Guillain-Barré is a risk with the regular flu shot too.

[DerrickNeilCanton]

My girlfriend's sister came down with it Thanksgiving '07 shortly after receiving a flu shot. She's still recovering, and has only recently been able to walk on her own. She's a nurse, and the clinic she works for seemingly all but forced their employees to get the shot, until this happened.

I'm not saying not to get the flu ('swine' variant or otherwise) shot, but making these vaccinations mandatory aren't a good idea to me, and yeah, seeing Guillain-Barré up close and personal has influenced my opinion. It's some scary sh*t.

[Village Idiot]

And a large percentage of the time, the vaccine doesn't even work.

Better to take 2000IU of vitamin D every day, and wash your hands frequently.

[Steven Grant]

And a large percentage of the time, the vaccine doesn't even work.

And don't touch your fingers to your eyes.

The main reason flu vaccines don't work all that often is that every year disease control experts guess at what the next flu(s) will be, and formulate vaccines on that assumption. Often they're simply wrong.

By the way, the British home secretary has decided swine flu is a far greater threat to Britain than terrorism is (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/5864197/Swine-flu-threat-greater-than-terrorism-says-Home-Secretary.html). Expect this to become the new meme here too...

- Grant

[Roquefort Raider]

More people died falling down a flight of stairs this year than died from the H1N1 virus. (At least in North America. I don't have stats concerning stairwells for the rest of the world).

I really wish people (as in "governments, news agencies, folks with no background in medical science and most especially panicky e-mail spammers") would stop spreading disinformation about both the flu virus and about vaccines in general. I guess it looks good on politician résumé to have "taken action" against an epidemic, even if it's no worse than what we get every year and that said actions are no more useful than painting one's balls blue. I guess it's also good for news outlets to entertain us hoi polloi with tales of the latest doomsday disease.

When I see the ridiculous statements spread here and there regarding something I do know about professionally (biology) I have to wonder how much nonsensical crap I am forced to swallow in fields where I am only a dilettante (politics, the economy and all the other subjects on which newspapers like to waste ink). It's kind of scary, really.

[Charles RB]

By the way, the British home secretary has decided swine flu is a far greater threat to Britain than terrorism is (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/5864197/Swine-flu-threat-greater-than-terrorism-says-Home-Secretary.html).

And it is, since people are actually getting swine flu and the UK's terrorists haven't pulled off shit for months (and that was their first success since 2005).

This is probably not what he meant.

[NatGertler]

More people died falling down a flight of stairs this year than died from the H1N1 virus.That's why I'm throwing my baby down some short flights, so he builds an immunity.

[Village Idiot]

When I see the ridiculous statements spread here and there regarding something I do know about professionally (biology) I have to wonder how much nonsensical crap I am forced to swallow in fields where I am only a dilettante (politics, the economy and all the other subjects on which newspapers like to waste ink). It's kind of scary, really.

I came to the same realization some time ago when the local newspaper ran 2 articles about comics in about a three month period, each riddled with errors. I wondered how much I could trust them about other things.

[Village Idiot]

That's why I'm throwing my baby down some short flights, so he builds an immunity.

I'm telling the MSM unless you give me $2 million.

[Gnarl]

About 90 years ago, a flu variety killed 5 % of the human species.

It'll happen again, and the odds are the death rate will be worse the next time. Because we have a much higher population density these days than we did then, and we travel much faster.

But there are new flu epidemics every year. And by the time we know if this is the Son of Captain Trips or just another sniffles, a lot of response time has been lost.

That is the essential problem. I'm not too worried about the Wakefield-followers, they're essentially a self-correcting problem.

[Iangould]

It'll happen again, and the odds are the death rate will be worse the next time. Because we have a much higher population density these days than we did then, and we travel much faster.
.

I tend to disagree with this. We know a lot more about how to prevent and contain an epidemic and while there are plenty of desperately poor people today you don't have the massive numbers of malnourished, sick refugees in transit from place to place that you had in Europe after WWI.

[Charles RB]

Yeah, we did have two flu pandemics after 1918 - they killed millions but not as many millions, likely cos there hadn't been a World War that wrecked a continent and brought in soldiers from all over the planet.

Though developing nations and war-torn ones would be vulnerable to a serious pandemic, so there is a potential for death tolls like that. It's just most of the deaths would be in a few specific countries. And since those countries wouldn't have white people with large media companies, most of the West wouldn't notice.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

And by the time we know if this is the Son of Captain Trips or just another sniffles, a lot of response time has been lost.


So at the first signs, rest up and drink plenty of fluids.
It seemed to me that lot of the reported Swine Flu deaths involved people who hadn't done this.

[Gnarl]

I tend to disagree with this. We know a lot more about how to prevent and contain an epidemic and while there are plenty of desperately poor people today you don't have the massive numbers of malnourished, sick refugees in transit from place to place that you had in Europe after WWI.

Yeah....well the Swine Flu turned out to be a lot less aggressive than we thought, and we didn't do so well on that one. On the positive side we learned a lot from trying! So we might do better next time. Of course, if that is a serious one, we'll have more panic to contend with.

On the 1918 pandemic, I have a vague memory of reading that it didn't kill the sick and malnourished, they just got sick. The virus overactivated the immune system, so the people with the strongest immune systems -young and healthy ones- were most at risk. I could be misremembering that, though.

[Steven Grant]

Yeah....well the Swine Flu turned out to be a lot less aggressive than we thought, and we didn't do so well on that one. On the positive side we learned a lot from trying! So we might do better next time. Of course, if that is a serious one, we'll have more panic to contend with.

On the 1918 pandemic, I have a vague memory of reading that it didn't kill the sick and malnourished, they just got sick. The virus overactivated the immune system, so the people with the strongest immune systems -young and healthy ones- were most at risk. I could be misremembering that, though.

No, that's accurate. The Spanish Flu mostly killed perfectly healthy men and women in their '20s, though I'm not sure they ever figured out the mechanism. Those already sick just got a little sicker, for the most part. Survival of the fittest indeed.

On the other hand, the relatively handful of deaths in the current Swine Flu outbreak have occurred in those with already seriously compromised systems, like the seriously ill or morbidly obese.

- Grant