H1N1 Vaccine, take it or not?

[Zed Snardbody]

I'm just waiting for my weekend to get it. Working at the 6th busiest airport in the country, during peak hours? Sign me right the fuck up.

[His Divine Shadow]

Got this anti-vaccine nut going around saying the last swine flu epidemic in the states killed less people than the vaccinations against it.

[PeZook]

Got this anti-vaccine nut going around saying the last swine flu epidemic in the states killed less people than the vaccinations against it.

Wow! I take he has professional reports from trustworthy sources to corroborate this claim? I mean, who would claim such a terrible thing without a shred of evidence?

Ok. WAY too many people are harping on about ARDS and how having a strong immune system is bad. Here's a hint, it won't matter. While ARDS was the stunner that killed people quickly, the majority of people who die from flu, and a good proportion of people who did die in 1917 died from secondary complications such as pneumonia.
The key thing is adequate rest, adequate hydration and nutrition, monitoring of yourself and leave the rest to the doctors.

So it's just scare mongering, then? I can't say I'm unhappy about that, to be honest.

[Zixinus]

Me and my dad just got it.

I mused myself about the fact that the nurse talked about how once every 2 or 3 child out of 10 often died of diseases they shouldn't have died. She mentioned how it is graceful that our children are vaccinated against so much, allowing them to live. She herself made a close brush against death when she nearly died of a disease for which there was a vaccine for (smallpox perhaps? I can't recall exactly, just that she described the symptoms).
Dad remembers particularly, being the son of a doctor that was a vaccinator for three villages (my dad often being the first one to go, to show to the others that it doesn't hurt).

These people are alive and well: people that remember how it was before vaccines got around. Not statistics or numbers, not a paper in a scientific journal, but people that were there and experienced first-hand what happens when you don't get vaccinated. To think that there are dipshits out there that will tell you that vaccines are poison....

[hongi]

The rest of my family have got it, I'll get it as soon as my tests are over. Yeah it's a hassle, but I don't want to take the chance. Besides, needles are fun!

[His Divine Shadow]

Wow! I take he has professional reports from trustworthy sources to corroborate this claim? I mean, who would claim such a terrible thing without a shred of evidence?

Honestly I don't bother with crack pots like these, they're clearly beyond reason. Next he was claiming that vaccinations in 1918 might have been the reason the flu mutated and killed millions in the first place. Whacko.

[PeZook]

Wow! I take he has professional reports from trustworthy sources to corroborate this claim? I mean, who would claim such a terrible thing without a shred of evidence?

Honestly I don't bother with crack pots like these, they're clearly beyond reason. Next he was claiming that vaccinations in 1918 might have been the reason the flu mutated and killed millions in the first place. Whacko.

I like collecting crackpot conspiracy theories. It's kind of a hobby of mine, if you couldn't tell by my sig

Of course, while some of their paranoid ravings are just funny, others are actually dangerous. There have already been cases of deaths of unvaccinated children due to mumps, and all thanks to the bullshit about autism and thimersal in vaccines being spread around the Internet.

Does this guy of yours even know that there was no inactivated flu vaccine in 1918? Anything they used to inocculate patients back then bears practically no resemblance to modern targetted vaccines. As silly as it sounds, immunology made some slight advances in 90 years

[Broomstick]

Got this anti-vaccine nut going around saying the last swine flu epidemic in the states killed less people than the vaccinations against it.

Wow! I take he has professional reports from trustworthy sources to corroborate this claim? I mean, who would claim such a terrible thing without a shred of evidence?

Actually, this one is true.

In January 1976 five people at Fort Dix fell ill and one died from swine flu. This prompted a mass vaccination in the US. A side effect of that vaccine was about 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, of which around 25 people died. Although there were other "regular seasonal flu" deaths that year (as always) only one person died of swine flu - the young man at Fort Dix. So in 1976 the swine flu vaccine did, in fact, kill more people than the swine flu did.

As the above have been pulled out of my memory of the event I may be off in fine details, but please feel free to independently verify any of the above. If I have time later I'll try to find some more solid cites.

No other flu vaccine has been linked to Guillain-Barre.

I can't help but think that memories of the 1976 vaccination problems might held feed the anti-vaccination crowd. However, if you want to get technical, the 1976 "swine flu epidemic" never happened, being limited to basically a half dozen cases total. The last actual swine flu epidemic in the US, one that actually was an epidemic, is believed to have been the 1918 flu which, of course, did kill a fuckton of people.

[PeZook]

Oh, yeah. I missed the "swine" bit, reading this as "the last flu epidemic killed less people..." etc.

Of course, today's situation is just slightly different...In fact, in some countries there's been more cases of swine flu than the seasonal kind.

CDC report on the matter

The 1976 scare is nothing compared to that.

[Darth Wong]

And in related news, a healthy 13 year old minor hockey league player just died of swine flu in Toronto. He went from minor cold symptoms to flat-line in 48 hours.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/10/ ... ey113.html

Toronto Public Health is offering swine flu vaccination clinics. In typical evil socialist fashion, they first made it available this week to high-risk people such as health-care workers and the elderly, and lower-risk people must wait until next week for it. I wonder if this will provide fodder to US conservatives who will crow about "waiting lists" again.

[PainRack]

Ok. WAY too many people are harping on about ARDS and how having a strong immune system is bad. Here's a hint, it won't matter. While ARDS was the stunner that killed people quickly, the majority of people who die from flu, and a good proportion of people who did die in 1917 died from secondary complications such as pneumonia.
The key thing is adequate rest, adequate hydration and nutrition, monitoring of yourself and leave the rest to the doctors.

So it's just scare mongering, then? I can't say I'm unhappy about that, to be honest.

Its not scaremongering sadly..... Its more of more people die from secondary complications than ARDS. So, focusing overtly on ARDS ignores the real big elephant in the room.

[Knife]

And in related news, a healthy 13 year old minor hockey league player just died of swine flu in Toronto. He went from minor cold symptoms to flat-line in 48 hours.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/10/ ... ey113.html

Toronto Public Health is offering swine flu vaccination clinics. In typical evil socialist fashion, they first made it available this week to high-risk people such as health-care workers and the elderly, and lower-risk people must wait until next week for it. I wonder if this will provide fodder to US conservatives who will crow about "waiting lists" again.

People are waiting in lines for it now in the US. Last week, in Salt Lake City, they had a line wrapped around the building where the county was handing out shots to at risk populations. They ran out after an hour. Today, at my city's convention center they had 2000 doses that were gone before they opened since people were camping out over night for them. My kids got the shot today, got in line at what would be the last couple dozen shots, and they were there an hour before the place opened. My work, a healthcare facility, can't get any due to shortages.

[PeZook]

There is something about the claim of paranoid nutters that pharma companies will make a killing on that vaccine, isn't it?

[Darth Wong]

There is something about the claim of paranoid nutters that pharma companies will make a killing on that vaccine, isn't it?

Yeah, but it has the same substance as people who point out that the police profit from crime.

[PeZook]

Yeah, but it has the same substance as people who point out that the police profit from crime.

There was an interview with a medical doctor in one of the newspapers here, who put it quite well: "What should worry us is not if someone profits from the pandemic, but if the vaccines he makes are effective."

It's not like they're withholding the vaccine or making poison, after all.

[Broomstick]

And in related news, a healthy 13 year old minor hockey league player just died of swine flu in Toronto. He went from minor cold symptoms to flat-line in 48 hours.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/10/ ... ey113.html

As I mentioned, if you get the cytokine storm complication you can die rapidly. The line "as healthy as can be" is frequently seen in such cases since you need a strong, healthy immune system in order to generate such a severe reaction. Of course, there could have been something else at work, but an autopsy will be able to turn up evidence of a cytokine storm if there was one.

Toronto Public Health is offering swine flu vaccination clinics. In typical evil socialist fashion, they first made it available this week to high-risk people such as health-care workers and the elderly, and lower-risk people must wait until next week for it. I wonder if this will provide fodder to US conservatives who will crow about "waiting lists" again.

Nope - every US city and county has waiting lists and waiting lines for the vaccine, so it clearly can't be argued the free market/capitalism/whatever does it better.

Meanwhile, every needs to take the other precautions - wash your hands frequently, don't touch your face, avoid sick people, stay home if you're sick, if you get sick contact your doctor for anti-virals if you're in a high-risk group, and watch out for a sudden turn for the worse in children and healthy adults.

Remember, for MOST people this is a mild flu. If you get sick don't panic. Do the fluids/rest/OTC medications as usual and the odds are you'll be fine. Best to avoid illness entirely, best to keep watch for complications, but really, most folks will recover without incident. You'll just feel like shit for a couple days, that's all.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm looking around for opportunities to get it - as soon as I find one covered by my insurance and/or for a cheap price, I'm going to go and get it. My job puts me in contact with a lot of different people on a daily basis, and we've already had one possible case at work (a co-worker got it, although thankfully I wasn't in the office when she was sick).

EDIT: I found a place. I'm going in tomorrow early afternoon, after work.

[Archaic`]

Now that the Australian Government are going to be giving it out for free, I'm heading in to get mine as soon as possible as well. I'm intending to travel to Costa Rica in December, and I don't like the idea of passing through North and Central America without some resistance to the virus. Not with so many people still so complacent about it.

[Justforfun000]

For the record, that Tamiflu worked quite effectively on me. Either that or it's just coincidence of timing....but I don't think so. I went from feeling violently ill to semi-normal feeling within the space of 6 hours. had a few relapses...this thing is a bitch man...but overall huge steady improvement since I started taking it yesterday morning. So it's encouraging to know the treatment they have for it is effective. It's so difficult to get accurate information sometimes. Somewhere I looked was saying that its was 98.9% resistant to Tamiflu as of 2008...and it was a seemingly reputable site..however another link to the CDC (which is a good place to begin and I should have thought of that in the first place.. ) supports it's effectiveness.

Only downside is I personally find it's potential side effects of nausea and vomiting to be the case for me...almost every time after taking the pill I'd have some issue with that within an hour or two. Still...small price to pay for the effectiveness.

[Justforfun000]

I just came across this website. If this is even remotely accurate, this flu still has a very high percentage of death potential...especially in certain countries.

http://www.flucount.org/

Death Rate per Infection
Country Cases Deaths % Dead Frequency
São Tomé & Príncipe 6 2 33.33% 1 in 3
Solomon Islands 3 1 33.33% 1 in 3
Sudan 5 1 20% 1 in 5
St. Kitts 6 1 16.67% 1 in 6
Bahamas 29 4 13.79% 1 in 7
Mauritius 69 8 11.59% 1 in 9
Paraguay 692 52 7.51% 1 in 13
Ghana 14 1 7.14% 1 in 14
Brazil 30206 2105 6.97% 1 in 14
Argentina 9119 585 6.42% 1 in 16
Uruguay 550 33 6% 1 in 17
Colombia 2521 131 5.20% 1 in 19
Dominican Republic 424 22 5.19% 1 in 19
Tonga 20 1 5% 1 in 20
Venezuela 1910 95 4.97% 1 in 20
United Arab Emirates 125 6 4.80% 1 in 21
Jamaica 118 5 4.24% 1 in 24
Ecuador 2078 75 3.61% 1 in 28
Spain 1538 54 3.51% 1 in 28
India 13370 451 3.37% 1 in 30
Mozambique 63 2 3.18% 1 in 32
Trinidad & Tobago 163 5 3.07% 1 in 33
Honduras 543 16 2.95% 1 in 34
El Salvador 767 22 2.87% 1 in 35
Costa Rica 1530 38 2.48% 1 in 40
Bolivia 2281 56 2.46% 1 in 41
Suriname 88 2 2.27% 1 in 44
Georgia 44 1 2.27% 1 in 44
Nepal 45 1 2.22% 1 in 45
Barbados 147 3 2.04% 1 in 49
Peru 8596 162 1.89% 1 in 53
Guatemala 1080 18 1.67% 1 in 60
United States 70034 1158 1.65% 1 in 60
Syria 122 2 1.64% 1 in 61
French Guiana 126 2 1.59% 1 in 63
Singapore 1217 18 1.48% 1 in 68
Namibia 69 1 1.45% 1 in 69
Samoa 138 2 1.45% 1 in 69
Hungary 283 4 1.41% 1 in 71
Panama 787 11 1.40% 1 in 72
Iran 1194 16 1.34% 1 in 75
Bulgaria 78 1 1.28% 1 in 78
Cambodia 269 3 1.12% 1 in 90
Chile 12257 136 1.11% 1 in 90
Malaysia 7066 77 1.09% 1 in 92
Cuba 677 7 1.03% 1 in 97
Oman 2425 24 0.99% 1 in 101
Yemen 1618 16 0.99% 1 in 101
Cayman Islands 104 1 0.96% 1 in 104
Saudi Arabia 4119 39 0.95% 1 in 106
Cook Islands 106 1 0.94% 1 in 106
Bahrain 650 6 0.92% 1 in 108
Marshall Islands 109 1 0.92% 1 in 109
Indonesia 1097 10 0.91% 1 in 110
Bangladesh 687 6 0.87% 1 in 115
France 4220 36 0.85% 1 in 117
Israel 4330 34 0.79% 1 in 127
United Kingdom 16945 130 0.77% 1 in 130
Serbia 131 1 0.76% 1 in 131
Canada 12038 91 0.76% 1 in 132
South Africa 12378 91 0.74% 1 in 136
Malta 718 5 0.70% 1 in 144
New Zealand 3174 22 0.69% 1 in 144
Mexico 49370 314 0.64% 1 in 157
Iraq 636 4 0.63% 1 in 159
Thailand 28057 176 0.63% 1 in 159
Philippines 5212 30 0.58% 1 in 174
Tanzania 174 1 0.58% 1 in 174
Qatar 550 3 0.55% 1 in 183
Madagascar 184 1 0.54% 1 in 184
Nicaragua 2137 11 0.52% 1 in 194
Australia 37642 186 0.49% 1 in 202
Ireland 1895 9 0.48% 1 in 211
Taiwan 5474 26 0.48% 1 in 211
Norway 2347 11 0.47% 1 in 213
Laos 242 1 0.41% 1 in 242
Netherlands 1473 6 0.41% 1 in 246
Vietnam 10395 35 0.34% 1 in 297
Czech Republic 309 1 0.32% 1 in 309
Japan 11636 35 0.30% 1 in 332
Luxembourg 333 1 0.30% 1 in 333
Kuwait 4021 12 0.30% 1 in 335
Egypt 1121 3 0.27% 1 in 374
Lebanon 761 2 0.26% 1 in 381
Palestinian Territories 455 1 0.22% 1 in 455
Belgium 2353 5 0.21% 1 in 471
Iceland 479 1 0.21% 1 in 479
South Korea 15158 28 0.19% 1 in 541
Jordan 1695 3 0.18% 1 in 565
Italy 2948 4 0.14% 1 in 737
Sweden 1584 2 0.13% 1 in 792
China (Hong Kong) 31211 36 0.12% 1 in 867
Greece 2659 3 0.11% 1 in 886
Brunei 971 1 0.10% 1 in 971
Turkey 1095 1 0.09% 1 in 1,095
Macau 2625 2 0.08% 1 in 1,313
Portugal 21531 4 0.02% 1 in 5,383
Germany 22936 3 0.01% 1 in 7,645
China (Mainland) 35664 3 0.01% 1 in 11,888
Overall: 544649 6876 1.26% 1 in 79

[Simon_Jester]

I find some of the statistics there questionable. For example, reporting a death percentage to four significant figures for the Solomon Islands (with three cases on the islands and one death).

I'm also skeptical that the death rate due to flu in mainland China is less than 0.01% when the death rate in Taiwan (similar culture, stronger economy) is fifty times higher. Methinks the Chinese government is underreporting influenza deaths.

[Tribun]

After reading all this, I have to realy how our government pretty much totally fucked up on the whole vaccine thing. It's not that there isn't enough vaccine, but their communication and information strategy was simply a disaster.

The screw-ups

To make it short, in their bumbling around they did everything to strengthen to idea that they get the good stuff and everyone else the unhealthy stuff. There are also other fuck-ups concerning the payment for the doctors and they managed to effectively kill the already low willingness to get the vaccine by casting doubt on the stuff with their amateurish management of the whole thing.

Yep, thanks to our government, people in Germany are now even less willing to get a vaccine.

[Mayabird]

I find some of the statistics there questionable. For example, reporting a death percentage to four significant figures for the Solomon Islands (with three cases on the islands and one death).

I'm also skeptical that the death rate due to flu in mainland China is less than 0.01% when the death rate in Taiwan (similar culture, stronger economy) is fifty times higher. Methinks the Chinese government is underreporting influenza deaths.

Those numbers look like they're confirmed and/or suspected cases, not just estimates of infection, since lots of people may have gotten infected but didn't go to the hospital to get tested. The death rates would be skewed upwards since people with more serious cases would be far more likely to go the hospital, where they'd be tested. For instance, my mom and younger brother strongly suspect that they both got it in June since they both came down with flu-like symptoms (my brother first, then my mom a couple days afterward), but it wasn't quite bad enough to make them want to drag themselves to a doctor or call an ambulance, just say home and be miserable for a week.

That being said, I did read that H1N1 was killing slightly more infants and toddlers (who were always a higher risk group due to their lack of immunities) than the regular seasonal flu usually does. So there's one argument you could make to certain selfish people who don't want to get it themselves because of something: "you could end up infecting and killing someone's baby, asshole."

[Lusankya]

I find some of the statistics there questionable. For example, reporting a death percentage to four significant figures for the Solomon Islands (with three cases on the islands and one death).

I'm also skeptical that the death rate due to flu in mainland China is less than 0.01% when the death rate in Taiwan (similar culture, stronger economy) is fifty times higher. Methinks the Chinese government is underreporting influenza deaths.

China's gone pretty overboard with their policing of H1N1. You get things like nurses scanning your body temperature before going into auditoriums and things like that. One thing I've also noticed is that Chinese people are also much more likely to go to a doctor when they're sick than Westerners. Keeping this in mind, I can quite easily see the lower death percentage being, as Mayabird mentioned, a result of the numbers of cases of flu reported being inflated rather than an underreporting of deaths.

[Simon_Jester]

I find some of the statistics there questionable. For example, reporting a death percentage to four significant figures for the Solomon Islands (with three cases on the islands and one death).

I'm also skeptical that the death rate due to flu in mainland China is less than 0.01% when the death rate in Taiwan (similar culture, stronger economy) is fifty times higher. Methinks the Chinese government is underreporting influenza deaths.

China's gone pretty overboard with their policing of H1N1. You get things like nurses scanning your body temperature before going into auditoriums and things like that. One thing I've also noticed is that Chinese people are also much more likely to go to a doctor when they're sick than Westerners. Keeping this in mind, I can quite easily see the lower death percentage being, as Mayabird mentioned, a result of the numbers of cases of flu reported being inflated rather than an underreporting of deaths.

But still, less than 0.01%? Either the overreporting factor is something like two orders of magnitude, or the deaths are being underreported, or the Chinese swine flu care system is something like two orders of magnitude better at keeping people alive. I honestly can't guess which- maybe a combination of those factors.