Weathering Flu Season: Preparedness

Transcript

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Announcer: 0:00

Welcome to the MedEvidence Monday Minute radio show hosted by Kevin Geddings of WSOS St Augustine Radio. Each Monday morning, Dr. Michael Koren calls in to bring you the latest medical updates with insightful discussions. Medevidence is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research, with both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and healthcare. This is MedEvidence. So sit back, relax and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and health care.

Kevin Geddings: 0:30

Dr. Michael Koren joining me live on the studio line, as promised every Monday morning. We always look forward to his participation with us, of course. He is a medical doctor, cardiologist, research scientist and heads up the show there at ENCORE Reseach Group and they provide leading-edge clinical research. And of course, over the weekend a lot of folks, Dr. Koren were preparing for Tropical Storm Debbie by, you know, hoarding toilet paper and bottled water from Publix. But there's some similarities between getting ready for a storm and getting ready for cold and flu season, right.

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:00

There are, there are. Yeah, we were just chatting right before I got on and you mentioned that all everybody wants to talk about is the storm. So let's talk about the storm. Let's talk about how you prepare for a storm and why. That's actually very similar to preparing for the cold and flu season similarities.

Kevin Geddings: 1:24

I don't think we treat it the same way. When we see a hurricane or tropical storm approaching, we get into gear and make sure we have batteries for our flashlights and all that kind of stuff. But when we know cold and flu season is coming and it is coming because it's always coming we don't really do much preparation, sometimes right.

Dr. Michael Koren: 1:36

Yeah, no, exactly. In fact, we know that cold and flu season will follow hurricane season, so hopefully, people who have thought about hurricane season have already prepared certain things. The first thing is do you have flood insurance? Do you have homeowners insurance? Are you ready for the worst case scenario? And the equivalent of that is did you get your vaccine? We have vaccines now that can protect people from some of the nasty viruses out there, but the interesting thing is that once the cold and flu season hits us, or once hurricane season hits us, it's too late. You can't get a flood policy or a homeowner's policy right now. In fact, I had a really interesting conversation with a friend over the weekend and her job is to decide when her company, her insurance company, stops selling insurance because of the impending storms. So if you try to get flood insurance now or homeowner's insurance, tough luck, you missed the boat. And the same thing is true for vaccines. You have a window to get your vaccines for RSV, for COVID and for flu, and all those are available in our research projects.

Dr. Michael Koren: 2:41

But if you wait too long, it'll be too late

Kevin Geddings: 2:45

when it comes to the flu vaccine and we want to be ready for flu season, obviously this fall and into the winter. When's the ideal time to get that? I mean, is it ever a time when it's too soon to get it, is it you know? What would you recommend?

Dr. Michael Koren: 2:58

I would say that right now is the starting time where people should be thinking about it and in fact, getting it. So after you get vaccinated against the virus, you have a good six to nine months of prediction. So the vaccine that you got now will keep you in good stead through next spring. So it's really a good time to be thinking about getting that, and keep in mind that it's unfortunately not just one shot yet, although we're working on that.

Dr. Michael Koren: 3:22

We're working on combining vaccines for different viruses, but at the current time there is no vaccine available for RSV, and the COVID and flu vaccines are separate, but if you get involved in one of our research programs it's possible that we'll give you access to those vaccines.

Kevin Geddings: 3:38

Okay, and Dr. Koren, when folks are driving by a CVS or a Walgreens, sometimes they'll see on the sign out there hey, we're offering pneumonia shots. Is that something we should get to get ready for the fall?

Dr. Michael Koren: 3:50

Yeah, that's a little bit different. Pneumonia shots are for a bacterium, pneumococcal bacteria, and so because of that you don't need it every year. That's something you get every five to 10 years, recommended for older people. But yeah that's also part of it. If you haven't had a pneumococcal vaccine recently, you should be thinking about that as well.

Kevin Geddings: 4:08

Okay, very good. Well, and, of course, when it comes to flu shots and the latest version of the COVID boosters and vaccines, you all are very involved with that ENCORE Research Group , in terms of testing the latest and how this is going to evolve down the road right.

Dr. Michael Koren: 4:22

Yeah, totally. And just to build our analogy with preparing for hurricane season so you have the vaccines, which is basically your insurance policy, but when a cold and flu season hits, you need to make a decision. Are you going to get out of harm's way? So we all make decisions. Do we evacuate? Do we hunker down? If we hunker down, what kind of preparations do we make? Do we take our patio furniture inside? Do we do anything in the garden to prevent damage? And the equivalent to that is deciding to wear a mask, deciding to avoid public spaces when it's cold and flu season, or taking care of symptoms of the cold and flu. So those are your way of protecting yourself when the cold and flu season actually hits. And then, of course, the third part of this triad is if, unfortunately, you do get hit by the storm, Well then what?

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:15

do you do. Who's the guy that's going to come in and get that tree trunk, a garage or your driveway or hopefully not your roof? But do you know who the vendors are? Are they going to be available? You know that after the storm, there could be weeks or months delay before somebody who's expert at helping you clean up the damage is available, and the same thing is kind of true with viruses. So we do have treatments for COVID and we have treatments for influenza.

Dr. Michael Koren: 5:43

So we have Paxlovid as a medical treatment for COVID for influenza, so we have Paxlovid as a medical treatment for COVID. We have a Tamiflu type treatments for influenza, but we do not have a treatment for RSV. Well, how do you know which of the viruses do you have and whether or not there's a treatment available? So these are all things that are part of your treatment strategy, which is similar to the strategy for storms when, god forbid, you get hit by a storm, how are you going to deal with it?

Kevin Geddings: 6:11

Yeah, no very good analogy. Obviously you can learn more too about participating in the next generation of flu vaccines and COVID vaccines by going to EncoreDocs. com. That's spelled with an E, by the way E-N-C-O-R-E, encoredocs. com, and sadly you know whether it's the COVID vaccine or flu vaccines. There's a lot of misinformation out in our world about those, and one way that you can get good health care information is through the website MedEvidence Right, Dr. Koren.

Dr. Michael Koren: 6:36

Exactly that's our platform for medical education, and we talk about the truth behind the data. So there's a lot of misinformation out there. If you Google something, chances are you'll get a reference that is trying to sell you something. In our system, we just tell you what we know about something, whatever the medical area is, what we don't know about that medical area and, ultimately, how we're going to learn about the stuff that we don't know. So it's a very objective website.

Dr. Michael Koren: 7:01

Many of the podcasts are between physicians discussing points of view, and people get a clear picture of what we know what we don't know and how we learn about things, and they can use that knowledge to help themselves and their family.

Kevin Geddings: 7:12

Yeah, yeah. Unlike Dr. Google, this is information you can absolutely trust. We highly recommend it here for our listeners at WSOS. Go to MedEvidencecom. That's MedEvidencecom, Dr. Michael Koren, we hope you stay safe out there in the middle of Tropical Storm Debbie okay?

Dr. Michael Koren: 7:32

Same to you.

Dr. Michael Koren: 7:32

Stay dry, Kevin.

Announcer: 7:34

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