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Nationwide Shortage In Supply of Swine Flu Vaccine
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that as the number of swine flu cases grows to levels unprecedented for this time of year, health officials predict a shortfall in the supply of swine flu vaccine. Forty-three children have died from swine flu since August 30 — about the same number that usually die in an entire flu season.' These are very sobering statistics,' says Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, 'and unfortunately they are likely to increase.' Projections of the supply of swine flu vaccine have widely varied. During the summer, health officials said 120 million doses would be ready in October but later dropped the estimate to 40 million doses. Now officials expect only 28 million to 30 million doses, adding that the exact number is impossible to predict and could change daily as vaccine manufacturers report that production was behind schedule. 'Vaccine production for influenza is pretty complex,' says Schuchat explaining the delay, 'and the complex process this year is taking a bit longer than we had hoped.' Schuchat warned parents with sick children to be alert for signs that medical attention is required including not eating well, difficulties breathing, and turning blue or gray. A particularly important sign is when children start to get better, then have a relapse, usually a sign that pneumonia is developing, and immediate treatment should be sought."
Based on what I've heard from people who actually had the swine flu, I'd rather have the disease than the vaccine.
I found that number to be way low, as well, given the number of deaths attributed to seasonal flu on a yearly basis. However:
From the CDC Website: ( http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/about/qa/0607season.htm#children )
During the 2003-04 Season, 153 flu-associated deaths in children were reported to CDC.
During the 2004-05 Season, 47 deaths in children were reported to CDC.
During the 2005-06 Season, 46 deaths in children were reported to CDC.
As of August 6, 2007, 68 deaths in children occurring during the 2006-07 season have been reported to CDC.
It makes a difference. All forms of influenza are devastating to an ill child. We must assume that some ill children have been exposed to H1N1 by now. So, which is the case:
1) All 43 were ill
2) None of th 43 were ill
3) Some portion of the 43 were ill
Also bear in mind that this is only about twice (possibly trending towards three times) as deadly as using school-buses:
"Approximately 27 school aged children die in school bus accidents every year." http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/personal_injury/bus/statistics.html
The 1918 pandemic was certainly something that we do not wish to see repeated. However, it was deadlier than this situation on the order of millions of times more.
Please stop scaring people. Please?
Well, judging from the fact that it's the New York Times reporting and there's a big stars and stripes flag next to the summary, I'd guess it's the USA.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
1) Summer: This flu is the WORST flu we've seen in years. Better get a vaccine!
2) October: We're running out of flu vaccine!
3) November-January: Oops, soorry, it turns out the flu vaccine we were using? It didn't do much against the flu outbreak that happened
4) ?
5) Profit
-
Your statement is blatantly false. As the most minor of checks would show you.
Children don't due from flu in the hundreds each year.
So show us your stats source, or did you just make it up because you are an uninformed idiot?
Where's the profit in that?
As an experiment, the New York Times once ran the headline "Everything Is Fine, Nothing To Worry About" on their front page. For some reason that day's sales were way lower than either the Daily News or the New York Post, whose front pages both predicted imminent doom.
Go figure.
Look at the distribution of deaths. Most flu deaths occur during the winter, when people generally have weaker immune systems and spend more time crowded together indoors making transmission easier. Lots of people have been claiming that the mortality rate for swine flu is lower than for other seasonal flus, but they have been comparing swine flu statistics in the middle of the summer to other flu statistics from the winter. If you look at the weekly reports of flu deaths over the last few years from the CDC, you will see no children dying in the summer, and up to around 12 dying a week in the middle of the winter, with around one a week over the milder parts of winter. Compare that with this year, and you see a spike of 3-8 per week in a period that has had zero for the previous three years.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
As an experiment, the New York Times once ran the headline "Everything Is Fine, Nothing To Worry About" on their front page. For some reason that day's sales were way lower than either the Daily News or the New York Post, whose front pages both predicted imminent doom.
[citation needed]
My 7 months pregnant wife works as a school teacher and has multiple students out with H1N1. I have never worried before about anything like I worry these days. Jobs, economy, foreign policy, health, the future, they all take on new meaning when you have a family. To quote Blink, "I guess this is growing up".
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Most flu deaths occur during the winter,
Known to be true.
when people generally have weaker immune systems and spend more time crowded together indoors making transmission easier.
Never been tested, completely surmised, and vulnerable to selection bias.
When I look at the numbers I see no children dying outside of the flu season. Summer not withstanding. Because of the outbreak, H1N1 got off to a weird season start. But Australasia's winter didn't kill any more or less than our summer. This seems to cast the 'cold = flu' thing in serious doubt, at least with H1N1.
Of course, if you were reading Slashdot yesterday, you saw already how the science isn't being done to find a link.
You just simply can't compare raw event numbers when estimating relative risk. Your statement about "twice as deadly" is very likely not true, and certainly not justified from the data you reference. You fail to take into account any sort of denominator when just using the raw events. What if only 27 kids rode school busses each year? What if 2 million did? What if only 43 kids were exposed to H1N1, and they all died? What if everyone was exposed to H1N1, and 43 died? You need to take into account the population, not just events. After all, every(?) child who died last year used toothpaste.
The 35K/year number is excess deaths due to influenza, and is derived by fancy statistics from the time series of deaths in medical categories (i.e. gunshot wounds don't get figured in.) You can read more on how difficult this process is at Effect Measure.
The "number of children" statistic, on the other hand, is confirmed 2009 H1N1 novel influenza diagnoses on the death certificate. No inference required, they are kids with confirmed infections which led directly to their deaths.
Both statements are true, in context. Please be a little less generous with the F-word.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The shortage of resources is reason we have a duty to keep deriding the vaccination program. We need to ensure that those people who think they know better than all the medically trained scientists do not get vaccinated. That way there will be enough of the Swine Flu vaccine for the worthwhile members of society.
It would be unethical to prevent stupid people from being vaccinated, but there is nothing wrong with sowing the seeds of discontent so that they voluntarily abstain. And when the more deadly strain of H1N1 wipes out a third of the population....
Well, nobody will care that much. It is the "B" Ark theory of trimming the fat of society. "Ah yes, the goat"
PS. Thanks to all the other posters for the fine work they are doing towards our goal. It must be hard to keep a straight face while writing some of those messages!
Well I do find it interesting that all over the news there are many health care workers who don't care to get the shot.
You may find it interesting that there are pharmacists, doctors, and nurses who feel it is their right to decide whether a patient even has the option of a morning-after pill or abortion. Now how do you feel about whether someone who chose to work in the medical field is permitted to inject their own dogma into your medical treatment?
Medical "professionals" and workers are expected to follow medical science, not superstition or personal beliefs and morals- and look out for the interests of their patient, not themselves or their own dogma. They knew that going in the door. Among other things, the first thing you are expected to do as an employee of a hospital is get all your vaccinations up to date.
Please help metamoderate.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First, government is responsible: the CDC is in charge of this operation.
Second, A deliberate decision was made to ship the stuff as fast as it was made rather than stockpiling it and coordinating distribution in order to get it out as fast as possible. It was expected that this would result in "shortages and lines". Better that than everybody waiting another month.
Third, given the leadtime they had (controlled by the virus, not the humans) they have done a remarkable job getting a significant amount of vaccine out this early at all.
I say this despite being a definite non-fan of government. I'm sure a truly free society (there are none) could do as well or better, but we have to work with what we have.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Schuchat warned parents with sick children to be alert for signs that medical attention is required including ... turning blue or gray.
No shit. You mean that's not normal?
Guess I'd better get the little ones to the hospital.
And maybe stop nicknaming them "Grant" and "Lee."
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
No, no, no, you see it's the Illuminati testing the Masons plans for tagging the Aliens that came from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse before 2012. Of course it's REALLY robo-Hitler's plan to find all the iJews before the arrival of the Baby Jesus riding down from heaven on his Velociraptor, but the Illuminati just hasn't caught on yet. And THAT'S why you shouldn't get the vaccine secretly made by the Flinstones, it's yabba-dabba-dangerous.
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Nothing creates a shortage faster than the word "shortage".
Johnny Carson was joking about a toilet paper shortage on NBC's Tonight Show, and Johnny's simple joke about shortage indeed created a very real toilet paper shortage that lasted three weeks. fact
If a comedian can have that much impact, one can only imagine what would happen if a more reliable source like New York Times went around announcing there was a shortage.
Google Flu Trends. The season is just starting. Have a look at how it matches to the last several years at their peaks.
It's an influenza vaccine. The only difference between it and any seasonal one is the virus it's made with; all the rest are the same process (grown in eggs, filtered, yada yada yada.) If we waited for full-up trials every season, by the time the vaccine was available we'd be in the next season and the strains in circulation would be different anyway.
HOWEVER! We have done clinical tests with the vaccine, the only way that we can in such short time frame: we injected it into volunteers and measured the antibody response, then compared that to the response from previous seasons where we have after-the-fact data to go by. We've been building that data collection for decades now, and it's pretty flipping good.
As with anything in real time, if you wait for perfect data you might as well not bother.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm not getting a flu shot because I think I'm going to die from it...
I'm getting a flu shot because I don't want to be sick as a dog from this thing and miss a week of work.
The $30 I spend (via insurance) on a flu shot every year pays for itself in that I'm not freaking the fuck out about catching up on work, not having to spend time I'm not at work laying in bed feeling miserable, and not having to shell out $15 a box (and show my ID thanks to meth makers) for pills that'll make me feel slightly less miserable.
I used to not get flu shots, and I got sick as a dog at least once a winter with whatever was going around. I now get flu shots and for the last 3 winters I haven't been sick with anything more than the sniffles, and I work in an office that seems to have plagues running through it at least once a quarter.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I know. I was driving down the highway at 110km/h, with the cold 5 degree centigrade wind rushing through my hair, so I could get a litre of pop, and then I flipped my fiat because the speed limit was 50km/h! I survived, thank God. Speed limits are a great idea. God save the Queen.
It's been a long time.
Equally, all experimental data supporting efficacy of Influenza vaccination is wishful thinking, and imprecise analogy.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
requires throwing ethics and morality out the window and blindly carrying out instructions, even if what you are being asked to do seems horribly wrong.
That's a nice straw-man; we're talking about medical professionalism in the context of patient care, not building bioweapons, rootkits, or anything else you cited. And yes, except in cases where the patient is unable to make decisions in an informed capacity and they do not have a pre-existing decision/order, their wishes are more important than whether something 'seems horribly wrong' to you. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Self-Determination_Act. And yes, if an 18 year old woman shows up at your pharmacy asking for a morning-after pill, it's not your right to lecture her about YOUR morals and religious beliefs. She's got her own.
How fucking funny that someone who just argued for the right for a healthcare worker to make decisions that affect the health of others, can't recognize the right for a patient to make decisions that only affect themselves.
Please help metamoderate.
Our health provider is "limiting" the vaccine to certain risk groups. These include pregnant ladies, children under a certain age, people with asthma or other chronic airway issues, and so forth. In other words, the specific groups they want to get vaccinated for flu every year.
A few comments about this virus and why vaccination is important:
H1N1 is a combination not seen for at least thirty+ years. Therefore, much of the population has never been exposed to the "surface codes" H1 or N1, which means they don't have partial immunity. This worries medical professionals, since that increases the virulence and the spread if this flu mutates into a deadlier form. (Generally, the flu shifts a few points. This is a major antigen shift.)
Vaccines do not have a 100% success rate. Some people's immune systems don't respond, so while they've been vaccinated, they don't have immunity and are still at risk. However, if the percentage of immunes is high enough, the particular disease never has a chance to get to those who are vulnerable. This is why anti-vaccination efforts are anti-social: your un-vaccinated kid can give my infant or elderly grandmother whooping cough or measles. (There have been a number of immune-compromised people in my family, and my parents watched family members and friends die from diseases that are now vaccine-preventable.)
Vaccines in general cover a larger number of diseases BUT have fewer "triggers" in them. For example, the original vaccine, smallpox, basically had to give you the whole disease to get your immune system going. Now we can separate out a few key proteins or antigens that are specific to the disease, rather than the hundreds that comprise it.
The upshot is, if you are in a risk category, get vaccinated. If you're not, practice good hygiene and wash your hands a lot, eat well, and get plenty of rest. And de-stress! Stressed people get sick easier.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
I have a friend that didn't get their kid circumsized (which is usually done in the first when the boy is only a few days old) because they wanted to leave this decision up to the child. Note that the boy has already had quite a few urinary infections due to this.
Then he's doing something wrong. There's no modern hygenic benefit.
The problem is that no human can develop an immune response to either H1 or N1 (as that would be deadly).
Um, what?
If a virus were to infect a cell, and the mexican flu would infect the same cell, there is some chance that the mantle of flu would be copied around the much more dangerous virus, which would beat any immunity or vaccine we currently have, would react differently to most treatments and be capable of spreading through open air (through coughing).
If such an event were to take place, that event has a good chance of making the 1917 flu pandemic look like a tiny issue. That disease literally blocked the world economy for over 2 months, making millions of victims.
The problem is not the flu in the H1N1 form. The problem is that pneumonia might "be infected" and transform into an H1N1 virus. The problem is, in essence, the evolution that it might cause in other viruses. Cases of gene transfer between viruses are well-studied, and the current consensus is that it's commonplace.
No, actually the PROBLEM is that such drivel got marked "Informative" on slashdot...
Seriously?
I have to say that after college, medical school, graduate school, and over 12 years of virology and immunology research, I've read a lot of stuff (including popular science that was meant to be educational) that was ridiculous. But the above post ranks in my top 5 examples of manic garbage. It's a collection of bits and pieces of something you've overheard, put together somewhat like a neanderthal would try to piece together the space shuttle. It may contain a couple of the correct parts, but the result does not only fail to take off, but is not identifiable as the correct object, no matter from what angle you look at it.
The CDC's 2009 H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) site is handsomely designed and rich in resources for all ages and interests.
The geek will find public health spreadsheet simulations for Windows and Excel here: H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu): Preparedness Tools for Professionals
Interesting stuff, no specialist knowledge or skills required.
Social networking and mobile resources, widgets, buttons and badages: Social Media - Novel H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu
I'm most familiar with the question of vaccinations being related to autism, as the father of two autistic children. Let it be said, my autistic twins were clearly "different" from my other two kids before they got any vaccines. And every study that's looked at the question has failed to find a link. But that doesn't stop fear-mongers from you from spreading their dung.
I promise you, the Flu's more dangerous than the vaccine.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1