For something as well-known and commonplace as the flu, it’s subject to an awful lot of silly myths. And like the flu itself, flu myths are hard to contain and hard to fight.

“There are urban myths and rural myths about the flu,” says William Schaffner, MD, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn. “Flu myths are everywhere.”

12 Flu Myths: Myths About the Flu Vaccine, Treatments, and Prevention