A friend of mine says 3 of his 4 kids are home right now with "confirmed" H1N1. "confirmed" coming from him may just mean their GP said it was H1N1, not that there was a lab test result.

I don't pay much attention to local news but he says the tent-city treatment areas are back up at area hospitals, that the cases are real not just parents worries over the sniffles, and that sampling by the Health Department is showing that locally the vast majority of flu cases right now are H1N1 not seasonal. I haven't verified any of this but it will certainly keep me from any unnecessary doctor visits for a few weeks!

On the positive side, he says his kid's flu is mild as is every case whose parent he's talked to.

Yeah, there was something on the news last night about peds being hit REAL hard this year with H1N1. So my GF is looking forward to that (thick sarcasm), as she's a pediatrics intern this year.

Our hospital stopped using the flu test we have on hand, both b/c 99% of flu currently is H1N1, and because the test can't 'detect' it currently. We're doing presumptive treatment - tamiflu is the only real 'treatment' and that only shortens the course a few days, if started within 48 hours of symptom onset.

Hydrate! Don't forget salt water gargles, humidifiers and saline nasal flushes can help with some symptoms too.

Also FYI, the CDC is recommending N-95 masks for the non-infected in contact with H1N1 patients. Not the normal surgical mask.

Thanks, Dagny! I've never heard of flu without a fever.

Sue

Fever is a defense mechanism. It tries to slow down the growth of the virus. Therefore, a fever is not neccesary a bad thing, as long as your body temperature does not rise to much.

If the fever stays on to long, or drops and rise againg that's offcourse not good either.

If it's that widespread among kids then it puts yesterday's headline of "!! 76 kids die of H1N1 !!" in perspective. It is unfortunate but 76 of a lot of cases is better news than 76 of a small number.

I bought a bunch of N100 masks this summer for me, parents, lazy friends, etc, thinking they'd at least make great Halloween stage props, and that they might become a lot more expensive & rare this fall. I may yet use mine for real...

Lack of fever in some cases is one of the abnormal aspects of the current H1N1 strain and was particularly perplexing in Mexico, when the outbreak first started.

A coworker was out this past week. He had a lot of diarrhea, which is uncommon for regular flu but is one symptom of H1N1. I read a survey of cases from one NYC high school and about half the cases had diarrhea.

Now recovered, I remain fascinated by the H1N1 virus. And so are doctors because this virus is exhibiting some vexing traits. Today's Washington Post has an article stocked with interesting info.

The vaccine effort is proving to be several weeks too late and millions of doses too little.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews


"...being female may itself be a risk factor, for reasons that remain unclear."

"So far, the virus does not seem to sicken or kill people more often than the typical flu. But the pattern of people getting seriously ill is far different than in typical flu seasons."

"...some young adults, possibly especially women, are falling seriously ill at an unexpectedly rapid pace and are showing up in intensive care units and dying in unusually high numbers...."

"..."It's not like seasonal influenza," Nikki Shindo of the World Health Organization said at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of more than 100 experts the WHO convened in Washington to review swine flu. "It can cause very severe disease in previously healthy young adults."

Yikes. That's testament to the power of thought.


:-0

Well, it depends on where you are. The peak may have arrived for regions like the Southeast and Northeast, but H1N1 is just starting to ramp up here out West.

We still have many months left in the typical flu season. It is entirely plausible that we'll have yet another spike of H1N1 in the winter in those regions that are peaking early.

It's interesting that NYC hasn't been hit hard yet. Some speculate that the spring go-around has built up some immunity in the population, but epidemiologists don't think that enough people were exposed last spring to explain a significant herd immunity effect. So that's another mystery from H1N1.