Looks like according to the CDC over 99% of the flu that is infecting the US is H1N1 (swine flu) and it seems to be dropping off the map. Did H1N1 kill the seasonal flu and now has nothing left to feed on? This is weird, in any event, I’m glad I didn’t get either vaccine. Looks like niether flu was the doomsday virus after all.
V
This isn’t interesting to anyone?
V
All the people I know who are in the health field are not getting the flu shot. There are ways to side-step it. They think it’s horseshit.
Ah well, these days the sky is falling every two weeks or so…
Never a big a problem as it seemed to be. My guess all the precautions such as shots, hand washing, not coughing on people probably helped a lot.
[quote]hedo wrote:
Never a big a problem as it seemed to be. My guess all the precautions such as shots, hand washing, not coughing on people probably helped a lot.[/quote]
But where did the normal seasonal flu go? The one which annually kills around 300,000? It’s gone, within the first few weeks of the official start of the flu season it just up and dissapears?
Look, I think Vitamin D awareness might have had a decent impact on this. I know myself I have been able to get at least 15-20 people taking daily D3 in the range of 2,000 to 5,000 IU. If any of those people told other people and so on, well there might be more people who are taking D3 than we can accurately measure. God knows it’s gotten a lot of good press, so maybe that has also had something to do with it. I know that not one person who I know for a fact is taking Vit D has gotten sick so far.
V
^^^
Sounds scientific to me. You’re a regular johnny appleseed, or johnny vitaminDseed 
[quote]bond james bond wrote:
All the people I know who are in the health field are not getting the flu shot. There are ways to side-step it. They think it’s horseshit.
[/quote]
Well you do live in CA and companies were trying to license with squalene adjuvant there. I miyself would avoid that too.
The pandemic strain was more likely the flu strain for the season, if that makes any sense. We are starting to think that the idea of a specific time of year in given hemispheres for flu transmission may not be after this strain but only time will tell. That flu may be moving to apoint where it is not seasonal anymore.
The fear was based on the fact that this strain can survive much longer on surfaces and easily transmitted, so if it recombinated with a much more severe strain that would be very bad.
But instead it appears as though it represses the spread of other strains. Probably due to phenotypes associated with replication.
In many years these same tests detect very little seasonal (or any) flu in this same particular week of the year, namely week 47: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ussurvdata.htm
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
^^^
Sounds scientific to me. You’re a regular johnny appleseed, or johnny vitaminDseed :)[/quote]
Don’t mock hum just yet. He is more correct then you realize. There is plenty of evidence to support this.
[quote]Gregus wrote:
[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
^^^
Sounds scientific to me. You’re a regular johnny appleseed, or johnny vitaminDseed :)[/quote]
Don’t mock hum just yet. He is more correct then you realize. There is plenty of evidence to support this.
[/quote]
I just started to take VitD last week after my wife was told to take it for her menopause. It helps combat osteoporosis. When the pharmasist mentioned bones and strength a light went on in my head. It’s also dirt cheap.
I never have taken a flu shot. It’s the flu. It happens every year. I don’t think I ever had it because I can only recall being sick and down more than a day maybe once or twice over the last 30 years.
Take some Vitamin C, wash your hands, and don’t tongue kiss gals with the flu. My wife and I start feeling a little edgy and sick we take 2-4 grs of Pharmaceutical grade C a day.
I can’t recall having a sick day for the last 15 years. The other times I had it was over the weekend :(.
[quote]apbt55 wrote:
[quote]bond james bond wrote:
All the people I know who are in the health field are not getting the flu shot. There are ways to side-step it. They think it’s horseshit.
[/quote]
Well you do live in CA and companies were trying to license with squalene adjuvant there. I miyself would avoid that too.
The pandemic strain was more likely the flu strain for the season, if that makes any sense. We are starting to think that the idea of a specific time of year in given hemispheres for flu transmission may not be after this strain but only time will tell. That flu may be moving to apoint where it is not seasonal anymore.
The fear was based on the fact that this strain can survive much longer on surfaces and easily transmitted, so if it recombinated with a much more severe strain that would be very bad.
But instead it appears as though it represses the spread of other strains. Probably due to phenotypes associated with replication.
[/quote]
What others seem to be missing is the lethality of H1N1:
see p 1328, “Pediatric influenza-associated mortality”
The datum for this year–which accounts only for events since April–mortality is 318 among children, compared to the full-year values of 45 to 90 in previous years.
The excess mortality among children and pregnant women is no secret and it is not “horseshit.”
I worry, too, that this is a “warm-weather” flu, and we will see another spike of mortality in March and April 2010.
Would you be able to provide figures for other medical causes of death by which we could see just how major, relative to other things, H1N1 SO-IV 2009 is as a emergency pandemic?
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Would you be able to provide figures for other medical causes of death by which we could see just how major, relative to other things, H1N1 SO-IV 2009 is as a emergency pandemic?[/quote]
Compared to past years, with confidence limits:
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Would you be able to provide figures for other medical causes of death by which we could see just how major, relative to other things, H1N1 SO-IV 2009 is as a emergency pandemic?[/quote]
And another representation of pediatric deaths
It will take a while to analyze the severity for adults in terms of hospitlizations, death and complication ratios, and so forth. So far, the data for pediatric and pregnant mortality are convincing, and were predicted.
I said other medical causes. I meant in general.
Obviously, I don’t want 200 more kids to have died.
However, in a nation of 300 million people, and where other medical causes of death are much bigger problems, presenting numbers on that order as being a national health emergency/crisis is not realistic.
I do understand that government officials and other government employees who presented this as very possibly being the next 1918 flu disaster, needing of course crash effort by the government as the only means to save us, have to make any figures whatsover still be a disaster. Thus, rather than millions or hundreds of thousands being dead being a disaster, basically any increase at all, even if microscopic relative to the population, is going to be deemed proof of the predicted disaster.
I understand you, but why compare causes of all deaths, or even preventable deaths? Of course, MVAs kill more, handguns kill more, and so on. But we have ways to prevent an epidemic of influenza. Not to act is also negligence.
Note:
–The CDC appropriately predicted the target populations: kids and pregnant women.
–THis season now fits the accepted definition of epidemic.
–This flu season is not over, and if we were to have 1000 excess pediatric flu deaths by April, would that be insufficient cause?
–The widespread disaster was not “predicted,” but it was one possible scenario, a scenario to be avoided.
–WIll we “know” the benefits of the vaccination and other measures taken? No. The data in May and June may disappoint those who accept only an “end of the world” scenario as the sole justification for the CDC’s action.
My father remembered November 1918. By the morning, young men who were healthy at the previous night’s dinner were by then enshrouded, and out on the curb, awaiting burial.
I thought the CDC told everyone to stop counting cases back in July so how would they know ?
Didn’ t CBS news bring up some real questions about their estimates and show that in several states they were 80-90% off ?..maybe I’m thinking of the great “bird-flu” epidemic of 2007 ?
More information:
From April through August, there were 424 deaths due to “flu” in the US. (In July, specific reporting for H1N1 was suspended, since it would be not possible to perform the confirmatory RNA tests in a timely fashion.)
Of these deaths, 5% were pregnant women. At any given time, a little less than 1% of all Americans are pregnant. When flu kills a pregnant woman, it frequently kills two people at once.
One might infer that the disease was particularly morbid among the pregnant. What comes as a surprise is the demographic for young healthy men and women, ages 25 to 50. Their deaths probably outnumbered the “elderly” (age > 65).
You will see, in the press and elsewhere, declarations that this was a “mild flu” season, which I take as a premature victory dance. The data are mixed: so far, H1N1 has become the dominant virus this season, with fewer reported cases than feared, but with substantially greater mortality than the ordinary flu. And this season is not over.