Posted on 06/24/2009 8:04:24 AM PDT by metmom
Within minutes, six-year-old Rubjit Thindal went from happily chatting in the back seat of the car to collapsing and dying in her father's arms.
"If we had known it was so serious, we would have called 911,'' Kuldip Thindal, Rubjit's distraught mother, said in Punjabi yesterday. "She just had a stomach ache -- she wasn't even crying.''
Rubjit was pronounced dead at hospital barely 24 hours after showing signs of a fever. Later, doctors told her parents she had the H1N1 influenza virus. She is believed to be the youngest person in Canada with the virus to have died.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.guelphmercury.com ...
South Dakota
Four cases of the H1N1 virus have now been confirmed on the South Dakota State University campus. Two of those cases are with students that live on campus, and the other two off campus. As of now they’re being considered mild cases and the students have simplify been sent home. Action News traveled to Brookings this afternoon and talked to a few South Dakota State University Students about the H1N1 virus arriving on their campus. Many of them didn’t know that there are now 4 cases of the H1N1 virus confirmed, but that didn’t make them change their habits as many already feel prepared. Courtney Murrow thinks she’s already prepared through what she does daily, she told us, “I’ve been more aware, but I really haven’t changed my habits too much, I’m really clean though.” Others, like Weston Holm stopped some other habits, just in case, saying “I was my hands, I’ve even quit chewing my fingernails.” Avoiding the H1N1 virus is important to avoid a bad semester for a college student. Tim Labored told us that “I’m a little timid, I’d be a little upset if I caught the swine flu, I’d have to miss school for quite a while and I don’t think professors would be to happy with that.” A vacation is on the way, but the students have to rely on their hygiene habits for now. Kaity Brown told us, “Once they get a vaccination for it, I’ll get that.”
http://www.ksfy.com/news/local/59089832.html
Story Created: Sep 11, 2009 at 10:27 PM CDT
Story Updated: Sep 12, 2009 at 11:21 PM CDT
((((“This disease will go through a 12-week wave, and at the peak, the numbers will be unbearable,” Dr. Palinkas said.
He added that the University is currently in week three of the 12-week wave.)))))
Updated September 16th, 2009 - 11:35 PM http://www.dailyillini.com/news/2009/09/16/dr-robert-palinkas-address-student-senates-swine-flu-concerns
Dr. Robert Palinkas, director and clinical assistant professor of internal medicine, visited Illinois Student Senate (ISS) Wednesday to discuss recent concerns of the H1N1 virus on campus.
He said around 500 people have been infected by the virus, though some people who have the illness have not attended McKinley Clinic to be medically evaluated, he added. He said he believes at the worst, around 1000 students may contract the illness.
Dr. Palinkas said H1N1 virus was not that much different than a seasonal flu. He added the groups who are at risk are those who have had a previous condition.
“This is flu, this is what we are experiencing,” Dr. Palinkas said. “Almost everybody (infected) will have four days of misery.”
Dr. Palinkas said those who contract the illness will have the usual fever and cough before they recover from the illness. However, he said he urged students to remain isolated until they are free from the contagious period. The usual safe period for isolation is around seven days.
“This disease will go through a 12-week wave, and at the peak, the numbers will be unbearable,” Dr. Palinkas said.
He added that the University is currently in week three of the 12-week wave.
Another subject Dr. Palinkas spoke of was the academic effects of the virus.
He said those who were infected came to McKinley to receive documentation. Dr. Palinkas added the best thing to do was to contact the faculty for the classes that were missed.
Flu Hitting Some Local Schools 9/16/09
Jay Hendricks
CBS 7 News
September 16, 2009
Big Spring/Odessa/Monahans - Some schools districts across West Texas are beginning to see the effects of the H1N1 flu, causing some to miss class.
Monahans schools seem to be getting hit the hardest right now.
The superintendent tells CBS 7 that there has been a 9% increase in absences or about 175 students reported out.
He says the school district is working to prevent the spread, and get students back in class.
In Big Spring, officials say they haven’t seen a huge increase, and feel right now they’ve been spared.
In Ector County, some cases have been reported
Health officials say if your child is sick, see a doctor, and keep your children away from school.
http://www.cbs7kosa.com/news/details.asp?ID=15010
If you do a search on twitter for pneumonia which can occur from the H1N1 flu . You can see cases are increasing ... direct link below....
http://twitter.com/#search?q=pneumonia
Illinois: State to declare public health emergency next week, Peoria health official says
By KAREN MCDONALD (kmcdonald@pjstar.com)
Journal Star
Posted Sep 17, 2009 @ 08:28 PM
PEORIA —
Gov. Pat Quinn next week will declare a public health emergency to provide more resources for a public health response to the H1N1 virus.
The declaration will allow the Peoria City/County Health Department and others to take advantage of opportunities to allow communities to respond to the viral threat through federal funding, said Health Department Administrator Greg Chance on Thursday.
“The declaration does not necessarily indicate that we’re at the extreme measure as it relates to H1N1, but it provides the tools necessary, especially from a public health response related to the mass vaccination programs that will be a challenge for all public health departments,” Chance said.
During a joint meeting Thursday, county and local health officials discussed responses to the H1N1 virus if there is a major outbreak in central Illinois.
For more on this story, read more on this story in Friday’s Journal Star or check pjstar.com later.
http://www.pjstar.com/homepage/x1699586498/State-to-declare-public-health-emergency-next-week-Peoria-health-official-says
Entire family contracts swine flu
Getting treatment and getting better hasn’t been easy”
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7018069
“WAKE COUNTY (WTVD) — An entire family stricken with the H1N1 virus has been held up for days inside their Fuquay-Varina home afraid of making others sick.
“It’s scary, it’s awful,” H1N1 patient and mother Amy McGrady said.
Mom, dad, their kindergartner and even their 3-month-old has the H1N1 virus.
“We’re all running fevers and we’re all still contagious,” McGrady said.
Contagious, but committed to getting the word out about H1N1, they called their son’s school to warn other parents.
“We were kind of shocked at the response that the school system gave,” H1N1 Patient and father Shawn McGrady said.
Wake County declined to send out a notice -that’s the district’s policy.
The Wake County School System said the county Health and Human Services Department has advised it to treat H1N1 cases among students just like the regular seasonal flu.
“We just want to get the message out, that it is out there,” Amy McGrady said. “There are people who are suffering with it; we just don’t want them to have to go through what we did.”
They’ve endured typical flu-like symptoms and their infant had a fever of 103.
The McGrady family also said getting treatment was a challenge.
They said Tamiflu hasn’t been tested in children less than six months old, so for their son, there’s a health risk.
It took two pharmacies to fill his prescription. One had to turn the McGrady’s away, because their supply was on back order.
“People need to know what the challenges will be if they come down with it,” Amy McGrady said.”...
Autopsy: Football Player Died of Pneumonia
Posted: Sep 17, 2009 11:50 AM
Updated: Sep 17, 2009 12:00 PM
http://www.kptm.com/Global/story.asp?S=11150019
OMAHA (KPTM) - The Benson High School football who collapsed after practice and died had pneumonia, according to the Douglas County Attorney’s Office.
Preliminary autopsy results show that 16-year-old Wilson Vili had pneumonia in both lungs, also known as double pneumonia. Vili wasn’t feeling well last week and complained of a cold.
The findings also showed he had Streptococcus A, a form of strep throat.
Vili practiced Tuesday afternoon until about 5:30pm, and went to dinner with some friends. He collapsed shortly after and was taken to the hospital, where he later passed away.
The Benson football team will remember Vili at their homecoming game this Friday. Vili leaves behind his parents, a brother, and a sister, who are all originally from Hawaii.
As would be expected.
That’s strange that he wasn’t sick enough to stop practice. You’d think with strep, he would not be allowed to practice and wouldn’t feel like it.
But then, some coaches have no heart and apparently, no soul. I’ve seen them treat every kid who’s not feeling well like a liar, and if you’ve been on anti-biotics for 24 hours, you’re not contagious and can practice.
Yeah, the first week of September, when people aren’t going to be keeping kids home from school cause they don’t want them to miss the start of the year, drops off.
Then, when it’s had a chance to spread and incubate, viola...epidemic.
I think he might of had the swineflu without fever . Pneumonia can be a complication to H1n1...
Strep throat has been associated with H1N1 ...
I’ve read that H1n1 rapid flu tests are 70% chance of false negatives.
This is from the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is widely read among academics and administrators in universities.
9/18/09 8:54 AM
http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Face-Swine-Flu/48453/
Colleges Face Swine-Flu Challenge as Number of Sick
Students Surges
By Katherine Mangan
Fraternity and sorority recruitment had just wrapped up and
classes were about to start when the first wave of coughing and
sniffling students reached Washington State University’s health
center.
Over the next few weeks, more than 2,600 students either walked
in or called, complaining of fevers, body aches, nausea, and other
flu symptoms. No one knows how many of those students actually
had the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, because health
officials nationally have concluded that routine testing is too
expensive, time-consuming, and generally unnecessary when so
many people are ill with a virus that can usually be treated like the
typical seasonal flu.
Still, because of the early start of its academic year and the large
number of sick students, Washington State found itself at “ground
zero” of reporting on the swine-flu pandemic, President Elson S.
Floyd ruefully noted last week on the university’s Web site.
Although college officials around the country were expecting an
early and rough flu season, the fact that it hit so many campuses
while students were still unpacking has complicated the start of the
academic year.
Campuses like Washington State’s are struggling to isolate sick
students, many of them freshmen, in residence halls where
roommates and shared bathrooms are generally the rule.
Residence halls are full on the main campus, in Pullman, because
of a record enrollment of 19,500 students.
There and at other colleges that do not have the luxury of setting
up isolation wards, “flu buddies” are delivering meals to sick
friends, who are being instructed to stay in their dorm rooms or
apartments and wear masks when their roommates are around.
Vending machines dispense hand sanitizers as well as candy bars,
social events are being rescheduled outdoors, and everywhere
students turn they see posters exhorting them to wash their hands,
cough into their sleeves, and resist the urge to sip from a friend’s
drink.
Across the country, relatively few faculty and staff members have
fallen ill so far, partly because adults older than 52 may have been
exposed to a virus that gives them some protection against swine
flu. Still, there have been scattered reports of canceled class
sessions, rescheduled exams, and a shift toward advising students
via e-mail rather than face to face.
Professors have also been advised to relax attendance policies and
make more work available online for students who are too sick to
attend class.
‘Pretty Stressful’
Because of the attention paid to swine flu by the news media, along
with what some observers consider exaggerated predictions by
President Obama’s science advisers last month that the flu could
kill as many as 90,000 people this year, college administrators like
Mr. Floyd have had to spend time reassuring worried parents, even
in the absence of a health crisis.
“Our experience runs counter to an image that was fixed in the
public mind this spring, when initial reports of swine flu cases from
Mexico seemed to point to a much more dangerous virus,” he wrote
in his Web-site column last week.
In fact, the number of new cases at Washington State seems to
have dropped since the beginning of the semester. Most have been
relatively mild, and students have recovered in three to five days.
For some students, however, the flu packs a bigger punch.
Matthew O’Dore, a freshman at Washington State, came down with
the flu on August 22 after several days of socializing during
fraternity recruitment. Even though he had heard about the flu, he
admits that he brushed aside warnings and participated in games,
like beer pong, that involve drinking from communal cups of beer.
“I figured if I got it, it was no big deal, but it was 10 times worse
than I thought it would be,” he says. “I had every possible symptom
—coughing, throwing up, achy muscles and joints. I could barely
walk. My mom was freaking out because I was too tired to call her
back and didn’t feel like talking. She finally called the building
director to check up on me and make sure I wasn’t dead.”
After he woke up one morning shaking uncontrollably, his teeth
chattering, a friend took him to the campus health center. By then
his temperature was 103 degrees and he was severely dehydrated.
After three liters of intravenous fluids and a day on the antiviral
drug Tamiflu, he felt better. That’s when he realized how far behind
he was in his studies.
“I missed the entire week, and I have a lot of work to make up,” he
says, “so it’s pretty stressful.”
Counting Coughs
Most colleges across the country have stopped testing students for
H1N1 and instead are tracking the number of students with flulike
symptoms. Because more than 90 percent of the flu cases being
reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
now are H1N1, campus officials are generally treating all cases as if
they were.
Students generally are not being given prescription flu medications
unless their cases are serious, because the limited supplies of the
drug are being reserved for elderly and other high-risk patients.
Washington State has cut down on the number of sick students
crowding into its health center by distributing electronic
questionnaires that allow students to assess, by themselves, the
likelihood that they have the flu.
Unless their symptoms are severe, “we tell people to stay hunkered
down in their rooms, push the fluids, and take it easy,” says
Eleanor Finger, director of residence life. Students are also being
told not to attend class until at least 24 hours after they have had
no fever without taking fever-reducing medication.
Ms. Finger followed those instructions herself when she came down
with the flu this month.
A student group called the Cougar Health Awareness Team has
been combing the Washington State campus, handing out more
than 2,000 free kits containing tissues, pain killers, throat
lozenges, hand sanitizers, sport drinks, and self-care tips.
Sick students are instructed to call the residence-life office every
day to report how they’re doing. If they don’t call, a residence-hall
supervisor checks on them.
College health authorities estimate that 95 percent of campuses
have to rely on students to “self isolate” in their residence halls,
and they say that many students are not doing that. “There have
been clinical surges of massive proportions at certain schools and
selective reports of noncompliance with self-isolation rules,” says
James C. Turner, president of the American College Health
Association. “Some students say they’re feeling OK and they’re
going to class.”
At Washington State and other campuses nationwide, the flu has
been particularly rough on freshmen. Many arrived early for
campus orientation or fraternity or sorority recruitment and
immediately jumped into a swirl of social activities.
“These students were right in the transition to college and hadn’t
met a lot of people when they got sick,” Ms. Finger says.
Not All Cases Mild
Nationally the number of suspected swine-flu cases continues to
surge. The college-health association issues weekly bulletins based
on data from colleges that are voluntarily reporting cases of
“influenza-like illness.” Last week, a total of 6,432 new cases were
documented on 253 campuses, representing around three million
students. That is up from just under 5,000 new cases the week
before. Eighty-three percent of the colleges reported cases,
compared with 72 percent the previous week. Since the reporting
began, on August 22, a total of 13,434 cases have been reported
and 27 students have been hospitalized.
While most cases have been relatively mild, a small number of
cases have been severe. As with any flu outbreak, the illness can
even be fatal.
Last week officials at Cornell University, where more than 600
suspected cases have been documented so far, reported that a 20-
year-old student had died of complications from the H1N1 virus.
On September 5, an 18-year-old freshman at Troy University, in
Alabama, died after receiving a flu diagnosis. It was not clear
whether those students had underlying medical problems.
Rates of the disease were highest in the Southeast and Midwest,
according to the survey, which does not include data from several
states, including Washington.
The University of Georgia has seen 619 suspected or confirmed
cases among its 34,000 students. A spokeswoman for the campus
health center says six of its approximately 200 staff members have
been out either with the flu themselves or caring for family
members with flu. She is unaware of any widespread illness among
faculty and staff members.
Mr. Turner, of the college-health association, says reassuring
parents remains an important part of campus health-officials’ jobs
this fall.
“We are getting a lot of calls from parents who are panicking
unnecessarily because of the intense media coverage, much of
which is overblown,” says Mr. Turner, who is also director of the
University of Virginia’s department of student health.
Parents want to know why their children are not being tested for
the flu or given flu medication, why they can’t have private rooms,
why there aren’t enough hand sanitizers on the campus, he says.
The next big challenge he and his colleagues face is vaccinating
tens of thousands of students for both seasonal and swine flu ahead
of the next wave of cases. The first swine-flu vaccines are expected
to arrive on campuses next month.
Swine flu’s tendency to strike the young is causing confusion
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-flu-mysteries18-2009sep18,0,2108779.story
By Karen Kaplan September 18, 2009
U.S. health workers worry about swine flu vaccine
Fri Sep 18, 2009 9:16am EDT
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-SwineFlu/idUSTRE58H2ZY20090918?sp=true
Posting two interesting letters from doctors received by Dr. Cannell @ Vitamin D Council.
Comments by Dr. Canell about these letters can be read at the web site (9/9 newsletter).
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/releases.shtml
CWC is a long-term care facility for people with developmental disabilities, home for approx. 275 people with approx. 800 staff. Serum 25-OHD has been monitored in virtually all residents for several years and patients supplemented with vitamin D.
In June, 2009, at the time of the well-publicized Wisconsin spike in H1N1 cases, two residents developed influenza-like illness (ILI) and had positive tests for H1N1: one was a long-term resident; the other, a child, was transferred to us with what was later proven to be H1N1.
On the other hand, 60 staff members developed ILI or were documented to have H1N1: of 17 tested for ILI, eight were positive. An additional 43 staff members called in sick with ILI. (Approx. 11–12 staff developed ILI after working on the unit where the child was given care, several of whom had positive H1N1 tests.)
So, it is rather remarkable that only two residents of 275 developed ILI, one of which did not develop it here, while 103 of 800 staff members had ILI. It appears that the spread of H1N1 was not from staff-to-resident but from resident-to-staff (most obvious in the imported case) and between staff, implying that staff were susceptible and our residents protected.
Sincerely,
Norris Glick, MD
Central Wisconsin Center
Madison, WI
Dr. Cannell:
Thanks for your update about the hospital in Wisconsin. I have had similar anecdotal evidence from my medical practice here in Georgia. We are one of the 5 states with widespread H1N1 outbreaks.
I share an office with another family physician. I aggressively measure and replete vitamin D. He does not. He is seeing one to 10 cases per week of influenza-like illness.
In my practice— I have had zero cases. My patients are universally on 2000–5000 IU to maintain serum levels 50–80 ng/ml.
Ellie Campbell, DO
Campbell Family Medicine
3925 Johns Creek Court Ste A
Suwannee GA 30024
Well, at least there's ONE advantage of growing old.
Ping 1,294 also talks about some protection against swine flu.
Airline Workers May Spread H1N1, Expert Says
Friday, September 18, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,551866,00.html?test=latestnews
Airline employees who report to work ill are more likely than sick passengers to spread infections such as the H1N1 swine flu virus aboard airplanes, with low-paid workers posing the greatest danger, a U.S. government expert said on Thursday.
Dr. Michael Bell, an expert on infectious disease with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said flight attendants and other employees who move through aircraft can leave germs on any number of surfaces, while sick passengers could be more likely to remain stationary.
But the greatest threat could come from a low-paid airline contractors, such as cleaners, if slim wages and poor benefits make it difficult for them to take a sick day.
When exactly did the swine flu go around in the 70’s?
I’ve tried googling it and all I can find is stuff about the soldiers in Fort Dix who got sick in Feb 1976.
I recall, I had just started a job in Feb of that year and within a week was sick as a dog with fever etc. I know it was the flu, but don’t remember that it was swine flu although it certainly could have been.
It’s pretty bad, starting a new job only to have to take off right away for the flu. I was hoping that it wasn’t going to affect it, which it didn’t.
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