There are a number of myths we come to hear every day about flu, but this time the Denton County Health Department has planned something different to debunk these myths. The department has decided to talk to public directly about flu and preventive shots.

The myths that getting flu shots give you flu; or the government is inserting micro chips to track individuals; and vaccination can cause autism are some of the myths that officials busted during the meeting.

Health department director Matt Richardson presented a slide show before the Denton County Commissioners Court. The presentation was a way to talk publicly about the flu and preventive shots.

Richardson said rumors starts to surface and soon Facebook is also jammed with it. He wanted to bring forward the truth with some factual information. During his presentation he said flu shots do not make you infected to flu, it rather gives your immune system the power to respond if you get flu.

“Think of it as a USB thumb drive that you put it into a computer and download a program. A flu shot is downloading a program into your body to train your immune system to recognize the ever-changing blob”, he said.

As per estimates nearly 49,000 people every year die due to influenza in the United States, which put flu on No.8 on the list of top 10 causes of death in the nation.

Richardson said the government is also making no effort to track people using the flu shot. And no pharmaceutical companies are making profit out off the vaccine, because low cost of the drug and the demand to create a new vaccine every year make it hard to make money out of it, he said.

“It’s done an enormous amounts of damage to immunization rates in the U.K. and U.S.,” Richardson said. “Some of that is because a lot of vaccines happen at about 2 years of age, the same age that autism is typically diagnosed.”

“While everyone is out traveling all over the country, we spread something other than tidings and good cheer,” Richardson said.