Originally Posted by www.stuff.co.nz

The number of swine flu deaths in Europe has doubled almost every two weeks since the middle of October with 169 people dying of the virus in the past week.

The Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said 670 deaths have been reported in Europe from H1N1 flu since they began monitoring it in April and all 31 European Union and European free trade area (EFTA) countries now have cases of the virus.

"While the most deaths have to date been in Western Europe there are increasing numbers of deaths being reported from central and eastern Europe."

It said it feared "deliberate misinformation" about H1N1 shots was being spread by a growing anti-vaccination movement and warned that a low uptake could hamper efforts to control the pandemic and increase pressure on health systems across Europe.

Originally Posted by content.nejm.org

Last spring, when 2009 H1N1 influenza first came to our attention, my patients were in a panic. Our clinic was flooded with calls and walk-in patients, all with the same question: “When will there be a vaccine?”

It was all so new then, and we didn’t have an answer. That lack of answer seemed to fuel anxiety to a fever pitch. A substantial co- hort of my patients continued calling, almost on a weekly basis, to ask about the vaccine.

These, of course, were the same patients who routinely refused the seasonal flu vaccine. Each year we’d go through the same drill: I’d offer them the flu shot. I’d explain the clinical reasoning behind this recommendation. I’d strongly encourage vaccination.

Originally Posted by www.cidrap.umn.edu

In a worrisome but not unexpected pandemic-related development, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today that it is seeing a spike in serious pneumococcal disease, particularly in younger patients.


Health officials expect to see more pneumococcal disease when seasonal flu circulates, but the infections typically strike people who are older than 65. In past pandemics secondary bacterial pneumonia infections, particularly those involving Streptococcus pneumoniae, frequently contributed to illnesses and deaths.


The CDC recommends the vaccine for several high-risk groups, but uptake is low. Only about 25% of adults in high-risk groups who are younger than age 65 have received the vaccine. The CDC's vaccine advisory group recently added people with asthma and smokers to the list of those who should receive the pneumococcal vaccine.

Originally Posted by scienceblogs.com

Thanksgiving festivities produce two things of epidemiological import. There are increased close contacts between different age groups (for example elementary, highschool and college age and the over 65 age group); and close personal contacts between people from widely separated geographic areas. It's a heady mix. December is the time when seasonal flu starts, slowly at first, then picking up steam in January and February. But this year we've already had a whole flu season (and more), although the usual victims (old folks like me) have so far been spared the worst. Will it now be our turn, falling prey as we usually do to seasonal flu? Or has the new kid on the block, swine flu, in some way we don't quite understand, "crowded out" the usual residents? We don't know yet.

There's also a new and completely different mix of the susceptible and immune in the population, a vaccination campaign targeting younger populations just starting to get underway, weather turning colder (which increases flu in ways we don't understand) and a major economic recession that is affecting habits, living patterns and perhaps susceptibilities in unknown ways. The dynamics of seasonal flu -- how the disease unfolds in space in time -- still isn't understood and now we have a completely novel situation: not only the aforementioned factors, but possibly four flu viruses (swine flu, two seasonal influenza A subtypes and influenza B) all circulating -- maybe -- along with the usual other respiratory viruses (respiratory syncytial and rhinoviruses chief among them).

What will be the result? We're going to find out soon.

Originally Posted by www.forbes.com

...H1N1 didn't go and "behave in the way we told people a pandemic would behave," said McKenna. Its case fatality rate turned out to be low, even though it was highly transmissible. This meant that it could spread widely and rapidly but, for most people, end up being no worse (and possibly milder) than the seasonal flu.

The kicker is that the more the virus spreads, the more people who are particularly vulnerable to complications from H1N1 are likely to get it; hence, the perfect viral storm of kids lining up to sneeze on Santa (and on one another). Being a child or being rotund puts you in a high risk category for the virus: H1N1 has killed almost twice as many children in the first month of this year's flu season as the seasonal flu killed in an entire year during 2006-07, while being overweight or obese (a job requirement for Santa impersonators) increases susceptibility to respiratory infections. What appeared to be lame TV was, in fact, a perfect teaching moment about the risks of not getting vaccinated.

Instead, the H1N1 story has left people, "very confused and unclear whether they got it wrong or whether we told them badly," said McKenna. "Neither is true of course. It's more that we didn't tell them completely enough; though since for most of the past decade people haven't been very interested in flu, it is debatable whether they would have listened."

Originally Posted by scienceblogs.com

Science jokes are good. You can learn some science from them. In particular, the first three or four of this set of groaners involve viruses and infectious diseases and each tell you -- vividly -- an important truth. The rest are pretty good, too.

Originally Posted by afludiary.blogspot.com

...Norwegian scientists are reporting a mutation found in a handful of samples that could increase the virulence of the virus – make it better adapted to deep lung tissues – which could make it more apt to cause severe viral pneumonias.

There is a lot about this story we simply don’t know yet.

Prime among those is whether this mutated virus is capable of ongoing transmission, or if it is something that occurred spontaneously in a handful of victims.

For now, officials are downplaying the idea that it might be circulating.

Originally Posted by afludiary.blogspot.com/

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Iowa has officially recorded 21 H1N1 deaths, including seven in Polk County alone. But the county's medical examiner said he has performed autopsies on some residents who were never diagnosed with H1N1, but actually had it.

"In the autopsy, what we're seeing is very heavy, wet hemorrhagic lungs, lungs with a lot of blood in them," said Dr. Gregory Schmunk.

He said the official count of seven H1N1 deaths is inaccurate, but patient rights laws prohibit him from giving specific numbers.

Originally Posted by www.foreignpolicy.com

As swine flu was spreading around the globe this spring, a senior disease specialist from the World Health Organization (WHO) held an urgent conference call with top British health officials. In the conversation this May, later described as "aggressive" by sources familiar with the discussion, the WHO official accused the British of concealing the extent of their country's swine-flu outbreak. Among those with swine-flu symptoms, Britain was only counting people who had traveled to places that, like Mexico, had already confirmed an outbreak of the virus, known to scientists as H1N1. Their method left much to be desired in a country where the virus was already spreading fast. Countless Britons fell sick and were intentionally left uncounted.


Governments, of course, have a long history of concealing outbreaks, and this year's flu pandemic, while the first of this particular century, was certainly not the first to be brushed under the rug. The consequences of cloaking swine flu weren't disastrous on this occasion, but the result will not always be so benign. In fact, at this very moment, another virus -- with the potential to be far more devastating -- is continuing to seed infections, frustrating efforts to root it out. That virus, H5N1, or avian flu, is a far more lethal strain. And you guessed it: front-line countries' records in candidly reporting the disease's spread don't bode well.


If there's one thing past pandemics have taught, it's that curing the world of flu is impossible unless countries are upfront about their outbreaks. Armed with that vital information, health officials can take steps to slow the spreading infection and, if containment fails, ramp up emergency medical care and other vital services. Without timely disclosures, it's much harder for virus hunters to discover how an emerging disease attacks its victims and transmits to others; it's also much tougher to get virus samples for study in the lab.

Originally Posted by scienceblogs.com

[snip]

“I'm boosting my immune system,” people keep saying to me, beatifically.

The phrase is like a new “Hail, Mary, mother of God” - it's said as if the mere knowledge of the words, and the things the utterance of those words suggests about the speaker, provided special protection.

I know that there are some who believe that "get vaccinated against flu" is also magical thinking. I'm not going to say that magical thinking doesn't exist in modern medicine. It does. But with vaccination we can dispel the magic with some anti-magic: evidence.