The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/flu-season/)
With an influx of sick students over the past few weeks, Cornell Health has struggled to provide as many appointments as requested, while students face difficulty in keeping up with classes while sick.
2,216 cases of the flu have been reported in Central New York since Oct. 5, 2019, with 65 of those having been treated at Cornell, according to Anne Jones, Cornell Health’s director of medical services.
These days, with many unknowns in the world around us, I’m asked both inside and outside of the exam room, “How can I take care of myself? How do I focus my energy in the right place to prevent illness and stay healthy and well? How can I make a difference in the world around me?”
This fall, there are three things that immediately come to mind: Get your flu shot, register to vote and be kind to yourself. Number 1: Get Your Flu Shot
A yearly flu vaccine is the first and most important step to prevent the flu and its complications, like missed work or school, time out of your busy schedule for clinic visits or more serious consequences like hospitalizations. The fall — preferably before the end of October — is the best time to get a flu shot.
September: Cornell’s campus is warm and breezy with remnants of summer left over, and our local fauna scurry across the quads to pick up fallen crumbs of Zeus’ mac’n’cheese. The returning students can breathe in, and almost absorb, the giddiness around campus that radiates from our puppy-eyed freshmen. They’re still blazing with the recent-grad, on-to-the-next-stage-of-my-life buzz that comes from spending the first couple of weeks on a college campus. Class of 2023, it’s true, college is a blast. You’ve got some wonderful times ahead of you, but if you think Ithaca will always be this fairytale-esque, you’re shit out of luck.
Physicians have already diagnosed three times as many students with influenza-related illness as the same time in 2017 and five times as many as in 2016.