Kids caught flu despite having jab

[Blueisthecolour1]

Both kids were vaccinated first week of Nov. Last week my eldest son had it & on Sunday night just gone my youngest (4) came down with it. Spiking fever, body aches, chills, exhaustion, headaches BUT with a noticeable absence of sneezing/congestion/general nasty head cold.

Both off their food for the duration - I’ve been pushing liquids & managed to get two bananas & two yoghurts down the little one today.

My AIBU is this - am I right in thinking that the flu jab doesn’t stop you having flu - it reduces the symptoms & possibly shortens the lifespan of the illness a little. I was initially surprised they got it as bad as they have in the first place - both kids barely moved off the sofa for 3+ days each time. So I am surprised that despite being vaccinated they’re feeling as bad as they are, however when I think about it I wonder if they would be literally bedridden if they hadn’t had their jabs. And there’s no congestion going on which I’m so so thankful for. I guess the vaccine must be doing some work here to make it slightly more bearable?

Is this a serious question?

A 9 year old would know this

First of all, there is a huge number of awful things going around at the moment that can have similar symptoms to flu. It could be any of those also.

Second, the flu jab has a high likelihood of protecting you from the strains it is made against, with a greater likelyhood of protecting against severe disease. No vaccine is 100% protection, some are as low as 50%. There is a huge number of strains and you get vaccinated against approximately 4, which is predicted based on what they think will be prevalent as predicted by the flu season thats just occurred in the southern hemisphere. If they predict wrong (which has happened), then we get a really bad flu season. If they predict well and uptake of vaccine is good we can have very mild flu seasons.

Not true at all.
My child was hospitalised with influenza A and was swabbed for it.
My husband and I were also swabbed, we both had it but he had no symptoms whatsoever.

Blaming anti vaxxers for your cousin having scarlet fever? Weird but ok

Nonsense.

Flu can be asymptomatic.

Yes it doesn't stop you catching it. It reduced the chances of you getting it, and reduces the severity of your symptoms if you do. Flu hospitalizations and deaths would be much higher without the vaccination programs.

How do you know it was the flu though? Plenty of other viral infections cause fever, chills, headaches, nausea etc and you can only know it's the flu with a test

You can vaccinate against diseases caused by bacteria, Diphtheria and Tetanus are two I can think of off the top of my head.

Someone always trots out this nonsense. Thankfully medicine doesn’t tend to use “can’t get out of bed” to identify viruses.

OP - as others have explained the flu vaccine is a bit of a guess as to what strains will circulate. I believe they use the Southern Hemisphere flu season to help forecast it. Unfortunately there seems to be a really horrible virus going round at the moment, not sure if it’s flu but doesn’t really matter. A horrible virus is a horrible virus. I hope they are on the mend soon.

You're right. My dad had the flu 8 years ago and ended up in intensive care for a few weeks. He was only in his mid-40s but that's when we found out he had undiagnosed emphysma. He's had the flu jab ever since. He gets the flu occasionally and has been bedbound but never stuck on a ventilator fighting for his life.

This just isn't true. In the same way people get 'mild covid', they can also get mild flu. Unless you test there is no way to know if it is flu.

I caught flu in 2016 after the jab. There are many strains

4 of us had flu vaccine last year.. 1 caught the flu (tested positive for it). She was definitely Ill (few nights of fever) but not as bad as others in her class who had not had the vaccine (over a week of non stop fever). The other 3 of us in the house never caught it, despite zero distancing between us.