I started getting flu shots pretty regularly sometime during the 1990s and fell out of it during the 2010s when I missed it one year and got away with it. I was fine for a couple more years but then I got the actual flu a week before a winter plane trip, five or so years ago, and it hit me pretty hard. I thought I felt fine and was over it by the trip, but while the plane was landing I got screwdrivers in the ears. My ears were blocked for the rest of the day and they were ringing for months afterwards. I’m mostly over that, but I still wonder whether the occasionally plugged-up hearing I get can be attributable to that experience.