Benefits of the flu vaccine are multiple, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Do you know the difference between seasonal and pandemic flu? Amesh Adalja, a critical care medicine physician and pandemic preparedness expert at Johns Hopkins, says seasonal flu is the garden variety type we see each year that still causes a lot of hospitalizations and death, while the pandemic type is one that hasn’t been experienced by most people, so there is little to no immunity from it.

Adalja: People who get influenza vaccines are less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to die, even when the vaccine is mismatched. It's about concretizing the benefits that an individual gets from the flu vaccine even if it's not perfect. This is a way to give yourself more resiliency than you would have otherwise. The biggest pandemic threat we face is influenza. We're in the midst of an avian influenza outbreak amongst cattle that should be thought of as a trial run. The more respect we have for seasonal influenza the better we're going to be for pandemic influenza.                 :29

Adalja urges everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.