OT: H1N1 Flu virus

[Mikeno7]

It's a nice diversion for the media; keep people in check by fear(most people subscribe to agenda based newscasts..MSNBC,Fox etc).... so the federal reserve and the current administration can continue to create vast illusion over the population. The H1N1 virus is no more harmful than other flu like symptoms; I would be more concerned with the "regular" strain of flu... which is far more deadly for the elderly. The inoculation was mandatory for health workers
; which they soon ran out...and it was then no longer mandatory???- can you say money maker. The producer of this vaccine or serum( or whatever this concoction actually is) is making out like bandits...it would be interesting to follow the trail of who is profiting from all this. I have no fear of modern medicine; but sometimes the overall fear will runaway with us and we'll get caught up in the hysteria.

[vespapod]

Right now the H1N1 is not a "killer" if you are a young healthy adult so due to the fantastic government run by this United States of America i would bypass being vaccinated to allow somebody else the shot....Purel the hell out of your hands...keep a jar in the car...and most of all eat healthy...greens, fruit, vitamin C...and stay active and keep upbeat...the rule of thumb in medicine is "attitude is 90% of the cure." Talk to sockii about that one with my mom.

Now...if the virus converts to a killer....take that long needed "upper parts of Canada trip"...I mean the arctic tundra to avoid the virus...either the government is not telling us this is going to happen or it may not anyway....I dont think it will mutate.

Be proud that the Obama administration totally blew this one...(I count it as bad as Katrina personally)....ALL schools and colleges in the USA should have been shut down for two weeks MANDATORY (education regulations be damned) and the vaccine should have been mass produced earlier...we actually have no facilities in this country to do this...WHY??? again I feel that the president and Congress together have the total IQ of Sting doing pot.

We should realize that this country does no long term planning...only knee jerk responses to situations...look at the health care mess....what the fuck is opt out....I went to school for fuckin 10 years and I have no idea what they are cooking up...as well as the physicians I talked to at my hospital yesterday.

Anybody know of GOOD candidates who have brain cells??? And what the fuck is all these czars!!!! Is there a vaccine czar???

[vespapod]

By the way...anyone interested I would start dropping about 2000 mg of Vitamin C daily.....

[vespapod]

just to piss people off even more....all prisoners in the USA have been vaccinated with no long lines to wait in...

wave that flag!!!!!

[Mikeno7]

Try to listen and watch;trying not to make this politically- because politicians, I mean all, are full of shit, but at least good old Ron has a fair assessment over current conditions concerning this matter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RlVeJNT ... _embedded#

[Lilrock]

You nailed it vespapod. Here here.

[moonstone]

This must be such an awful dilemma when you have small children Tamadude.

I think Smudge is right that you should talk to your Doctor and maybe get a second opinion as well if it helps put yours and Mrs Tamadudes minds at rest.

I'm thankful that my own daughter is grown up and left home so I don't have to make this choice for her like I did when the MMR vaccine came out. Myself Im not having the shot because I work outside all day, have minimal contact with lots of people and am reasonably healthy apart from a bit of pollen related asthma. If I worked with young kids or the elderly though then I probably would have it.

I too hate the fear that is being spread by all the media hype. There was an ugly incident reported in our local paper a few weeks back when an 11 year old girl had stones and abuse thrown at her in the street for coming outside to play when her mother had just been diagnosed with 'swine flu'. Sickening.

I think the majority of deaths in the UK have been people who had underlying health problems whilst every year hundreds of elderly people die from normal flu or hypothermia but this doesn't seem to be of interest to the press.

Good luck with what ever you decide to do Tamadude.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

(smile) Well, now that SC.net's a political zone again, guess I can throw in my two cents. DISCLAIMER: I do a lot of arguing politics in my day to day life. None of this is to be construed as an attack on anyone here in particular; I love and respect you guys; I just think that we can agree to disagree.

Obama can't win either way on this. If he had shut down schools, whatever, Fox News would have had a field day, making hay out of the costs (it would probably cost hundreds of millions, if not billions, in lost productivity and outright costs - to manufacture and distribute a vaccine - to do something like that. Plus, are you going to force people to get a vaccine against their will? Isn't that kind of invasion of personal rights something conservatives claim to be ethically opposed to? Some people think childhood vaccines are linked to autism. Are you going to tell concerned parents to sit down & shut up?)

Then, when a lot of people didn't get sick (either from having been vaccinated or because this flu isn't that deadly to begin with), the press would have used that as justification for their criticism of the Administration's having spent the money.

Frankly, you guys might want to save some blame for the media-infotainment complex, which plays politics with things like this and does a lot of dictating policy.

Frankly, I don't watch much mass-outlet news - because of the constant brainless-celebrity-news nonsense, missing-white-girl hysteria, total lack of objectivity thanks to corporate ownership's interests, etc. - so maybe I'm just not up on this, but it sounds to me like they're really inflating H1N1 into the next media circus - which, oh, by the way, sells newspapers, causes viewership totals to shoot up, etc. Any chance these outlets may be profiteering from scaring the hell out of the public? Oh, my stars, Roger Ailes [& the other corporations that are pimping this stuff] would never do anything like that, would he? [insert laundry list a mile long HERE of various cases - Y2K, some terrorism-related stories, plus tons of others, where the media has done exactly that]

Having had this dread flu myself, I think an ounce of salt when turning on the television might be a concept worth considering. Again, NOT that I don't think it's dangerous, but given the projections for this flu earlier this year? I don't think the reality is even beginning to approach any of that.

On the other hand, I don't live in a giant, teeming city where I'm forced to come in contact with hundreds of strangers every day as a matter of course, so that's my (admitted) blind spot on this.

[DirtyMartini]

I only ever get the flu vaccine (of whatever stripe) because of Mo: his asthma puts him in the high risk category, and we live in an apartment w/o a spare bedroom, so no matter how many precautions we take, it's almost guaranteed that if one of us gets sick, the other will soon follow. So when he gets the shot, I get the shot. Just seems to make sense. But otherwise, since I don't work with children or patients or other large populations and don't have any risk factors (and I'm not on the subway every day), I wouldn't get it.

I've known about half a dozen people who've had swine flu so far. Their verdict: it felt like the flu. The one change for me this year about getting vaccinated isn't H1N1 but whether or not having just had surgery makes getting the shot a better or worse idea. I haven't a clue; I have to call my doc.


If it helps, Tama, here are some official numbers (give or take, since these are reported and confirmed numbers):

US:
Seasonal flu-related deaths in the US each year, according to the CDC: 36,000
Confirmed H1N1-related deaths in US (as of Oct. 10 cuz that's as late as I can find on the website): 292
Population in US: >300,000,000

(http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm)
(http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1flu/qa.htm)


Canada:
Seasonal flu-related deaths in Canada each year, according to what I think is the official Canadian Health agency (?): 4000-8000ish (They aren't very specific: "An estimated 4 000 to 8 000 Canadians -- mostly seniors -- die every year from pneumonia related to flu. Many others may die from other serious complications of flu.)
Confirmed H1N1-related deaths in Canada as of Oct. 27, 2009: 89
Population in Canada: >33,000,000

(http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/di ... pe-eng.php)
(http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/alert-alerte ... ce-eng.php)


[Worldwide sidebar: global confirmed death toll (as of July 2008) from that big bird flu scare: 243
World population: 7,000,000,000+
(I've been all over the WHO website, but I can't find any recent numbers, so this is the best I've got: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/ju ... ic.warning)]

[TheEqualizer]

Due to the shortage of the vaccine, I believe that you should not get vaccinated unless you fall in the high risk category.

I think we would all be well served by following Vespapod's sound advice and take Vitamin C.

[vespapod]

yes, the Vitamin C is an easy one to do...I do feel it is a media circus...like anything else they report because there isnt much else to talk about...its on friggin 24 hours a day.

I think any pandemic, however should institute certain triggers in the system including the shutdown of schools...dont forget..this would have been great practice for the BIG pandemic that is coming someday....its only natural that a killer virus will eventually mutate...we should have huge vaccine production centers in this country...not farming out to mexico and the phillipines -and get ourselves geared up for the big one...even if H1N1 isnt that particular virus.

[vespapod]

for Dirty martini...I tell patients after having general anesthesia to wait a few weeks before stressing their system again with an attenuated vaccine...

[English-lion]

I'm avoiding commenting on this thread like the pelage

[Tamadude]

C'mon, Lioness. You're on the frontline. We need your input, man! (JK. I understand if you're taking the 5th)

I do appreciate everyone's thoughts.

SS, my yard apes range in age from 8, to 5, to noob. I also have my MIL living in the basement suite and I'm in close proximity to hundreds, if not thousands of people every work day.

[Chatchka]

Tamadude, I'll share a bit, though I don't know if it'll help.

Great discussion thread -- it has been on my mind a lot too. Especially because my daughter (5 years old) just had the flu for the first time. She had not been vaccinated this year, but has been in all previous years. Coincidence? Hard to say. Our family gets the vaccine every year and it is extremely rare that any of us suffer more than an early winter cold each year. In fact, it is kind of a standing joke in my extended family that I never get sick -- they all aspire to my immunity. I tell them to get a flu shot, which they scoff at. I think it is highly unlikely that I have some magical immunity to the various bugs that pass by me, so in the absence of a medical education, a consistent work-out schedule or a healthy diet, I attribute it to that annual shot (and maybe some good luck).

When my daughter first got sick, it was the day after a nationally hyped case of a preteen in Texas that apparently got the flu and died within 24 hours. I was paranoid, so off to the doctor we went with her high fever. They said she had a cold, declined to test her for the H1N1 flu and sent us home. By the next day, a Saturday, her fever was 104+, coughing, aching, barfing, etc. We called and they told us it was too late for Tamiflu to help, and again declined to test her for H1N1 because the treatment for that strain is the same as any other flu. Poor kid had to ride it out for four more days of high fever and misery until she got over it just like any other flu, and we'll probably never know which strain it was. The doctors still recommend that she gets both flu shots this season to help prevent contracting it or any other flu again this season. We are going to get them first for her and then for ourselves as they are made available. Why us too? Because when we became parents we accepted taking care of our little ones as our first responsibility. Part of that is taking care of ourselves too.

Presumably, you trust your doctors for medical advice. I'm not an advocate of blind faith, but they do study this science more than I do, so when I pay for their professional advice, I generally accept it. If it seems suspect, I do more research on my own, which it sounds like you are doing. You are clearly doing your best to safeguard your family, so while the sparkling political rhetoric here is interesting (I love it when some of you folks start ranting ), stick to your task, get some advice from a medical professional you trust and get through the flu season as safely as you can. Good luck, my freind!