Posted on 12/19/2017 7:38:13 PM PST by MtnClimber
One Sunday in November 20-year-old Alani Murrieta of Phoenix began to feel sick and left work early. She had no preexisting medical conditions but her health declined at a frighteningly rapid pace, as detailed by her family and friends in local media and on BuzzFeed News. The next day she went to an urgent care clinic, where she was diagnosed with the flu and prescribed the antiviral medication Tamiflu. But by Tuesday morning she was having trouble breathing and was spitting up blood. Her family took her to the hospital, where x-rays revealed pneumonia: inflammation in the lungs that can be caused by a viral or bacterial infection, or both. Doctors gave Murrieta intravenous antibiotics and were transferring her to the intensive care unit when her heart stopped; they resuscitated her but her heart stopped again. At 3:25 P.M. on Tuesday, November 28—one day after being diagnosed with the flu—Murrieta was declared dead.
Worldwide, the flu results in three million to five million cases of severe illness and 291,000 to 646,000 deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the totals vary greatly from one year to the next. .........
How does the flu kill? The short and morbid answer is that in most cases the body kills itself by trying to heal itself. “Dying from the flu is not like dying from a bullet or a black widow spider bite,” says Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “The presence of the virus itself isn't going to be what kills you. An infectious disease always has a complex interaction with its host.”
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Hmm. The flu shot is made from killed virus; there is no way people can spread the flu by getting a shot. I'm guessing they didn't want recent vaccinees around him because it takes about 2 weeks to mount an immune response, and they could have been exposed to the flu during that time. I think that people can spread the flu before they have symptoms. So the only way to protect your son from nocosomial flu infection is to keep anyone who might have it or be exposed to it away from him.
While it would be beneficial for your son to have a flu shot, it would still take two weeks for his immune response to fully kick in, so the hospital would still have to take those precautions even if he had the shot on his first day there.
IMHO yes
D3 might help your immune system work properly, but it has no ability to protect you from the flu. If you are exposed to the virus and you do not have active (antibody mediated) immunity against it, chances are you will get sick. (Whether you get sick depends on whether you are exposed to an infectious dose, which is the minimum number of infectious particles that can make you sick.) In the case of influenza, I'm not sure that having a good strong immune response is desirable--strong immune responses are the cause of death for many influenza patients, as we saw happen to millions in the 1918 pandemic.
I take D3 because I have a lab verified D3 deficiency. I've had strep throat and two colds since I started taking D3 about 4 years ago. But in the 10 years before taking D3, I was sick maybe once. Therefore, the anecdotal evidence is that taking D3 makes me susceptible to infections. (Of course, that is not true; correlation is not causation.)
She got bacterial pneumonia as a direct result of having the flu. The flu causes people to be highly susceptible to bacterial infections, which they would not get otherwise. So yes, she died from the flu.
I’d guess you’re correct. It was pretty serious invasive surgery. He was blessed to have bounced back pretty quickly.
He’s taking full advantage. He has some lifting limitations for a few weeks so he can’t load the car to go to Grandma’s at Christmas.
Oh, my, that sounds really scary.
I think that people do not realize just how deadly infectious diseases are. They also do not realize that we are in danger of losing our most effective weapons against infectious disease, since antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming more common.
I am very happy for you that you pulled through. It sounds like you had quite an ordeal. I hope you are fully recovered.
How tragic! How awful for your grandparent to come home and find her dead like that.
For those of us who work in fields related to public health, a pandemic is a very scary possibility. The government spends a lot of time and money researching ways to prevent one. The 1918 influenza spread around the world very quickly, in a world in which most travel was by ships and trains. Think how quickly a pandemic could spread in today's world, where anyone can go anywhere in a few hours.
Or the outbreaks could be coincidental with lower temperatures that favor the survival of the virus outside of the body.
In your opinion, does Elderberry tea help against the cytokine storm?
The efficacy of the flu shot varies every year. I think that last year, it was only about 40% effective against the most widely circulating strain, the H3N2 strain. In some years, the efficacy can be 80-90%. The reason the efficacy varies so much is because the people who determine which flu strains to include in the vaccine are looking at currently circulating strains and using that data to make a prediction about which strains will be most prevalent several months from now. In other words, they are much like weather forecasters. Sometimes, they are very close in their predictions. Other times, the circulating strain shifts, so that the dominant strain is not what they predicted.
In any case, some protection is better than none. If you have been vaccinated against a strain that is not a circulating strain but is similar to it, your immune system will still partially recognize the virus. If you get sick, the resulting disease will not be as severe.
I'm glad he did. It probably helps that he is young.
I stockpile many of the supplies recommended in this study
As a daily winter regimen I Find Vitamin D3 to be very useful, along with magnesium and sinc
https://www.acoem.org/ohden/downloads/AvianFluGuideOct05.pdf
My wife says it’s all the herbs and supplements she’s been making him choke down over the last couple years.
She’s probably correct.
I hate to say it, but herbs and supplements benefit the herb and supplement sellers and producers, and no one else.
In some cases, taking herbs that contain pharmaceutically active components can be dangerous since you have no way of knowing how much of the pharmaceutical component is in the supplement. Otherwise, taking them is probably harmless.
The best thing for health is a proper diet. It must be balanced between the macronutrients (proteins, fats, and carbohydrates) and contain a variety of foods so that you get adequate amounts of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). Eat different colored fruits and vegetables. Don’t consume more calories than your body requires.
You’re welcome to your opinion. I’m not much for that stuff, but I must admit, some of it seems to work.
I think I know where you’re going in the supplements
She doesn’t buy processed supplements, just the raw herbs and make sup her own concoctions. It’s not out of control and crazy with her.
We had some good discussion threads about the 1918 Flu and the impact of the cytokine storm response. It turns out that we have no response to a badly mutated Avian flu like the 1918 flu available.
This article indicates the first hope I’ve seen that some sort of response in possible. A 1918 Spanish Influenza (Avian) event is beyond most people’s understanding in its impact. They think of a bad version of regular influenza and don’t understand that it is that to the fifth power.
Having a properly functioning immune system helps you to weather infections, but it cannot prevent you from getting sick from a pathogen if you do not have pre-existing immunity against that specific pathogen.
The flu virus recognizes and binds to specific cell surface receptors in your respiratory system. Those receptors carry the virus inside the cell, where it takes over and forces that cell to produce new viruses. The only way your body can prevent this process is by having circulating antibodies that recognize and attach to that virus, which physically prevents the virus from attaching to the cell receptors. Once the antibodies attach to the virus, they signal other components of the immune system to destroy the virus.
No amount of vitamin D or "immune system enhancement" can substitute for the presence of specific antibodies that recognize and neutralize specific viruses.
“Having a properly functioning immune system helps you to weather infections, but it cannot prevent you from getting sick from a pathogen if you do not have pre-existing immunity against that specific pathogen.”
A fairly standard medical view.
If your body has the correct ph level and nutrition, germs will find it tough to gain a foothold and flourish in a bad environment. Vitamin D is part of a good terrain.
If your terrain is strong, your body will process germs and move them out quickly.
In other words, the other side of the coin you did not address is terrain of the body. Terrain is always s the first line of defense as part of your immune system. I refer you to the work of Antoine Béchamp.
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