Flu News

New design

by Jim Howard on December 23, 2009

I am working on this site.
It needs a name for one thing.
I have a couple of other blogs.  When I am looking around the Internet I find that there are certain headlines and stories that I read.  Often they are not the type of stories that are the most imporant but they are ones that draw my interest for some reason.
They are not the sort of thing I want to blog about or that I even want on my main blog:  Howard’s Notebook.
They are sort of stories that I will mention to some people and at the same time the sort of stories that I will make sure and not mention to others.
That is my goal here.  I am not even close to getting it done.  I often see those sort of stories online and read them and then forget to post them here with a link.

One thing I wanted to post about was flu news because it interested me so much this year but it seems to be dying out as a story.  I never got a flu shot this year.

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Flu Deaths

by Jim Howard on October 7, 2009

My ex-wife just completed chemo treatments.  She lives in Fort Worth (TX).  I talked to her today and she is worrying about the flu.  It sounds like the Fort Worth TV stations are reporting every flu death.
So it sounds very bad.  There are a lot of flu deaths just in a normal year and it does not get reported.  It looks like they all will get reported this season.  There are going to be a lot of people living in fear.
There may also be a big demand for flu shots and people upset if they can not get one.

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Small Businesses and H1N1

by Jim Howard on October 5, 2009

  Time has a story on the effect that H1N1 virus is going to have on small businesses. 

“…But small businesses are also more vulnerable than large companies precisely because they work with a light staff — lose two workers to the flu and a shop’s workforce can be cut in half for a week or more. And, says Mavity, even if a company had the foresight to buy insurance in the event a catastrophe disrupted the business, policies are often so narrowly construed that they probably would not offer protection against a flu pandemic…”    Time

  I think a lot of places are going to be hurting.  They have cut down on staff and they use a lot of part-time people.  Plus I worry about them forcing sick employees to work and spread H1N1 ever more.
  Plus they will not have to force some employees … they make so little money they will need to work even if they are sick in order to pay their bills.
 
  I am not sure I will get any flu shot this year.  I guess if I am at he doctor’s office and they offer the shot I will take it.  But this year it looks like the H1N1 shot is going to be needed by younger people and if the supply is short I do not want to take a shot from some kid.  

  My ex-wife just completed chemo treatments.  She is in a wheel chair now all the time.  She has post-polio syndrome plus she has very bad asthma and other problems.  She does not need some fast food worker giving her the flu.

  I hope we have an easy flu season this year but I think we have to be ready for a bad one.

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Snort Sniffle Sneeze No Antibiotics Please!

by Jim Howard on September 29, 2009

Here is an excellent CDC video from YouTube. This is important. I have seen a lot of this over the years…People demanding antibiotics from their doctor. It puts the doctor in a bad spot.

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Don’t Blame Shots for All Ills, Swine Flu Officials Say

by Jim Howard on September 28, 2009

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: September 27, 2009

“As soon as swine flu vaccinations start next month, some people getting them will drop dead of heart attacks or strokes, some children will have seizures and some pregnant women will miscarry.

But those events will not necessarily have anything to do with the vaccine. That poses a public relations challenge for federal officials, who remember how sensational reports of deaths and illnesses derailed the large-scale flu vaccine drive of 1976.

SRP-flu_shot

This time they are making plans to respond rapidly to such events and to try to reassure a nervous public — and headline-hunting journalists — that the vaccine is not responsible.

Every year, there are 1.1 million heart attacks in the United States, 795,000 strokes and 876,000 miscarriages, and 200,000 Americans have their first seizure. Inevitably, officials say, some of these will happen within hours or days of a flu shot…”  The New York Times

It sounds like they know what the TV and blogs are going to say as soon as something happens.  Think of all the stories they are going to have every time someone gets sick or dies.  Plus we got about 10% of the people that will believe any wild and strange story.  I would hate to be the CDC and other people when they start giving out the swine flu shots.

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Up your nose with H1N1

by Jim Howard on September 27, 2009 · 1 comment

“ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Health officials expect more than 3 million doses of H1N1 flu vaccine to be available in the first week of October.

“3.4 million doses of vaccines will be available,” said Dr. Jay Butler, who heads the 2009 H1N1 Vaccine Task Force at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“All of that vaccine is the inhalable vaccine,” he said Friday.

That form of vaccine is marketed in the United States as FluMist and is approved only for healthy individuals between the ages of 2 and 49. Pregnant women are not allowed to get this type of vaccine because it contains a live virus…”

That would be a great day…smile_regular… the day they put live virus up your nose. I get to pass on this idea. I am over 49 years of age.

Is FluMist going to become a household name? Should I buy stock in the company? I do not know. FluMist on Wikipedia

I just feel there has got to be a joke in this someplace… a live virus up your nose… I can not think of the joke.

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CDC Video on H1N1 (Swine Flu)

by Jim Howard on September 27, 2009

In this video, Dr. Joe Bresee with the CDC Influenza Division describes swine flu – its signs and symptoms, how it’s transmitted, medicines to treat it, steps people can take to protect themselves from it, and what people should do if they become ill.

This video can also be viewed at http://www2a.cdc.gov/podcasts/

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Masks

by Jim Howard on September 27, 2009

“ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — An advisory panel is recommending a major step up in protection for health workers dealing with patients suspected or confirmed to have H1N1 influenza.

The Institute of Medicine said Thursday, in recommendations requested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said loose paper masks are inadequate because the workers could still breathe in the virus.

Instead, health workers should switch to N95 respirators that form an airtight seal around the nose and mouth.

If properly fitted and worn correctly, N95 respirators filter out at least 95 percent of particles as small as 0.3 micrometers, which is smaller than influenza viruses, the report notes…”

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Stop calling it the swine flu

by Jim Howard on September 13, 2009

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture symbolically slapped the news media on the hand Thursday for perpetuating the term “swine” flu in reports about the new H1N1 strain of influenza that’s spreading across the world.

In a written statement and during two telebriefings, the USDA reminded reporters that since last Spring they have “consistently asked that the media stop calling this ‘novel’ pandemic virus ‘swine flu.’”

So what’s the big deal? Health officials say the H1N1 virus more closely resembles the pandemic Spanish flu of 1918 than a swine flu. The USDA says struggling pork farmers are being hurt in a big way when the virus is called “swine flu.” USDA officials stress that “ you cannot get infected with 2009 pandemic virus from eating pork or pork products.”

“Each time the media uses the phrase ‘swine flu’ a hog farmer, their workers and their families suffer,” says USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement posted on the USDA Web site. “It is simply not fair or correct to associate the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza with hogs, an animal that does not play a role in the ongoing transmission of the pandemic strain.”

USDA officials point out that China is not importing U.S. pork because of the erroneous belief that eating pork is tied to the spread of this new type of flu…”

By Miriam Falco
CNN Medical News Managing Editor

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Preparing for the flu

by Jim Howard on September 1, 2009

The Miami Herald has a good article on “Preparing for the flu: Here’s what you should know.”  It is written by Fred Tasker.

“School’s in, the autumn flu season approaches, the H1N1 influenza virus has been lurking all summer, and America’s health officials anxiously prepare for . . . they know not what.

“The only thing certain is uncertainty,” says Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This will be a unique season with both H1N1 and seasonal flu virus circulating at the same time.

“Even with our best efforts, there is going to be a lot of illness, severe illness and death.”

“This isn’t the flu we’re used to,” noted Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. “We’ve seen continued transmission in a summer that should not be flu season. It’s never gone away.”

As flu season approaches, here are some frequently asked questions about H1N1 (also called swine flu), and their answers..”.

What I keep forgetting is that we are going to have two flu problems this year.  Also the fact that H1N1 did not go away is a bit scary.  I guess we will know something by October 15th.  What would be bad would be if a person would get one flu and then be weak and get the other one.

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Dr. Gupta offers advice to parents on H1N1

by Jim Howard on September 1, 2009

“(CNN) — Over this past week, I had some interesting conversations with colleagues who are also health care professionals. These conversations usually start with, “You know what I hate about the media … ?”

Now, over the past eight years, I have grown accustomed to being engaged in these sort of discussions where I am asked about everything the “media” have reported over the past few months, and asked to defend things point by point. It can be a challenging task.

This time, however, the topic was H1N1, or swine flu.

I spent the weekend thinking about what I was being told, and realized there was a larger point here.

People were scared, more than I had seen in a long time. And, health care professionals were blaming the media — accusing them of being alarmist…”

The story has some good advice for parents at the end of the article.

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Swine Flu News Media Hype?

by Jim Howard on August 29, 2009 · 1 comment

From my little window on the world it looks to me like there are going to be a few problems with this flu season.
One is that many people do not trust the government and many do not trust the news media.  (If you are a right wing Republican then you do not trust any of them.)
Many people my age remember  the 1976 swine flu scare.  That is one of the few times I got a flu shot.  The medical people were wrong that year and the deadly virus did not sweep the nation.

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