"covid rules"...
Avoid touching your face, avoid putting your hands in your mouth, wash your hands more frequently than you're used to and do it properly, if you're out in public and you feel you want that extra protection, put on a decent face mask or, keep your distance, or, avoid going out in public for unnecessary reasons especially places that are busier than typical.
Get a flu jab, whether or not it's free it doesn't matter, you get it, your arm may hurt for a couple days or it may not, and then you've got some protection. Will it be 100% protection probably not. Nothing's 100%. 50%? 70%? 20%? Hey, I figure protection is better than zero, that's why I got the covid shot and the flu shot 3 weeks ago.
At the same time, which is fine, actually it's recommended because it make sure that you get them both done at the same time, and I'll be honest with you my flu arm didn't hurt very much but my covid arm did.
And I feel awful for about 48 hours, (in the covid arm, overall tiredness, achiness, headache, chill, sore skin, sore joints.... But I didn't really care because I knew it's just my immune system reaction, I wasn't really sick...)
I've had the flu once. The real flu, the influenza flu not the pukey thing that people call the flu.
It was about 7 years ago, I'd never had it before, I didn't recognize it for what it was when I first got the symptoms, but I realized pretty quickly that this was not a cold and nothing I had before.
It really sucked. I would say about 4 days of really feeling crummy and then about 3 days of not so crummy but not myself.
Mostly just extremely tired, headache, achy, really achy, and back and forth between fever and chills. Not the worst thing in the world.
Didn't enjoy it, and I've gotten a flu shot ever since.
I don't know why you're panicking; there was no need to panic during the start of covid and that was worse.
Yes it is possible that if you're immunocompromised, very young, very old, or have some other extremely serious medical condition that the influenza can land you in the hospital, and I'm not minimizing the fact that influenza can be deadly, but for the average person of which you say you're not immune compromised, you'll probably be just fine. So why panic? All that stress will do is raise your cortisol which will then lower your immune system and then you'll get sick easier.