A report Tuesday by the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology called swine flu "a serious health threat to the United States." The report says the swine flu may infect half the U-S population, hospitalized 1.8 million patients and lead to as many as 90,000 deaths.
Experts say the number of cases will increase in the coming months, potentially clogging intensive care units and emergency rooms.
"While this is not the 1918 flu pandemic," said a co-chairman of the council, "it infects younger people more, and serious complications do occur."
The report predicts this flu season might resemble the one in 1957, when 70,000 died, or 1968, which killed 34,000. The report says the government needs to step up efforts to advocate prevention measures as well as pressure vaccine makers to speed up production.
So far the virus has killed 522 people in the United States.
What is swine flu?
What is a National Emergency Declaration?
There's nothing like semantics to hype a story. They're saying this is --quote-- "not a prediction but a planning scenario for which public health officials should be prepared." What's the difference between a prediction and a planning scenario?
If they expect deaths possibly from 30,000 to 90,000, well, 30,000 is less than a normal flu year. Roughly 35,000 people die every year from just regular influenza, so they're saying it could either be like nothing or it could be major. What else is new here?
We aren't even able to measure an ultimate death rate because we base it on people who come to the hospital or go to the doctor. Many people who get the flu just stay home and sweat it out. How many? Who knows? If we could know, if we could look at everyone who got the infection and compare that to a death rate, then we might have a better idea about the severity of the outbreak, and it could well be a lot less than what's reported. What the council is honing in on here is that most of us have not had the virus so most of us are not immune to it. Every time you get a vaccine, we're immune to that strain of virus. Then a new virus comes along and you get a different flu the next year.
From that standpoint, the standpoint of immunity within a "virginal" population, it's possible that 20-40 percent of Americans could get sick. What the death rate from that would be, how many would be hospitalized --that's all guess work. What comes with the swine flu may be no different than what we went through last April. It's unknown because viruses and their mutations are very difficult to predict. All they council is saying is that we oughtta be prepared and there's a big difference between being prepared and being panicked.
What's wrong with being prepared if 40 percent of people came down with this and we had to hospitalize a few million people? Frankly, that would be a disaster. We don't have anywhere near the accommodations. It would completely overwhelm our health care system, although maybe at that point when people start talking health reform, they'll look a little differently at the issue.
We can only hope that we have smart people in charge who are drawing their conclusions based on evidence and not emotions, which is what the media tends to use to report these matters. If we develop a vaccine that works, it can solve a whole bunch of problems, even though we won't have enough vaccines for every person. Hmm, is that rationing?
And if a "Public Health Emergency" is declared, does that only apply to those with health insurance, or will there be an official S-O-L press release for the 50 million Americans with zero health coverage?
Incidentally, isn't it interesting that everyone is looking to the government to save our butts when it comes to this deadly disease, and yet no one wants the government involved in health care? And here we have the government pushing the pharmaceutical companies to go faster to figure this out, yet we want them to stop monopolizing market prices and access of drugs from other countries like Canada or England.
This is a pretty simple matter: If and when a vaccine becomes available, you don't have to get it although as a preventive measure, it's probably advisable if you do. What you'll certainly see is prioritization list from medical authorities on who should get the virus, and get it first: Older people, people with illnesses, very young people and pregnant women.
Even better: It'll be available outside the doctor's office at public places like grocery stores and drug stores in your community.
Bottom line: Flu kills around 35,000 people in an ordinary year. Not to minimize anyone's death, but 522 dead out of 305 million Americans isn't even a measurable statistic. Remember: The Spanish Flu of 1918, the model for a modern-day epidemic, killed just two percent of those who became infected --that's it.
It would be medically reckless and ultimately dangerous to be dismissive about any outbreak, but it would be irresponsible to panic over, unless of course, you like helping the cable news outlets get ratings.
What's your reaction? The news media overreacted before. Will they do it again? Why do we always have to have something to be worried about? Or are you worried at all? Will you get the vaccination?
Comments
1918/1919 flu killed 2% of those infected compared to the annual flu rate of 0.1%. The annual flu doesn't infect a lot of people, where the H1N1 of 1918 flu did, it is estimated that 650,000 Americans (50-100 million world wide) died in that two years. I'm not sure what that would be in todays population but to play down 2% is crazy. Just a side note the H1N1 of 1918/1919 did little damage during the first wave of outbreak in the sping of 1918. In the late fall it began killing very heavily.
If this strain is anything like 1918, then the idea of giving the vaccine to "the old, the compromised, and the very young" is dead wrong. The most compromised group in 1918 were those with the strongest immune systems. The 1918 H1N1 killed by the so-called cytokine storm - one's own immune system is the killer. The other difference is this: The moral fibre of our country's population is vasty different than in 1918. Then, millions of young men willingly marched off to a bloody trench war with relatively little resistance. Then, hospital care consisted of a wet washcloth, a thermometer and a bedpan. Now, the public reaction of 20 something dinks and x'ers who demand "the best" in health care when they get sick, and who've never meaningfully suffered discomfort, privation or the threat of imminent death are what will tip the scales in favor of a cultural panic, no matter what the actual death numbers are.
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