An online friend of an online friend died in the hospital from H1N1

… that led me to look up a few things to satisfy my curiosity.

The number of total cases of influenza hospitalization is pretty alarming when compared to previous years. A case could be made, based on the wording here, that more people with flu symptoms are going to the hospital instead of struggling through it at home. A third of all H1N1 related deaths are between the ages of 25-49.

Persons with asthma are considered to be on the priority list for H1N1 vaccination. I wasn’t aware there is an oral vaccine, but that’s not suggested for people with asthma as it can cause spasming.

From an article:

H1N1 influenza has turned flu death statistics upside down, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed today.

In a normal flu season, 90% of deaths are in elderly people. But since September, 88% of deaths have been in people under age 65 — with almost a quarter of the deaths in young people under age 25.

“It is almost completely reversed. Nearly 90% of our fatalities are occurring in people under 65,” CDC respiratory disease chief Anne Schuchat, MD, said at a news conference. “This illustrates this H1N1 virus is disproportionally affecting the young.”
…
While the majority of severe H1N1 swine flu cases are in people with conditions that put them at risk of flu complications, not all these conditions are severe. Well-treated asthma, for example, is common. And pregnancy isn’t an illnesses at all. Yet the risk is there.

“Completely healthy pregnant women are coming down with horrible, horrible illnesses — and, tragically more deaths,” Schuchat said. “And some conditions like asthma which is well controlled. So even if you have diabetes that’s well controlled, if you have asthma that’s well controlled, we want to you think of yourself as a higher risk and recommend that you be vaccinated.”

Locate flu vaccine centers in Michigan

I’ve had a flu vaccine before (I am fortunate in that my work offers seasonal flu shots for free), and while that day I felt a little run down, I was otherwise completely fine. I’ll be taking my seasonal shot on the 27th, and I will be seriously contemplating H1N1, especially now that (as of yesterday) I’ve joined a gym (IE public exposure).

According to the CDC, “people infected with seasonal and 2009 H1N1 flu shed virus and may be able to infect others from 1 day before getting sick to 5 to 7 days after”, so keep that in mind if you think you might be coming down with the flu.

~ by Skennedy on October 23, 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized

10 Responses to “An online friend of an online friend died in the hospital from H1N1”

  1. You joined a gym! That’s wonderful! Go you!

    sheryl67 said this on October 23, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    • Yeah! My first day of a real work-out since January, and I did 2 miles and 30 minutes of quality-heartrate elliptical. Not too bad for a guy who has been sedentary for awhile!

      KT invited me to come to her gym for a guest pass, and I happened to still have my clothes in the car from the last time I was working out regularly, so I gave it a shot.

      The guy was able to get me in for under 30 bucks a month, month-to-month, very little pressure, and gave me a pass so Lucy can join me whenever she is in Plymouth until the end of the year. That’s hard to beat, even if I had bad experiences in the past.

      I’m being very careful this week to essentially stick to cardio and stretching – next week, I’ll consider how I want to approach back-strengthening exercises.

      atdt1991 said this on October 23, 2009 at 2:48 pm

  2. Hrmm, however if you keep looking, the actual number of deaths (in the 122 cities whose health departments report their mortality statistics) from pneumonia-and-influenza-like illnesses has risen to 6.7% of total deaths. The CDC threshold for ‘epidemic’ status from influenza is at just 6.5%, so it’s not really an alarming issue, yet.

    Now, total hospitalizations have risen dramatically, but that may be due to a societal paranoia. Unfortunately, that also improves the chances of spreading the disease in an environment where folks are generally already in very poor health.

    Yes, the initial outbreak of H1N1 in Mexico City had an exceptional mortality rate in the worrisome age band of 15-40 y.o. but we haven’t actually seen those kinds of numbers crop up around the world where we’ve found the virus. It may be that the virus, as it mutated to become more contagious, also nerfed its pathogenicity.

    (I’m aware of a lot of the paranoia and facts about the flu, as I just taught it two days ago to my class…)

    The short of it is: I’m not worried about H1N1, yet. Standard flu precautions are likely to be fine, and if it actually achieves higher infection rates in Michigan and Ohio, I’ll help supply folks with as many face-masks as they need.

    flinx said this on October 23, 2009 at 3:26 pm

    • I appreciate your commentary and statistics. I’ve wondered myself (as I mentioned in the OP) whether some of that sharp rise was due to the increased level of concern people have. It’s really strange to know someone, even second-hand, who has died from H1N1. Not flip-out strange, but unusual.

      I saw in the statistics that, I believe, .5% of cases that were hospitalized turned out to be resistant to, I believe, tamiflu. Is that a common thing for viruses in general? I always kind of ran with the idea that once there were -any- resistant cases, we are kinda screwed – you would think those proportions would change quickly.

      atdt1991 said this on October 23, 2009 at 3:50 pm

      • Education. It’s what I do. :)

        Yes, once a particular medical problem impacts your expanded circle of connections, then it’s bound to cause some ripples. I mean, I no longer find it odd that I know three five people who can’t eat wheat, when it’s something otherwise very rare in the general population. There’s something in there to be said about an availability heuristic, which is defining the behavior/results of the whole of the population only from the samples you have personally available, and extrapolations are notoriously lousy.

        As for the tamiflu resistance, yeah, there were 2 isolates reported out of a few hundred, in the last few weeks. However, given how quickly influenza mutates in general, that’s not terribly surprising. My understanding is that the resistances were determined after the isolate had already been cultured, so we don’t have an idea of what the real resistance numbers are out in the whole population. Given that tamiflu is generally best used as a prophylactic drug (it has no effect once the victim is symptomatic), it’s hard to say what kind of impact that’s really going to have.

        On the other hand, I think the general rate of anti-flu drug resistant strains of flu, across all of Flu A, B and C (H1N1 is an A strain), is something near 10-20%. The most worrisome scenario to me would be if we were also suffering under a concomitant seasonal flu epidemic that was more contagious and also drug resistant. The increased odds of one victim getting hit with both the H1N1 and a seasonal bug, and then having genetic reassortment into something that’s H1N1-derived but more contagious and drug resistant, would suck.

        But, in comparison to the behavior we observed with the 1918 flu epidemic, this bout of H1N1 appears to be fairly mild. Especially when you consider that current airline traffic is close to moving more people per day, globally, than WW1 troop transports moved in a month (taking the flu from Kansas to Europe), and we still aren’t seeing massive numbers of sick flu patients, the severity of this pandemic is comparatively very small.

        True, we have not yet seen the seasonal flu epidemic hit–we’re about a month too early for that, still. But if H1N1 pretty much burns itself out of the susceptible population in that time frame, then there will not really be an overlap.

        flinx said this on October 23, 2009 at 4:18 pm

  3. well.. it’s not the Stand, but maybe we should all head out to Colorado anyway. :-P

    I’m not interested in getting any sort of flu shots. With going to LCC and riding the bus, I’ll get it if I get it.

    plasmonicgrid said this on October 23, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    • Colorado is kinda fun. :)

      You are kind of an ox – I suspect you’d survive an anthrax dusting.

      atdt1991 said this on October 23, 2009 at 3:51 pm

      • I’m thinking that if I manage to not get any symptoms of the H1N1 (or flu in general) this year, I should look into breeding. Might as well allow someone to benefit from a seemingly effective immune system.

        Tho I thought I also read that people that tend to not get the flu will get hit harder by the Ol’-H1. So perhaps I’m not in as good of position as I think. *shrugs* I’ll leave my title of “Captain Cantankerous” to you, should the piggy flu do me in. :-)

        plasmonicgrid said this on October 23, 2009 at 3:56 pm

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