[conspire] Flu season, flu shots

[Rick Moen]

Flu season is already _here_ -- and is shaping up to be a particularly
deadly one.  See this current article from San Diego:  
https://fox5sandiego.com/2019/10/18/local-flu-cases-more-than-triple-from-last-year/

As a reminder, influenza can not only make you utterly miserable for a
week and possibly cause you to infect your loved ones and/or colleagues
with the same affliction.  It can also kill you stone-cold dead.
Seriously.

Short of living a hermit's life from September to March (in the Northern
Hemisphere), there is exactly one thing you can do to reduce the risk:
one of those cheap, widely available flu shots.  (If you're 65 years old
or older, you should ask for one of the strong version.)

The small bad news is that this year's vaccine is also a less than
usually bad match for the _probable_ predominant flu strain, something
we belatedly know from the flu season just concluded in the Southern
Hemisphere.  The labs that concoct a vaccine each year must make a guess
about what strain will be most prominent, and the lead time for ramping
up production is unfortunately so long that it's not possible to 'fix' a
bad-match vaccine.  _Still_, even a poor-match vaccine remains the only 
thing (short of being a hermit) able to give you systemic protection
against some flu strains and partial protection against all of them.

It takes about a week for immunity to ramp up, after the shot.  Please
get the shot _now_, if you haven't yet.