| Magnetonium |
Pffft. MANY MORE people have died from regular flu than from H1N1. It was all just the scare tactics. People watch too much TV.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/05/0...main/index.html
Swine flu no worse than regular flu
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The swine flu virus that has sparked fear and precautions worldwide appears to be no more dangerous than the regular flu virus that makes its rounds each year, U.S. officials said Monday.
"What the epidemiologists are seeing now with this particular strain of U.N. is that the severity of the disease, the severity of the flu -- how sick you get -- is not stronger than regular seasonal flu," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday as the worldwide number of confirmed cases of swine flu -- technically known as 2009 H1N1 virus -- topped 1,080.
The flu has been blamed for 26 deaths: 25 in Mexico and one in the United States, according to the World Health Organization.
Still, Napolitano noted, the seasonal flu results in "hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations" and roughly 35,000 fatalities each year in the United States alone. There are still concerns that the virus could return in the fall, in the typical flu season, as a stronger strain.
"We are cautiously optimistic that this particular strain will not be more severe than a normal seasonal flu outbreak," Napolitano said. Video Watch Napolitano assess the swine flu risk »
Napolitano acknowledged claims by health officials in Mexico, the epicenter of the H1N1 outbreak, who believe their cases have peaked and said, "I have no reason to think that is inaccurate."
The WHO said there were no immediate plans to raise its alert to the highest level, Phase 6. That designation would mean "that we are seeing continued spread of the virus to countries outside of one region," Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda said.
"If you are seeing community outbreaks occur in multiple regions of the world, it really tells us if the virus has established itself and that we can expect to see disease in most countries in the world."
In the United States, the CDC on Monday reported confirmed 279 cases across 36 states -- 60 more than were confirmed the day before. Several states, including New York and Massachusetts, confirmed dozens more cases Monday that were not immediately added to the CDC tally. See where the H1N1 virus has spread across the world »
Earlier, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the CDC "erroneously" doubled the cases in his state. Jindal confirmed his state's total is seven, and the CDC dropped its nationwide count from 286 to 279.
Many of the cases are among children; the median age is 16, said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC. The youngest confirmed case is a 3-month-old, he said.
There are also more than 700 probable cases across 44 states, Besser said.
"This likely represents an underestimation of the total number of cases across the country," he said, because not everyone with flu-like symptoms goes to the doctor and gets tested.
The numbers are expected to increase. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's interim deputy director for public health, said Sunday, "We believe we're just on the upswing here."
But in Mexico, where the first cases were reported, illnesses may have peaked for now.
Mexico City will reopen government offices and restaurants Wednesday, and museums, libraries and churches Thursday as officials cited improvements in the battle against swine flu.
Officials said university and secondary students can return to class Thursday while younger students will wait until May 11.
In another sign of improving conditions with the H1N1 virus, federal officials lowered the nation's health alert level Monday from red, or "high," to orange, or "elevated."
"The measures we have taken, and above all the public's reaction, have led to an improvement," Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said at a news conference.
"But I insist that the virus is still present, that we need to remain on alert, and the resumption of activities will be little by little, not all at once."
The Mexican and Chinese government sent chartered flights to each other's countries Tuesday to pick up their respective nationals stranded or quarantined because of the global swine flu outbreak.
An Aeromexico flight was making several stops throughout China to collect nearly 70 citizens who were being held in quarantine across the communist nation as part of its strict swine flu-control measures.
The flight will make stops in Beijing, Shanghai and the southern city of Guangzhou.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Embassy official said four Americans are or were quarantined in China: two in Beijing; two in the southern Guangdong province.
The official could not say whether the two in Guangdong had been released, nor did she provide additional details.
In the U.S., residents gripped by concerns about the swine flu, also had a hopeful sign Monday. The St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, New York -- which had the first confirmed U.S. cases of swine flu -- reopened Monday.
More than 100 St. Francis students had come down with flu symptoms two weeks ago. Some were tested and found to have the H1N1 virus. Learn more about the H1N1 influenza virus »
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand to welcome them back to a school that had undergone an intense scrub-down.
"The school has been completely sanitized," St. Francis Principal Leonard Conway said in a letter to students and their parents.
The U.S. Department of Education said that 533 schools were shut Monday, about 100 more than Friday and about half of 1 percent of all schools in the United States. The closures affect about 330,000 students in 24 states.
New cases of swine flu were leaving soldiers isolated in California.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marine Base at Twentynine Palms, north of Palm Springs, California, said two new cases of the flu were confirmed by the CDC. The two Marines show no symptoms but are being kept in isolation, spokeswoman Jennie Haskamp said. Previously, one other case was confirmed at the base.
The U.S. Defense Department also reported that a crew member stationed aboard the USS Dubuque in San Diego, California, was confirmed to have swine flu and is currently ashore. The department said there were 13 other "probable" cases among Dubuque personnel.
And California officials were looking into a suspected case at Centinela State Prison in Imperial County. Authorities suspended visitation and other "non-essential activities" at the prison pending confirmation.
Even as health officials worldwide worked to battle the outbreak, intense efforts were under way to develop a vaccine -- with lessons from history in mind.
"In 1918, the Spanish flu showed a surge in the spring and then disappeared in the summer months, only to return in the autumn of 1918 with a vengeance," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said Sunday. "And we know that that eventually killed 40 million to 50 million people."
Health officials are not making such dire predictions in this case. And they can't know for certain whether the swine flu will make a big return later in the year.
Still, they're taking no chances.
In that effort, health officials have a tool unlike anything they've had before.
"This is the best surveillance we've ever had," Fukuda said Monday. "You know, we're really monitoring and able to see a situation unfold in a way we have never been able to do in history before."
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http://www.nationalpost.com/news/wo...html?id=2226094
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H1N1 no deadlier than regular flu: top doctor
November 2009
OTTAWA -- Despite the recent surge in H1N1 deaths, the nation’s chief public health officer says the pandemic virus appears no deadlier than regular seasonal influenza and that there could actually be substantially fewer flu deaths than normal this season.
Although H1N1 is disproportionately infecting more children and otherwise healthy young adults, “the mortality rate from this (H1N1) is no worse than seasonal flu,” Dr. David Butler-Jones said in an interview with Canwest News Service.
“The individual risk of severe disease or dying if you happen to get the flu is very similar today as it was back in June. It’s just that we’re starting to see a lot more people affected,” he said.
“The fact that we haven’t had more deaths and more people in (intensive-care units) I think is a testimony to people doing the rights things to both prevent and reduce the severity of disease,” said Dr. Butler-Jones. People are following public health advice to cough and sneeze into their sleeves, stay home if they’re sick and get on anti-virals if symptoms are worsening, he said.
“When you do take this disease seriously, you can actually dramatically reduce the number of people with severe illness and death,” Dr. Butler-Jones said. “So the usual 2,000 to 8,000 range (of flu-related deaths) that we see with seasonal flu, we might actually be able to reduce that substantially.”
Experts said the rates of serious illness and death are far from the levels predicted for a novel pandemic virus and that, based on the information available up until now, H1N1 is not on track to causing disease and death on the scope or scale of the flu pandemics of the 20th century.
Given the delays in getting people vaccinated, that’s a good thing, said Dr. John Granton, president of the Canadian Critical Care Society.
“If this was a more deadly virus, we would be in big trouble.”
Canada’s national pandemic plan estimated a flu outbreak could cause 15 to 35 % of the population to fall clinically sick, and force the hospitalizations of 34,000 to 138,000 people.
So far, an estimated seven to eight per cent of the population has been infected between the first and second wave, Dr. Butler-Jones said.
While the number of hospitalizations jumped twofold in the week ending Nov. 7 compared to the previous week, to 1,324 from 661, according to the latest analysis from the Public Health Agency of Canada, there has been a drop in severe infections.
As well, the proportion of ICU admissions and deaths among those admitted to hospital with H1N1 is falling.
The number of new reported deaths were up fourfold in the same reporting period (35 versus eight).
But some say relying on deaths and hospitalizations can lead to what seems a sudden surge in population-wide sickness that does not paint a true picture.
It can take two to three weeks in many cases for people with influenza to get sick enough to end up in hospital or an intensive-care unit, and even longer for them to die, said Dr. Richard Schabas, a former chief medical officer of health for Ontario.
During the SARS outbreak in 2003, “people had the impression right through April of 2003 that the SARS outbreak was still roaring along, because they kept reporting deaths,” Dr. Schabas said. “But what they didn’t say was that these were people who got their SARS back in March, and it took them two, three, four, five weeks to die.
“It’s the same thing with influenza. Most people with influenza don’t die quickly. They die slowly. Continuing to report (deaths) as if it’s a way of judging what the outbreak is doing is wrong.” He said school absenteeism and emergency rooms visits are more timely indicators.
Estimating the death rate for swine flu is difficult, because the denominator -- how many people have been infected -- is missing. Canada, like most countries, stopped counting confirmed cases in July, and H1N1 causes mild symptoms in the majority of people it infects, so many people never see a doctor.
Reporting in this month’s Harvard Health Letter, Harvard University researchers said data from the U.S. shows the death rate for H1N1 is one death for every 2,000 people who develop symptoms. The death rate for seasonal flu is about one death for every 1,000 to 2,000 infections.
During the 1957 flu pandemic, the death rate was elevated fourfold over regular seasonal flu, said University of Ottawa virologist Earl Brown.
In other words, for every person who dies of seasonal flu, four people died during the 1957 pandemic. “If you take 1968, where if you had one person dying per year, it went to two,” Dr. Brown said.
“If we’re looking here at 2009, one is going to, one? Less than one?” The data is incomplete, he said.
The number of deaths is not alarming, Dr. Brown said. What’s unsettling is the sudden deaths, such as the two Ontario children who died within days of one another in late October and the 38-year-old University of Ottawa professor who died Wednesday, three days after being admitted to hospital.
“When you look and see who is dying . . . those are the people where you shake your head, because those are people who normally don’t fall from flu,” Dr. Brown said.
“But right now, if you had to say we know the picture and this is the picture, we’d have to say we got away pretty lightly, and the projections were more severe than what we’re actually seeing.”
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