Flu shots can cure epidemic of broken resolutions

Yes, it’s too late to make good on most of those 2014 New Year’s resolutions you pretty much forgot about by the end of last January.

But there’s one for which you still have a chance to give yourself a gold star. If you haven’t got a flu shot for the 2014-2015 season, do it now.

The peak time for the flu isn’t until the end of January, February and early March. But it takes a couple of weeks for the vaccine’s protection reach its most effective level, so now would be a good time to act.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the flu is officially an epidemic, and Illinois is among the hardest-hit states.

You may have heard that this year’s vaccine isn’t as effective as in some past years because health officials didn’t do as good a job predicting which strains would be prevalent. But even for strains that have mutated, a shot can mitigate symptoms.

A flu shot now might mean you won’t have to be reaching for Tamiflu or Relenza later on.