I was stopped by a friend this morning who was concerned about the swine flu because he watched a 60 Minutes special last night about a teenager who died of the swine flu.  The special went into detail about this poor teenager’s suffering and death (or so I was told–I didn’t see the special).

It is time to STOP the presses!  The press/media is making people panic.

The facts:

• If you have fever, cough, body aches, and/or headache, you have the flu–it is widespread and epidemic
• 55,781 confirmed cases in U.S. & 1,081 deaths=mortality rate=1.9% NOW these stats are WAY off because those are the confirmed cases meaning cases that have been tested.  There are probably double that many of cases that were tested and were false negatives (had the flu but test was wrong–30-50% of the time!).  There are probably 10 times (at a minimum) more cases of the flu so probable cases of the flu in U.S. likely 500,000 or more so that means the mortality rate is far less than 1%.
• The problem–those who are dieing are young and healthy.  Regular flu kills 30,000 people per year but they are very old or very young people.  New pandemic flu strains attack the people in their prime.  This is what drives the media to report on the deaths.  We HAVE TO keep it in perspective.
• The vaccine scare–The H1N1 vaccine was created in the SAME process that the regular seasonal flu vaccine is (they would have mixed the seasonal flu vaccine and the H1N1 vaccine in the SAME shot if they had had the time).  The vaccine is safe (as safe as the regular seasonal flu vaccine.
• tamiflu–NOT recommended unless person with the flu is immunocompromised otherwise tamiflu is NOT recommended (and it is NOT without it’s own side effects)