H1N1 is going to be a really, really big deal this fall and winter. It's time to set up your H1N1 website, and start selling "I survived the swine" t-shirts.
I work as an ER nurse, and hospitals all over are expecting a huge influx of patients. It's going to be a miserable winter for me. :( The CDC is expecting 50% of the population to come down with it, close to a million hospitalizations and 90,000 deaths in the US alone. This out break already meets the WHO definition of pandemic flu.
Most people that come down with it have a bad case of the sniffles, a cough and feel miserable for a while. But the problem with this virus is that it randomly hits younger people (age 25-50) really hard and sends them to the ICU. We've had 10-12 young people in our ICU this summer on ventilators with H1N1. Two of those people were pregnant mothers.
<PSA>
So, get your flu and swine flu shots this year. Wash your hands. Sneeze or cough into your elbow instead of your hands. If you're sick, for the love of health, please stay home and isolate yourself instead of sharing your germs with your coworkers. And, if you're having a hard time breathing, come to the ER sooner rather than later.
</PSA>
They said this at the start of the summer in the UK. There was talk of keeping kids from starting school in september because that's when everything would be at its worst. They setup round the clock manned telephone hotlines for advice. Those operators are now sleeping, playing cards, waiting for the phones to ring.
Seems like most people in the UK have had a mild case of swine flu now, and it was pretty boring (I believe myself and my family had mild case of swine flu a month or so ago - we stayed at home, felt a bit rubbish for a few days, then got better).
Is it really worth getting jabs for this? (Unless you're pregnant or have other medical issues). Is it really worth trying to isolate it?
On the grand scale of things, the number of people likely to die from it seems miniscule compared to other threats.
PS (When I started to type "myself" above, my fingers actually typed "mysql"! Hate it when that happens :/ )
"In the grand scale of things, the number of people likely to die from it seems miniscule compared to other threats."
What are other threats are you thinking of?
What other diseases are estimated to cause half the US population to be infected, one million hospitalizations, and 90,000 deaths? Even if most people who get it are fine after a few days, it's a pretty big deal if half the population is going to come down with it; H1N1 sure is going to get a lot of chances to kill even if it's not so deadly for any one individual.
Exactly, 30k dead in the US annually due to seasonal flu. I doubt the swine flue will kill 90k. They want to scare people to sell Tamiflu and the vaccine. It's a billions of dollars business.
The same people who own the pharma companies were involved in the propaganda of WMDs in Iraq, most notably Donald Rumsfeld who is the owner of the Tamiflu selling company.
There's an average of 30k to 50k deaths related to flu each year. And, yes, vaccines are truly beneficial. There's also 30-50k deaths each year because of car accidents.
I'm not saying that people should panic about the flu, but good handwashing, getting vaccinated and not exposing others to your germs is just good common sense, and it's what our best current science says.
If you get the vaccine you might still get sick, but if you do, it's usually less severe. And, we all get the benefit of herd immunity from large scale vaccinations programs.
<PSA>...and boost your vitamin D level! 60% of the US population is deficient and it gets worse in the winter (which is one reason flu cases increase seasonally.) Your body will make vitamin D on its own in response to direct sunlight (but not through glass.) You can also buy inexpensive D3 supplements. Many high end multivitamins already include it.</PSA>
Wait - you mean you can have swine flu and not have a high fever? I've been in bed for like 8 days with a cough, waterfall mucus production, bronchitis, and feeling terrible. I'm leaking out my right ear and have lost hearing on that side. The doctor said it wasn't H1N1 because I have no fever.
You're saying it could be? Going back to the doctor tomorrow, but I'm surprised to hear your description of the symptoms - it is not what my doctor suggested, and it fits with what I've had.
I wouldn't be surprised if you have it. The classic symptoms are fever, cough, copious mucous, body aches, with vomiting and diarrhea. But, I'm pretty sure I had it for a couple of days, and I just had a little fever, runny nose and body aches. My wife had a runny nose, a cough and aches for 3 weeks.
A few weeks ago Santa Clara County Department of Health told us that 99% of all flu like symptoms in the area are H1N1. There just aren't too many other bugs going around right now, at least in Silicon Valley.
That being said, getting swabbed really doesn't do much for you. It lets you tell your friends, "I had swine flu", but not much else. Tamiflu helps a little bit, but only if you take it in the first 2 days of symptoms. So, you're pretty much screwed. Sorry.
If you start to cough up colored goo, or have a hard time breathing by all means go to see the Bone Saw again.
> Wash your hands. Sneeze or cough into your elbow instead of your hands. If you're sick, for the love of health, please stay home and isolate yourself instead of sharing your germs with your coworkers.
Why? If this thing is a contagious as it seems to be, there is no point in doing this. Pretty much everyone is going to get it from one source or another.
Let's fight useful battles, instead of making everyone think they are doing some good, when they are doing nothing effective.
This is nonsense. If it's as contagious as it's purported to be then washing your hands and staying home when you are sick are precisely the things that you should be doing. These simple measures have a real, measurable impact on public health. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_washing_with_soap
I have to say I don't entirely see why this is news. Swine Flu is no more dangerous than any other Influenza A infection (Influenza A accounts for about 70% of flu cases in any given year). It's distinguishing trait is it spreads faster than other flu viruses. But as the article itself says...
"The overwhelming majority of our patients have had mild symptoms and are usually better in three to five days," the university said.
None of the WSU cases have been fatal.
I think a lot of people are confusing Swine Flu with Bird Flu in their mind and freaking out. Swine Flu may lead to more cases of the flu this season but it's still just the Flu. Assuming you don't have another underlying condition you should be fine with rest and chicken soup.
The problem with H1N1 is that the general population has little immunity to it, so containing and controlling it is difficult. Had it been more virulent, this would be very serious.
Why this thing is tracked and scientists take it very seriously is that influenza can rapidly mutate and H1N1 _could_ become much more virulent than it is today. The extremely deadly 1918 flu had a first wave that behaves like most flu outbreaks before coming back and killing tens of millions of people.
That doesn't mean that will happen this time or that people should get panicky. Catching H1N1 in its current state is probably beneficial because it would confer stronger immunity to what might be a family of influenza that could be around for a while, but its spread is newsworthy. If the news leads to more people staying home when they are sick, even if the symptoms are more minor for them, and we get more herd immunity through increased vaccinations, that's a good thing.
EDIT: I just wanted to emphasis that vaccination is definitely preferable to catching the actual disease, even if the latter would give strong immunity to future, similar strains.
there has definitely been backlash against the unnecessarilly scare-mongering of the earlier swine flu coverage- but, it is worth taking notice because of how easily transmittable it is. a slight mutation and this could in fact be a seriously dangerous pandemic
It's all over colleges. I went to my school's clinic last Friday, Georgia Tech, and everyone who came in with any flu symptoms had to wear a mask. They had setup a makeshift, H1N1 triage center, separated from the rest of the clinic.
Turns out I had bronchitis(hooray for antibiotics), but it was fairly scary how quickly H1N1 is spreading. It's not too deadly, but seems to be very infectious.
I had swine flu this winter (July as I live in the southern hemisphere). I was bedridden for some days but the hype far too high. It had a strange upside. While delirious I had the most pleasant dreams...
"Swine flu is "the one that we're most concerned about," Frieden said.
"Because if it does become more deadly, it could cause a very severe scenario"
It could, but it does NOT. Swine flu is by far less deadly than seasonal flu. In Germany we have 15k swine flu cases and not a single death in 4 months. In contrast there care 20k flu related deaths in Germany each year.
That doesn't say anything about a difference in the case fatality rate between the two strains of flu until you tell me how many cases there are of typical seasonal flu in Germany each year.
But you didn't say how many cases of (non-swine) flu there are each year, which makes it difficult to extract any information about the per-case fatality rate. On the other hand, if your figures are right then we can be pretty sure that swine flue is relatively mild, unless just about everyone in Germany gets flu every year. On the other other hand, (1) one thing that's unusual about the current swine flu epidemic is that it's happening out of the normal flu season, so some of the credit for the low death rate may be due to the fact that people aren't yet getting it in winter; and (2) no one is actually disputing that swine flu, as it is now, is pretty benign; the question is how likely it is that a slightly mutated version will turn up that starts killing a lot more people.
Yes, 20k deaths obviously refers to seasonal flu. 20k deaths OUT OF HOW MANY CASES? No information. So we don't know the death rate for ordinary seasonal flu. So we don't know just how the rates for swine flu and ordinary seasonal flu compare.
(Of course we know -- assuming your numbers are right -- that the observed death rate for swine flu is zero. But we don't know, e.g., whether the death rate for seasonal flu is so low that a figure of zero would be unsurprising even if swine flu were worse than typical seasonal flu.
I work as an ER nurse, and hospitals all over are expecting a huge influx of patients. It's going to be a miserable winter for me. :( The CDC is expecting 50% of the population to come down with it, close to a million hospitalizations and 90,000 deaths in the US alone. This out break already meets the WHO definition of pandemic flu.
Most people that come down with it have a bad case of the sniffles, a cough and feel miserable for a while. But the problem with this virus is that it randomly hits younger people (age 25-50) really hard and sends them to the ICU. We've had 10-12 young people in our ICU this summer on ventilators with H1N1. Two of those people were pregnant mothers.
<PSA> So, get your flu and swine flu shots this year. Wash your hands. Sneeze or cough into your elbow instead of your hands. If you're sick, for the love of health, please stay home and isolate yourself instead of sharing your germs with your coworkers. And, if you're having a hard time breathing, come to the ER sooner rather than later. </PSA>