Posted on 03/02/2010 12:27:02 PM PST by jazusamo
This has been a flu season like few others.
Normally at this time of year, influenza is rampant in the U.S., prompting hundreds of thousands of people to stay home in the dead of winter with fever, aches and pains.
Now, after raging through college campuses and communities last summer and fall, cases of the new H1N1 swine flu virus have dwindled to a trickle, and run-of-the-mill seasonal flu has barely made an appearance. Not one state reported widespread flu illness to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the week ended Feb. 20, the latest data available. The percentage of all doctors' visits by patients with influenza-like symptoms has dropped from a high of 7.8% in late October—the largest peak since the agency began surveillance in 1997—to 1.8% in late February, well below the norm for flu season.
Doctors and flu experts say the lull is unusual. "This is typically the peak of flu," said James Turner, executive director of the University of Virginia's department of student health. He said the Charlottesville, Va., student health center usually sees as many as 130 students a week complaining of flu symptoms this time of year. Recently, no more than three to five students a week have been coming in with fever, cough or other signs of flu, he said.
It is not clear why there is so little flu, particularly swine flu, going around, experts say. "Surely there's a sufficient number of people who haven't been infected or vaccinated," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Many scientists say the answer probably has to do with how the flu virus progresses. Influenza comes and goes in waves, normally running from October through May...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Wasn’t this flu supposed to kill off 60% of the population or something? Honestly scientists and commentators need to stop watching so many bad sci-fi movies.
Hand sanitizer everywhere you look.
People staying home when sick.
Etc.
The H1N1 scare has introduced sanitary practices that have prevented other diseases from spreading.
If they’d gotten the billions they wanted, the WHO would be patting itself on the back for having saved humanity. It’s the same as the global warming scam-cap and tax, if passed, will be credited for having saved civilization when the great global warming catasrophe failed to materialize.
For months it brought out the “sky is falling” crowd, fortunately it didn’t happen like a bunch of them predicted.
You make a good point and I believe you’re right.
SARS -- we're all going to die!
Avian Flu - we're all going to die!
Swine Flu -- we're all going to die!
And don't get me started on the coffee's good for you/coffee's bad for you; wine is good for you/wine is bad for you; aspirins good for you/aspirins bad for you.
Enough all ready!
it was always about manufactured crisis and selling vaccines. Fortunes were made.
Yes, the WHO wasn’t on the up and up on this, IMO.
This was the first year I didn’t get a flu shot at all. I was nervous, but for some reason I just didn’t get one...just never got around to it.
Haven’t been sick at all luckily.
Amazingly mild season despite the weather goes to show the whole myth of the flu coming from the cold to be way wrong.
Wow...and I’m in the high risk group and never get flu shots..well, there was one year, but after getting sick as a dog, never again. Ain’t I supposed to be dead by now?
Good thinking.
Before H1N1, there would not be all these hand sanitizer stations in public places. Now they are all over the place.
but it’s not just h1n1. All flu went down.
Could it be that all of the precautions worked?
If you look at the CDC plot of influenza, it looked very scary at the beginning, with H1N1 cropping up in significant strength at a time when flu is mild, just like the 1918 flu. “The Experts” were extremely worried and blew the siren and started the Drudge flashing light. Many took it seriously. It was an anomalous pattern involving a zoonosis that crossed over.
It turned out not to be a big deal, but the actual incidence could have been steeply reduced by bathing the USA (and other nations) in hand sanitizer and elbow coughs.
BTW my Purell stock did nicely. My Jimmy Dean stock, not so good.
Another HOAX brought to you by scientists. Hand sanitizer my a$$.
LOL! I haven't thought of ole Jimmy Dean in a long while.
Purdue researchers predicted this in October 2009.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2367571/posts
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Two Purdue University math researchers have predicted the novel H1N1 flu will peak so early that planned vaccinations will not have a large effect on the number of people infected.
Sherry Towers, from Purdue’s statistics department, and Zhilan Feng, from Purdue’s math department, used a mathematical model to predict the spread of the disease. They used data collected by the Centers for Disease Control in May, June, July and August.
The result? The model predicted that H1N1 infections will reach their peak in either the week before or the week after Halloween.
The researchers said this early peak for the disease mean that the vaccination campaign will only reduce infections by, at most, 6%. However, as the model also predicted that 63% of the US population will have been infected by the end of the year, a 6% reduction could still mean that the vaccinations could save thousands of lives.
While 63% of the US population sounds like a huge figure, Towers explained that this figure represents the total number of infected people, not the number of people showing symptoms.
“In the paper we point out that many studies have shown that while a large number of people may be infected by influenza, only about 40 percent of those people who are infected actually show signs of illness,” Towers said. “So, in our paper, we actually state that in the end only about 25 percent of people will likely fall ill.”
Towers said they do not want to discourage anyone from getting an H1N1 vaccination.
Feng cautioned their model was “very simple,” and noted that the pair had to make a lot of assumptions to get a result.
“You have to be careful about following the prediction of the study,” said Feng.
The study appears in the October 15 edition of www.eurosurveillance.org .
thousands of kids died from the flu. It’s not a joke just because it didn’t turn into another 1918 epidemic
“Hand sanitizer my a$$.”
I bet it stings.
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