All this for a flu which has barely made anyone sick.
In 4 or 5 months everyone will have had it anyway. It’s running through my town now, getting all the kids just as vacation hits, 3 of my 4 kids, no worse than an ordinary flu, me, like a bad cold, not even coughing now.
Not swearing it was H1N1 for us, because we didn’t test, but just about everyone who did test had H1N1.
Source: http://www.thespec.com/News/CanadaWorld/article/586508
‘Pretty healthy’ people dying from H1N1
June 20, 2009
Stories by Helen Branswell
The Canadian Press
TORONTO (Jun 20, 2009)
Whether speaking of a 58-year-old man or a 38-year-old woman or a little boy of nine, officials announcing swine flu deaths are almost always quick to note “underlying health conditions” may have contributed to the fatal outcome.
Asthma, heart disease, diabetes, maybe even obesity are among the conditions used to help explain why swine flu infection is hospitalizing and killing younger people, people who would be expected to make a full recovery from seasonal flu.
It could create the impression that only the sickly are dying from the new H1N1 flu virus — a claim no one is making. To the contrary, many, including the World Health Organization, say between one-third and one-half of swine flu deaths have occurred in people who were previously healthy.
But how healthy is previously healthy? The answer depends on whom you ask.
Dr. Anand Kumar is a critical-care specialist who has been treating swine flu cases in embattled intensive care units in three Winnipeg hospitals.
He says a small portion of the ICU patients look like flu’s typical victims, people with health conditions known to be badly exacerbated by a bout of influenza. But more are younger and — until they got sick — healthier than flu patients hospitals typically see during a regular influenza season.
“For the most part, these young, relatively healthy people aren’t marathon runners or anything like that,” he admits.
“They’re normal people. ... If you asked them, ‘Are you healthy?’ they’d say, ‘Yeah, pretty healthy.”’
Dr. Michael Gardam, head of infectious disease prevention and control for Ontario’s public health agency, believes the constant refrain of “underlying conditions” bespeaks a sort of wishful thinking, an attempt to explain away the unusual age range of the people the new virus is sending to hospital or to the morgue.
“That’s the story that I think people haven’t really registered,” says Gardam. “We’re clinging to these ‘Oh, they had underlying illness, therefore it’s OK.”’
“But ... I would argue that the 30-year-old with mild asthma — how big of an underlying illness is that compared to again the 80-year-old person with bad lung disease from smoking who’s got heart disease? That’s the usual group that unfortunately gets really sick with flu, not this healthy adult group.”
You’ll find little argument that this virus, at this time, is causing more severe disease in people far younger than those normally hospitalized and killed by flu or its complications in a typical flu season.
“This is not a disease of older adults. There’s no question,” says Dr. Allison McGeer, an influenza expert with Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital.
“For people under 50, this is a significantly more severe disease than seasonal flu. For people over 50, it’s much better,” she notes.
But are the people under 50 who are being badly hit by the virus specimens of perfect health or are many of them already shaded by the broad umbrella known as “pre-existing health conditions?” How you view a condition like asthma — seen in 41 per cent of the hospitalized cases in New York City — may influence how you answer that question.
“A lot of that is about labelling people,” McGeer admits.
“Half of me doesn’t want you to think you’re diseased if you have asthma, and the other half of me wants you to get your flu vaccine because you’re at increased risk.”
“How do you walk that line?”
Year in and year out, public health authorities get plenty of evidence many people who have some health issues plunk themselves firmly on the “healthy” side of the divide.
Scads of people with asthma, diabetes and other conditions and women who are pregnant forego the flu shots public health officials urge them to get, suggests Dr. Scott Harper, an influenza expert with New York City’s Department of Health.
“The majority of deaths that are being seen have well recognized underlying health risks,” he insists.
One such potential new risk factor is obesity. An early study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control suggested it may be contributing to poor outcomes in people who contract the new H1N1. The WHO is concerned about that possibility.
“Obesity is now a huge global problem,” says Dr. Nikki Shindo, an expert with the WHO’s global influenza program.
“And if obesity is a risk factor, then I would be very much worried about some of the populations that are living with obese conditions.”
Something like 150 killed worldwide. I suspect millions have already had it and recovered just fine without seeing a doc. I had symptoms that sure sounded like what they described starting just a few days before the panic. After about 10 days I was fine.
No Prior Existing Conditions but Dead Anyway
http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/48007842.html
Who would think that a normally healthy woman would die so swiftly from influenza in June?
Could you ever have imagined such a thing? No wonder her family and friends are in shock.
So why did it happen?
Originally Posted by www.todaystmj4.com
Barbara Davis, 48, was healthy just a week ago. She had dinner with her mother Josephine last Friday night. But just hours after that dinner, Josephine got a phone call.
“My friend, he called me and told me Barbara was real sick. And I said, “Well, she wasn’t sick when I left, so what’s the matter?” Josephine Davis said.
Barbara told her mother that she was ok. But the next day, things got worse. She had trouble breathing, and she was shaking. She could barely walk into the hospital.
“She tried to talk to people, but she just couldn’t talk,” Josephine Davis said.
Doctors treated her for two days, but they couldn’t save her. They believe she died from swine flu.
“They’ve never seen nothing like that, what she had. That infection just went through her body, attacking her kidney, her lungs, her liver. Everything,” said Josephine Davis.
The Milwaukee Health Department confirmed on Friday a Milwaukee adult with no underlying medical conditions died from swine flu, though they haven’t confirmed Barbara Davis was that victim.
Barbara’s family knows all too well how serious swine flu can be.
“Everybody is just in a shock. The people that I talked to today, they are frightened. Because it happened all of a sudden,” Josephine Davis said.
More than 1,800 people have caught swine flu in Milwaukee alone. The city’s Health Department is stressing that if you are mildly ill with flu symptoms, you should call your doctor. If your symptoms are serious or if you have mild symptoms that are getting worse, you should see a doctor right away.
http://www.wisn.com/health/19751526/detail.html
Originally Posted by www.wisn.com
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner said 48-year-old Barbara Davis died Thursday in the ICU after being diagnosed with the flu strain.
The health department said, unlike Milwaukee’s first swine flu victim, Davis did not have any “underlying medical conditions” that would have put her at a greater risk for the disease.
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/sho...04&postcount=7
This post was written by Dr. Gratten Woodsen, MD commenting over at flutrackers on this unfortunate woman’s case.
Originally Posted by www.flutrackers.com
The decedent is described as having fulminate multi-organ failure that developed rapidly resulting in death 48 hours after onset and despite intensive medical therapy in an ICU including all the bells and whistles.
The attending physicians told the mother that they had never seen anything like this before and I believe them. So did she. No one has seen anything like this since 1918. In 1918 many doctors said the say thing after dealing with their first cases of Spanish Flu and for them too it was a great surprise at least until those that didn’t die from the virus themselves had seen it so many times that it was no longer unique.
There are numerous descriptions from the 1918 pandemic that match the one above but no where else in medical history do we find anything remotely similar. This is why the doctors in Milwaukee were so shocked by what they saw.
How many other North American victims had similar pathology? Why have the autopsy and clinical findings from the deaths in Mexico, the US and Canada been suppressed?
I know from press reports that there have been other US deaths where multi-organ failure was present.
Canadian update: 747 new cases since Friday, with 55 new hospitalizations. 2 deaths are noted since Friday, for a total of 15, and then the 6 year-old today for 16 deaths. Total 6457 cases.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/alert-alerte/swine-porcine/surveillance-eng.php
Really? Our children had it, and they were the sickest they’ve ever been. Son’s coach had it, and that man was SICK for two weeks. (that’s how our oldest son got it and spread it to the rest of us.) We had it before it was popular with the press and CDC.