Ahira's Hangar

Actually, Av, influenza has been around for at least hundreds of years. In the last summer of the reign of Queen Mary Tudor, there was a big outbreak in England that killed thousands. People took it as a sign of God's displeasure with Bloody Mary! Some medical historians think that the huge epidemics of the "sweating sickness" that would sweep through England in the Tudor period, killing tens of thousands at a time, might have been a particularly virulant form of influenza, which mutated to a less deadly form over the decades.

It's actually probably been around at least as long as agriculture, when birds, swine, and humans all started living together and sharing germs around.

A lot of human diseases have close animal counterparts, such as small pox (humans) and cow pox (bovines). In fact, some of the first attempts at vaccinations infected people with cow pox, as they would then be immune to small pox.

A lot of diseases began with animal husbandry, when germs crossed over from one species to another, and the mutated germ became a lot more deadly to the new host species.

The last huge influenza pandemic was about a hundred years ago. It killed more people than WW1 - and the far traveling soldiers and displaced people from that war made sure it got spread around the whole world. My father's grandmother died in that pandemic. She lived in the backmost back hills of West Virginia, a very isolated area to this day, and very far from the battle fields of Europe.

Yeah, the "Spanish" flu IIRC. Interesting stuff Duchess, thanks. Will have to do some reading up on it.

--A

Well, I won't be getting the swine flu shot any time soon. Today was the last day for people to get a shot: after this, no more clinics will be scheduled until the province receives more vaccine. (Alberta also has apparently closed all its flu clinics.) And they were apparently enforcing the priority list today: people who didn't belong to high risk groups would not be vaccinated. (FYI, our high risk groups: all aboriginal people, children from six months to under five years, pregnant women and people under 55 with a severe chronic medical or other risk condition. That includes people with serious asthma that has led to hospitalization or requires frequent visits to the doctor.)

Also, for health officials to say they were taken off guard by the public response to the swine flu shot sounds like a weak excuse to me, given the massive and expensive public campaign they waged to cajole people into getting the shot sooner rather than later. Well, people have accepted the seriousness of H1N1, but it's now the health agencies that seem not to have taken seriously the task of preparing for the massive inoculation program they were so eager to tout. Where were the extra staff that should have been hired? The extra clinics that should have been opened? Where were my tax dollars going - just to the fat salaries of the health agency bureaucrats? Today on Parliament Hill, the Opposition was blasting the government for not having had procured enough vaccine to meet the initial demand. I think the criticism is legitimate. If the swine flu was as big a threat to public health as the government's own ads warned, then the government should have devoted the resources to deal with a potentially huge public response - which there was. As I said before, I'm personally not that concerned about the swine flu, but I feel bad for all those who really could use the vaccine, but who now can only wait in anger and frustration.

Yeah, chances are you'll be fine.

--A

I have not been able to get a shot yet, and I work in a hospital. They keep getting in the inhalation version of the vaccine, which I cannot take due to asthma.

Reading articles like this are very frustrating, as both of my children and I have asthma, but the vaccine is simply unavailable right now in our county. I will try one more time for myself at the endocrinologist's office on my Thursday afternoon appointment. None of the general practitioners have it. The county health department had one mass vaccination event at the huge Convocation Center (an large arena at Eastern Michigan University where they have rock concerts and the like) but it was such a madhouse with such long lines, I was not willing to subject myself to it on a workday. The county has only received a third of its requested doses from the government thus far.

I read an editorial in yesterday's local paper which talked about the vaccine shortage here in Manitoba. It said that, instead of blaming government for the perceived lack of adequate response, people should take responsibility for their own actions - referring to the "queue-jumpers" who got the shot even though they were in the low risk group, leaving many in the high risk group stranded without the vaccine. If people hadn't panicked, and those at high risk had been properly taken care of first, the local health authorities wouldn't have now had to implement a screening process. The editorial also said it was moronic of the federal Opposition to accuse the government of having allowed people to die because they couldn't get the vaccine. It just can't be realistically expected to have 33 million people (Canada's population) inoculated overnight. Well, I can't argue with that. I'm a bit guilty myself of unloading blame on the government. At any rate, if I ever do get the H1N1 shot, it probably won't be until the new year. I want all this craziness to die down first. I heard that there might a third H1N1 wave hitting us in the spring, so I might try for a shot then.

What is especially frustrating is how hit and miss it all is depending on what county you live in. The more people who live in a county the less likely it is you can get a shot, no matter what your medical condition. The three core counties of Metro Detroit are having lines hours long, even overnight, at the mass clinics and people cannot get the shots. We are on the edge of Metro Detroit, as is Monroe to our south, and we are in even worse shape. The other county to our south, Lenawee, has plenty of shots on hand - anyone who wants one can walk in to one of their clincs, produce ID that they live or work there, and get a shot no questions asked - and they even have enough on hand that they are going around to every school in the county and are innoculating all of the children. While not all of the patient care personnel who work in my hospital can get one.

Maddening!

Would it be wrong to say this has happened before. IIRC in 1976 during the Carter administration there was a Swine flu scare. And if you're saying, 'well, it was nothing like this'! Consider this, during the time of the 'epidemic' several popular TV shows of the day satirized the situation (one comedy skit on The Carol Burnett show was especially memorable). Additionally, local shopping malls were officially sequestered by public health officials, and that resulted in lines of automobiles lining up in order to get your shot.

Nothing like a good epidemic to get people worked up.

--A

Saw on the news this afternoon that the pandemic is lessening greatly in the West, but only starting in Africa, and the WHO is expecting more big outbreaks in the southern hemisphere as winter comes in down there. Hopefully if they happen it will be the same relatively mild strain we had here - yes, there were deaths and serious illnesses, but nowhere close to being as bad as it could have been.

We can only hope! I have no clue about what vaccination programs are available in Africa.
But I'm totally guessing that unless you're in one of the big cities, you're basically on your own.

That would be my guess as well, as the shots require refrigeration. Not sure if they can get them out to the truly rural areas (like out in the middle of the Kalhari).

That's Kalahari.

Anyway, really? Haven't heard anything about any outbreaks yet out our way. But then, still a few months until winter. also, don't forget it started here last winter. I'm not expecting anything terrible myself...the normal flu continues to kill hundreds of thousands more people than swine flu did.

--A

To Duchess,
Do you know if there was any official recommendation against folks over 70 or so from having priority to receiving this new vaccine preparation? Example, my father, born 1925, was told by local public health officials that because of his age he was not a priority recepient to H1N1 vaccines. Much later I heard that was because people in his age 75+ had immediate contact to people who lived through the 1919 epidemic and received some immunity from that. Additionally, I heard around that anyone who received a vaccination during the 1976 Swine Flue scare had some immunity to the current virus strain. In other words, most people over 40 or so who got a shot in 1976 were not priority recepients, either. I'm probably full of crap....