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Not taking (seasonal) flu seriously enough
BY JACK DOWNS
Design Editor
Tens of thousands of people are ill, some seriously. Hundreds of Americans are dying every week. By the time the year is up it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people will die worldwide.
This is an emergency. This is a crisis. We're not taking flu seriously enough.
Swine flu? H1N1 flu? No, I'm talking about regular seasonal flu.
Depending on the virulence of the regular, annual flu, and the level of vaccination, the disease claims about 10,000 to 30,000 Americans die each year. Worldwide, the numbers are closer to 250,000 to 500,000.
For a disease we can control with a vaccine, a disease in which transmission can be dramatically slowed with hand washing, these numbers are very high.
So why all the big headlines about swine flu, when the number of deaths, day by day, are less than seasonal flu?
It's new. The new is always scary.
And, we don't have a vaccine. Vaccination rates nationwide for seasonal flu are far too low. But just knowing there is a vaccine makes us feel safer, even if we don't get vaccinated.
Think the swine-flu scare is overblown? Maybe a bit. Panic is not healthy. But maybe the problem is we're underplaying seasonal flu, not overplaying swine flue. Where's the big headlines about seasonal flu? That's what is killing people.
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Want to learn more about the health impact of seasonal flu? Here are some links:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/28/regular.flu/index.html
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/fluactivity.htm
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/04/28/US-seasonal-flu-kills-13000-since-Jan/UPI-64801240974841/
