The H1N1 in December nearly killed me in 4 days. I had terrible pneumonia. Still do not feel completely well ever. Thank G-d for heavy antibiotics or I would be dead today.
Then I read stuff like the above and I don't know what to think. On the one hand, fewer deaths than the usual flu. On the other hand, the people who get it get hit hard and fast.
Maybe I'm comparing apples and oranges. My pal at CDC thinks they get some credit, I think. Maybe they do. Me, my natural paranoia makes me suspicious of stuff like this, especially when I don't know anyone who has it. Maybe thats what FR is good for; now I (sort of) do.
I share your consternation regarding those who are hit the worst by the H1N1 Influenza. I’m not trying to downplay the people confirmed to have it that are hit very hard, and those who actually die from it. One death in the family is terrible, and I consider everyone to be in my extended family.
After some thought on the subject, this is the conclusion I have come to.
As much as we would like to think otherwise, we simply do not know every thing there is to know about medicine. How this disease progresses and why, is still a mystery to us. Folks will state otherwise, but there are still no explanations to account for what you have touched on, why some are hit very hard and others barely exhibit symptoms.
If the worst cases were solely due to this influenza, then everyone who was exposed to and came down with any symptoms at all, would exhibit the worst case scenario, or something a little less severe, accounting for natural differences in people’s immune systems.
Instead nearly all people came down with mild cases, and only a relative few came down with severe symptoms or died. Therefore, there has to be something or even a few somethings the most severely affected had in common, or perhaps more accurately that exacerbated the situation in a manner we still haven’t figured out.
The discovery of those commonalities between those who got sickest, or differences from the vast body of people who didn’t get that sick, will probably lead us to a better understanding of how all influenza attacks our systems, and help us develop counters to them. That will probably benefit us with regard to how to fight this and perhaps other normal influenzas, and perhaps even other communicable maladies.
That IMO is where the CDC and the NIH will be able to shine. And if they do investigate thoroughly and come up with good preventative medicine, then more power to them. That’s the only way I see them pulling their bacon back out of the fire they fell into earlier this year.
The H1N1 Influenza, once touted as a pandemic level disease, may in fact turn out to be a Godsend, in that it may provide information that would have applications that would help humanity greatly.