The Not-Flu kicks the Omega family’s collective butt
posted in Family, Illnesses, Pop Culture, Science, Wah |If you can see me, you will see me waving a little white flag of surrender.
We none of us had the flu–officially. Luckily, the dotter’s pediatrician eyeballed the accuracy rate of the rapid flu tests as determined by the CDC (40% to 70% accurate–almost as good as tossing a coin) and her history of pneumonia, and prescribed Tamiflu.
Alas, the same did not happen for OmegaDad and me. OmegaDotter started feeling sick on Sunday (with a bang!), OmegaDad and I started feeling sick on Monday. We are now eyeing Day 8 of fever and/or general illness. The dotter, who started one day earlier, and got Tamiflu, has been fever-free for three days, and had energy enough to do cartwheels, handstands, and walkovers today.
I, on the other hand, managed to do dishes and check the chickens in a fit of woohoo-I’m-over-it! energy, which promptly depleted any vestige of fuel my body still contained and I collapsed for the rest of the day in bed feeling like death warmed over.
This is seriously nasty stuff. At the height, I was running a fever of 103.5F. The one good thing about the Not-Flu? I had no hot flashes, ‘cuz I was hot all the time! Har. (There was another good thing about the Not-Flu that I thought of, but it has vanished into the mists of vagueness that surround my brain these days.)
You may have noted that I am very dubious about the claim of Not-Flu. You betcha. Reading that the flu tests are essentially no better than flipping a coin is enough to tilt my skeptical eyebrow up, sure ’nuff.
In my quest for mindless entertainment, I searched Twitter for H1N1. (For reference, it’s actually 2009 (a)H1N1.) Oh, boy. The woo is strong on this subject. Let’s see:
- Various claims that a “friend” got the H1N1 vaccine, then promptly came down with it and died. Let’s just avoid the issue that the vaccine is just now being delivered across the U.S. There’s a little timeline problem there.
- A person saying she wouldn’t get the H1N1 vaccine because a little kid died of H1N1 around here the other day!!!! Folks. That’s what the vaccine is supposed to help prevent.
- People saying they would get the seasonal flu vaccine, but not the H1N1 because it’s too “new” and hasn’t been tested enough. Okay, this one requires two sub-points:
- FIRST: Take a look at CDC data. Ninety-nine percent of the flu cases that are being diagnosed are H1N1. One percent is “seasonal” flu. If you were asking me, I’d go for the H1N1 vaccine, not the seasonal flu vaccine.
- SECOND: Okay, this takes a little longer. Flu vaccines in general have been around since World War II. The way the vaccine is developed each year is that WHO epidemiologists take an educated guess as to which flu strains will be prevalent in the upcoming flu season. This happens around January. Then it takes the manufacturers of flu vaccines about six to eight months to create a vaccine and get the production rolling on it in time for seasonal flu shots. This time around, H1N1 showed up in April–months after the regular seasonal flu vaccine process gets going. However, they had plenty of good virus samples very quickly, and epidemiologists from across the world were rapidly made aware of how novel this one was (like within weeks). So, the only difference between the H1N1 vaccine and the “normal” seasonal flu vaccine is that (a) they knew exactly what flu they wanted to vaccinate against, rather than a crap shoot of three guesses, and (b) it was a few months later than normal. But there were a lot of scared governments that pulled strings to get some of the production switched over to H1N1 rather than the seasonal flu.
- Why were they scared? Because this is a “novel” flu, meaning there are very, very few people who have any immunity to it. Apparently there was a similar flu in the mid-1950s, so people who are older than that may have native immunity. But everyone younger than that? None. Nada. Zilch. The seasonal flu that we normally contend with is usually similar to a flu from the previous year or before, so that most people have had some exposure to it. This time, a similar flu hasn’t been around for more than sixty years. To get an idea of how it’s affecting people now, take a look at this chart of “influenza-like illnesses” reported to the CDC within the past few weeks. I look at the down-tick at the very end of the red line and am hoping it continues, but the kind of upswing shown in the past few weeks is what normally happens in December/January, not September. So far it seems about as virulent as normal seasonal flu (this is good!), but given the possible numbers of people who could get it at once, the end result could be bad. Imagine all the hospital ICUs filled with folks on ventilators from the H1N1, and then, oh, a school bus crashes into a tour bus and those people need ventilation and the ICU…where do they go?
- OMG, it contains SQUALENE!!! It causes CANCER!!! It kills people!!!! It has mercury!!!! And on and on. Sigh. Oh, yes, and it’s all a PLOT by the NEW WORLD ORDER…I can’t address them all. A good resource is EffectMeasure, on ScienceBlogs.
The end result: the Internet is a marvelous tool. But if you’ve got no ability to sort B.S. from real information, you’re a sitting duck for the more scary memes out there.
I personally think we all had the flu. Given the percentages, if we had the flu, we all had Teh Swiney FLOO. But when that vaccine comes around, I am dragging the dotter in to get it first, and then myself and DH when we’re in the ranks of those who can get it. (It seems that they’re going to be giving it to kids and pregnant women first, as those are the folks who are most susceptible.)
Anyway, this is just a lot of rambling. It’s taken me about six hours to write this post, because I have to keep stopping to rest. Hah!
Hopefully, OmegaDad and I will also soon be feeling better, and no longer like a pair of old damp washrags that have been wrung out and hung out to dry.
