I know two people in the hospital now with pneumonia from H1N1. That’s unusual because I am the last to know anything. If my wife died, I’d probably be the last person to know about it.
Actually alot of h1n1 deaths aren’t being reported.
Here is an interesting article attesting to that fact....
L.A. County’s Swine Flu Victims: Death Certificates Tell the Stories Of A Ravaging Virus
Nov 2009 - by Callie Schweitzer - Neon Tommy...online publication of the Annenberg School of Journalism - excerpts
“Neon Tommy analyzed the death records and interviewed family members, public health officials and doctors to see what the dozens of deaths suggest about the patterns of the illness and who remains most at risk. In several cases, the families we spoke with said they did not know their relatives had died of swine flu until we told them. In these cases, county officials said the diagnoses had been made after doctors filled out the death certificates, and that it is not the county’s responsibility to notify family members. Nearly half of the death records do not list swine flu as a cause of death.
In a typical flu season, about 1,000 people usually die in Los Angeles County; 36,000, nationwide. But up to 70 percent of the victims usually suffer from preexisting conditions that put them at risk. Our study of the 44 swine flu victims showed this virus behaves differently — the number of people with such conditions was equal to those without such ailments; preexisting conditions included diabetes, renal failure, obesity, hypertension and lupus, among others.
... swine flu in L.A. County has not been predominantly killing people with troubled health histories. A closer look at the 44 certificates showed the contrary — the two categories were equal; 22 had preexisting conditions, and 22 had no preexisting conditions listed...Flu season normally begins in the cooler months of October and November, but swine flu has proved to be different — thriving in warmer temperatures, Lopez said.
“We have a virus that does very well in warmer months and is being transmitted pretty efficiently because of such low immunity,” he said. “It’s not very well understood that this virus has been able to sustain itself ever since it was introduced in April and May.
http://blogs.uscannenberg.org/neontommy/2009/11/Swine-flu-hits-la-county-victi.html
Missed you yesterday at the funeral. Wondered where you were. ;)