No one likes coming down with flu. And at the recent Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices conference in Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released some promising data regarding this year's flu shot.

Although flu season is not yet over, the shot has proven to be 59 percent effective, a marked improvement over the 20 percent effectiveness rate of last year's vaccine.

The CDC was able to breakdown the effectiveness of the vaccine on the three main strains of flu virus. The current shot is 51 percent effective at protecting H1N1 — the influenza A strain otherwise known as swine flu that was responsible for the 2009 pandemic — and is 76 percent effective against influenza B viruses.

The effectiveness of the vaccine each year depends on two main factors: the health and age of the person being vaccinated and the accuracy of the scientists' predictions when making the vaccine. Because it takes around six months to develop a flu vaccine, scientists must predict far in advance which strains of flu are going to be most prevalent each year. In last year's case, the influenza A virus responsible for causing the most cases had mutated from an earlier form of the strain used to create the vaccine.

Health officials had hoped the low success rate of last year's vaccine didn't ward off the public from getting the shot this year. Consumer Reports Chief Medical Adviser Marvin M. Lipman, M.D., believes flu season could last another month, and getting the shot far exceeds the risk of ending up in the hospital or being bedridden.

Lipman is not exaggerating the risks; flu puts more than 200,000 people in the hospital each year and is responsible for thousands of deaths. The elderly, young and those with pre-existing health conditions are most at risk, but flu is dangerous for even those in good health. Reports have shown that half of the children who die from flu have no underlying health conditions or high-risk factors.

Despite the risks, only about half of Americans get a flu shot, and many of the unvaccinated are children. A recent poll by C.S. Mott Children's Hospital found 35 percent of parents who opted not to get their children vaccinated did so because they believed the flu vaccine was less important and less effective than other childhood vaccines.

But with 20,000 children dying each year because of flu complications, physicians like William Schaffner, M.D., professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, urges the importance of vaccinating children since they are more vulnerable to the virus. Children produce more flu virus than adults when infected, and they can readily spread the virus to others.

This year's season has been much milder than last year, but doctors are beginning to see a bit of an uptick in cases. Flu season started later this year, and cases are expected to peak in the coming weeks.

But it's not too late to get vaccinated. The flu vaccine is still the best line of defense against the virus. Although not foolproof, the vaccine will result in less severe symptoms in those who have been vaccinated and still get the virus.

For easy searching, the Flu Vaccine Finder on Flu.gov provides a list of flu vaccine clinics available throughout the United States based on ZIP code.