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By now, many of you have probably fallen victim to the infamous Fresher Flu. With winter soon approaching, the last thing anyone wants to deal with is the (real) flu as well as the cold. The best thing you can do to help get you through, flu-free, is to grab yourself a flu shot. And before you stop and tell me that you’ve had the jab before, and still got the flu, make sure you’re not just talking about a nasty cold.

A common rumour that flies around as soon as people start talking about vaccines, particularly as part of a school program, is that vaccines aren’t safe and can give you autism.

What happened was this: a scientist called Wakefield did a study on MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) – that’s the shot you would have got at school at roughly age 10. They published a paper that claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to autism. This was quickly retracted by the journal, because the claim could not be verified. This was a case of some pretty shoddy science. To begin with, they only looked at twelve patients – nowhere near enough from which to draw reliable conclusions. Secondly, they used self-reporting from the parents, who claimed that their kids developed signs of autism about six days from the shot. This could be biased in many ways. Finally, autism is a spectrum disorder – which means it can be different between patients, and occur for different reasons.

A huge number of papers published since have completely disproved the claimed link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The problem we have now is that people continue to believe this, even though science says no. Hype has an incredible way of hiding the real facts. Let me be completely clear here: there is NO evidence supporting the link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

So now that we’ve clarified that vaccines won’t give you autism, what about their safety? Well, a vaccine has to get through a huge number of clinical trials to even reach the public. If it isn’t safe, it doesn’t get through. Let’s not forget how vaccines have changed public health. You know how polio is such a problem around the world? I don’t, and that’s because the polio vaccine has done such an incredible job at almost completely wiping out the disease. Thanks, science.

So, apart from the needle (which is tiny!) you actually have nothing to worry about. If you want to avoid the flu this season, just head down to student health and get yourself a shot. It costs next to nothing, sometimes free. Don’t worry, this winter you’re covered by science, bitches.