the middle and trickles off. Last year’s season was extremely early, climaxing in December, and it appears this year’s hardest-hit point was in January.
“So there’s time in its normal disbursement of months that we can get another hit,” Kilduff said, “but I would think that we’ve had our main peak already.”
And although it would be difficult to make a sure determination without regional numbers and statistics that aren’t currently at his disposal, he said, in his opinion, he doesn’t believe it to be a “particularly bad flu season.”
According to Dallas School District nurse Bonnie Kalish, even during the January apex of the flu, the district didn’t experience much of the illness.
“I mean, we’ve had the stomach virus,” she said, “but true flu, where you’re really down and out, no. The elementary has had a few cases, and I know the middle school has had just a few, in both of those buildings. It really hasn’t been affecting our (absenteeism) here (in the high school).”
The district does encourage students and teachers to stay home when they have the flu, and follows the guidelines of the National Association of School Nurses, available online at tlgets.me/fz0. According to these guidelines, a child should be kept home until his or her fever has been gone for 24 hours without medication.
This is just one way the illness is prevented from spreading.
“Hand washing is just so important,” Kalish said. “Hand washing, and making sure when people are sneezing, that they’re doing it in their arm or a tissue.”
Kilduff echoed Kalish’s statements, saying hand-washing or using anti-microbial gels and coughing into one’s elbow instead of hands is important. These and other “universal precautions,” he said, such as maintaining a healthy diet, exercise, staying hydrated and regularly taking a multiple vitamin, can all help boost the body’s ability to defend itself against illness.
Getting a flu shot before the season begins is also a good idea, according to Kilduff.
He said the vaccinations are developed in early summer based on presumptions from the previous year’s strains of the flu, using scientific research and predictions. Because they are just that — predictions — some years the vaccine is more or less effective than others.
“But still,” he said, “certainly getting the vaccination challenges the body to be ready to fight the flu, and it can decrease the intensity of the symptoms if you have it.”
Perhaps one local church, St. Paul’s Lutheran in Dallas, got the idea right with an announcement on its website, which read, “Are you worried about passing on germs (or receiving them!) while passing the peace? We are indeed in a period of heightened illness, and the flu is ravaging many areas of the country. The passing of the peace is an important theological part of our liturgy that provides the opportunity to proclaim and hear the hope and good news that Jesus is with us.
“But how we transmit and receive this message is of secondary importance to the message itself. So, if you are uncomfortable at this time with the traditional act of shaking hands, then a simple wave accompanied by the words “Peace be with you!” is more than sufficient. In the same light, please do not be offended if you extend your hand to someone who resists or refuses to take it.”