The Rocket staff believes that every student at Slippery Rock should get a flu shot this fall. SRU’s health center offers free flus shots to students, while supplies last, and both CVS and Giant Eagle in town offer free flu shots, with insurance. Free flu shots were also offered to students at the 32nd annual HealthFest held in the ARC on Tuesday.
Getting a flu shot not only protects the person getting the shot, but everyone around them as well. Not getting the shot puts yourself at risk of contracting the flu, and then you are putting every one around you at risk of you spreading the virus. With flu season now upon us, it is the perfect time to go and get vaccinated.
As students we are not always keen to the idea of working ahead, waiting until the last minute to finish an assignment becomes something of a skill in college. However in this instance thinking preemptively and getting vaccinated now is well worth it. Would you rather take 10 or 20 minutes to go up to the health center today and get a shot or sometime in November get sick for a whole week? In November we will all be starting to prepare for finals and working on final projects and papers, could you really afford to take a week, or more, off with the flu?
Getting the flu shot now all but assures that you will be able to suffer through finals week without having to also suffer through the flu, because is finals week not bad enough?
In addition, the flu vaccine is completely safe. It is a dead vaccine, which means that you cannot get the flu form the vaccine. The people that would be giving you the shot are all also trained professionals, either nurses at the health center or pharmacists at CVS and Giant Eagle.
No threat, little to no cost and ease of access means that every student at The Rock has the means necessary to get a flu shot and all they need is the motivation to go get one, which this editorial hopefully provides.
In the end, it is each of our individual responsibilities to get vaccinated so that individually we do not get sick. But in getting vaccinated we can also make sure that the flu does not come to, or spread around SRU and we can help keep each other healthy as well.
