In mid-October, an elderly couple stopped by the U-M’s Briarwood Medical Group for flu shots. They waited for forty-five minutes on a line that went up a long hallway and almost out to the street.

“More people have been coming all over Ann Arbor,” says Tracy Newhouse, who runs the flu immunization program for the U-M’s Michigan Visiting Care. “Our clinics are busier than ever.” Rhonda Morris, pharmacy district manager for Rite Aid, says that the number of people coming in for flu shots is up 10 percent over last October.

Why the increase? “More people have insurance that pays for inoculations this year than last,” Morris suggests. The nurse who inoculated the couple, though, thought fear of Ebola might be spurring people to take precautions against other diseases.

For Americans, the flu is actually a significantly greater danger. “If you asked many people right now, they would be more worried about Ebola,” says U-M epidemiology professor Matthew Boulton. By mid-month, there were three cases in the United States. Yet every year, 200,000 Americans are hospitalized for flu-related problems–and 20,000 die.

“People absolutely should get vaccinated,” Newhouse says, “to protect themselves and others.”