H1n1

Are many particularly worried about H1N1 in the US? I don't get the sense there is the kind of rising panic that I'm seeing in various local media outlets here in Canada. I was at a hockey tournament with my son this weekend and a player from another team felt ill on Sunday, went to a clinic, was discharged and died on Monday. He was a healthy 13 year-old with no underlying illnesses.

Its certainly got me motivated to get everyone in my family the flu shot.

I bought a suit, a blaizhure, and a couple shirts and at H1N1 last Spring.

A friend of mine is an ER Dr. in the Washington DC area. He had a patient die in his clinic of H1N1 last week. Healthy male, mid 30's. He also says he's never seen so many bad flu cases this early in the season in almost 20 years of practice.

Originally Posted by Baron

Click to expand...

A friend of mine is an ER Dr. in the Washington DC area. He had a patient die in his clinic of H1N1 last week. Healthy male, mid 30's. He also says he's never seen so many bad flu cases this early in the season in almost 20 years of practice.

Its a very different strain, so we will see quite an increase in cases this fall/winter.

Deaths in healthy patients - some effects from what is called a cytokine storm (basically you're healthy but your body overreacts to the virus)... there are probably some other things coming into play that we honestly don't have a firm grasp on (yet).

As for the OP's question - I know people who are concerned, but not unduly so. I have to say the CDC has actually done a pretty good job with the response to H1N1, providing information, which in turn, helps people to keep everything in perspective (i.e. the sky is not falling and there are plenty of other things to be mindful of).

Originally Posted by Kris

Click to expand...

I bought a suit, a blaizhure, and a couple shirts and at H1N1 last Spring.

Trying to fit in with SF clique jokes fail

I'm personally not concerned.

North Americans typically blow all this kind of **** out of proportion. We live in such great conditions and have so little happening to us in this little bubble of a life that we lead, the second something goes wrong we put on alerts and declare pandemics.

HEALTHY PEOPLE ARE DYING!!! Yes. Healthy people die every single day from thousands of different things; many of them destroying the number of deaths caused by swine flu; let's think: the regular flu?

"But the young are dying!"

Yeah? Alright? Welcome to the world of an unfamiliar illness. What can you do? Wash your hands and go on with your day, or let them inject you with that sham chemical concoction of a vaccine.

I think HIV is a bigger threat to the young than H1N1

So just so I have a bit of perspective, if we look back to the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak, at the early stages would they have been as equally blase? When would have been the appropriate time to be concerned?

If George Bush were still President, we'd have stories of children dying of H1N1 on the news every night.... With Congressional investigations into vaccine shortages.

Originally Posted by CBDB

Click to expand...

So just so I have a bit of perspective, if we look back to the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak, at the early stages would they have been as equally blase? When would have been the appropriate time to be concerned?
Are you saying that our medical intelligence in 1919 was parallel to now? edit: Enjoy your flu shots, by the way. Keep pumpin Tamiflu full of profits profits profits! http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthi.../aa011604a.htm New influenza viruses are constantly being produced by mutation or by reassortment.[30] Mutations can cause small changes in the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase antigens on the surface of the virus. This is called antigenic drift, which creates an increasing variety of strains over time until one of the variants eventually achieves higher fitness, becomes dominant, and rapidly sweeps through the human population—often causing an epidemic.[75] In contrast, when influenza viruses reassort, they may acquire new antigens—for example by reassortment between avian strains and human strains; this is called antigenic shift. If a human influenza virus is produced with entirely novel antigens, everybody will be susceptible, and the novel influenza will spread uncontrollably, causing a pandemic.[76] In contrast to this model of pandemics based on antigenic drift and shift, an alternative approach has been proposed where the periodic pandemics are produced by interactions of a fixed set of viral strains with a human population with a constantly changing set of immunities to different viral strains.[77]

Originally Posted by ZackyBoy

Click to expand...

Are you saying that our medical intelligence in 1919 was parallel to now?

I'm not but 1919 killed around 150mm worldwide and I believe its an attack of hubris to believe that we are profoundly better than we were.

CDC says that something like 98.9% of flu cases right now are H1N1. My dad had it, was admitted to the hospital with that and pneumonia. Its that fact that swine flu kills your immune system which leaves you susceptible to other viruses and bacteria.

Originally Posted by tigerFormula

Click to expand...

CDC says that something like 98.9% of flu cases right now are H1N1. My dad had it, was admitted to the hospital with that and pneumonia. Its that fact that swine flu kills your immune system which leaves you susceptible to other viruses and bacteria.

What? That is absolutely not true.

Originally Posted by PaoloM

Click to expand...

I think HIV is a bigger threat to the young than H1N1

Except that HIV pretty much a preventable disease. We know how to prevent transmission.