radx says...

No vaccine for me, thank you very much.

The advantage of growing up in the country: 26 years without ever catching the flu and now 18 years without catching anything else than a cold once or twice a year.

entr0py says...

gwiz, you're right it's no more dangerous then regular flu. In fact when they say H1N1, that's shorthand for the most common type of flu.

It is a real epidemic though, it quickly spread to every part of the world. The unusual thing about this outbreak is that almost no one has a natural immunity.

Here's a quote from a recent BBC report:

"The government has also warned that deaths from swine flu this winter could be between 19,000 and 65,000 in the UK.

Experts said it was impossible to predict exactly, but with a third of the population perhaps becoming infected in the coming months the death toll could rise to such numbers.

The World Health Organisation has also described the pandemic as the fastest-moving one ever, adding it was now pointless to count every case."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8154419.stm

Another thing most people don't know is that at this point, if you get the flu, it's almost certainly swine flu. According to the CDC:

"Over 99% of all subtyped influenza A viruses being reported to CDC were novel influenza A (H1N1) viruses."
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

While there are other types of H1N1 flu, whenever you see the world "novel" it means swine flu. It's a euphemism pushed by the pork industry.

Doc_M says...

Living Working in a hospital means I generally get free vaccines for flu, so I will get one if it's offered. I think I'd pay for it even. I can't afford to be away for a week. Being around this many sick people, even in passing on the way to a lab or in the caf basically means I'm "at risk" or at least "at risk to spread to immune suppressed patients."

There have been 80 or so cases in my county and we're the main hospital for a hundred miles or so for critical cases. I'll err on the side of caution and get poked.

And yeah, the pandemic is picking up steam rather than abating, so it will live until winter, which will be no small deal. >130,000 global cases now and rising.

http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/

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