Washington – Swine flu may infect half the U.S. population this year, hospitalize 1.8 million patients and lead to as many as 90,000 deaths, more than twice the number killed in a typical seasonal flu, White House advisers said.
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In a report by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, President Barack Obama today was urged to speed vaccine production and name a senior member of the White House staff, preferably the homeland security adviser, to take responsibility for decision-making on the pandemic. Initial doses should be accelerated to mid-September to vaccinate as many as 40 million people, the advisory group said.
Seasonal flu usually kills about 36,000 Americans, said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Swine flu, also called H1N1, causes more severe illness needing hospitalization among younger people than seasonal flu, while leaving people 65 and older relatively unscathed, said Mike Shaw of the CDC.
“This isn’t the flu that we’re used to,” said Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. “The 2009 H1N1 virus will cause a more serious threat this fall. We won’t know until we’re in the middle of the flu season how serious the threat is, but because it’s a new strain, it’s likely to infect more people than usual.”
Data from clinical trials to assess the safety and effectiveness of swine flu vaccines will start to become available in mid-September, health officials reported Aug. 21. Full results from the two-dose trials won’t be available until mid October.
Mid-October Vaccine
“We are making every preparation effort assuming a safe and effective vaccine will be available in mid-October,” Sebelius said today at the CDC’s Atlanta offices.
According to what the advisory report describes as a “plausible scenario,” 30 percent to 50 percent of the country’s population will be infected in the fall and winter. As many as 300,000 patients may be treated in hospital intensive care units, filling 50 percent to 100 percent of the available beds, and 30,000 to 90,000 people may die, the report said.
Peter Gross, chief medical officer at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, said if the group’s scenario comes true, “I think every hospital in America is going to be in a crunch. We’ll be hard pressed to deal with those predictions,” he said.
Predictions ‘Overblown’
The predictions seem “overblown,” Gross said, given that swine-flu outbreaks in 1968 and 1957 failed to cause as many deaths, even with medical technology and disease surveillance less advanced than today.
“Influenza, you can make all the predictions you want, but it’s more difficult than predicting the weather,” Gross said in a telephone interview today, after the advisory report was made public. “If influenza was a stock, I wouldn’t touch it.”
The 775-bed hospital is planning for an outbreak, upping its order of flu medications and discussing where to put patients if the worst occurs, Gross said.
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is chaired by John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, Eric Lander, the head of the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Harold Varmus, the chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
The 21-member group of scientists and engineers, created by Congress in 1976, advises the president on policy involving scientific matters.
Four Months
H1N1 has already reached more than 170 countries and territories in the four months since being identified, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said. Swine flu causes similar symptoms as seasonal strains. It has so far resulted in worse than normal flu seasons, with increased hospitalizations and cases of severe illness, the WHO said in an Aug. 12 release.
The median age of those with the pandemic virus has been 12 to 17 years, the WHO said on July 24, citing data from Canada, Chile, Japan, U.K. and the U.S.
“People who get infected with this strain happen to be the healthiest members of our society,” said Shaw, associate director of laboratory science at the CDC’s flu division, in a presentation today, also at the agency’s offices.
The H1N1 strain is genetically related to the 1918 Spanish Flu strain that killed an estimated 50 million people. Variations of the Spanish Flu strain circulated widely until around 1957, when they were pushed aside by other flu strains. People whose first exposure to a flu virus was one of those Spanish Flu relatives may have greater immunity to the current pandemic, Shaw said.
I think Chicken Little (“the sky is falling”) must have been promoted to surgeon general
Yet the NYS department of health shuts hospitals and lets others close. I guess all we can do is trust in Hashem!
Why are they creating an unecessary panic. They are going to rush to vaccinate without knowing side affects.
this is the newest tactic to scare people into universal health coverage.
Explain me , If only 79 people not 79 hundred people but 79 total worldwide died from swine flu and other complications combined , Why the panic? How does anyone know that it will surely get worse ?….. Why rush with questionable, hardly tested vaccinations?
Maybe A good time to buy stock in the companies that will be issuing this New vaccination! May turn a sizable profit! I wonder who else owns these shares!!
SOME QUESTIONS TO ASK:
Why did WHO raise the pandemic alert to highest level when less than one
thousand people WORLDWIDE have died from causes “associated with h1n1”?
Pandemic alert level 6 allows “martial law” and “mandatory vaccinations”. Many if
not most of the people who have died had “underlying health problems.”
“Worldwide, the number of deaths attributed to the flu each year is
between 250,000 and 500,000? (Thomas Walkom, The Toronto Star, May
1, 2009).”
“…Only 700 people have died from the swine flu world wide in the last
year. In the same period, half a million people died of the regular
flu, but that isn’t called a pandemic. We are being lied to.”
[other reports put the numbers at even less. and then there’s the epidemic of
cancer, heart disease and diabetes…]
Could it be a few politicians and pharma companies making over $50,000 billion may have something to do with it. Somehow I think it’s the money. Investors love this to bits and bits. They are all laughing all the way to the bank at our expense of course. There is something terribly fishy about the whole thing.
To 9 & 10: Your attitude on a public forum will cause deaths. What happened 30 years ago has never occured since then. While you are right there is no such thing as a 100% safe vaccine -the benefit outweighs the risk. And they are testing these shots before distribution. Don’t pasken shev v’al taaseh -they aren’t equal Tzeddodim. I like your attitude, but I’m sure if any of your family succumbs to the flu, you’d be kicking yourself and saying why didn’t I get the shot? It’s very easy to be an armchair quarterback, but even if this shot only saves a few lives- then it’s worth it. And no, doing all those things that you mention, even though they might be a good idea, will not stop people from dying from this flu. You should watch the PBS documentary on the Spanish flu of 1918 and I guarantee you will lose your cavalier attitude.
Everyone should have in mind the word MEGIEFA when Davening these Yomim Tovim!
May Hashem hear our prayer and help us!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Two separate polls of GPs in Britain have revealed that one in two doctors have severe reservations over the safety of the forthcoming H1N1 flu vaccine, raising serious questions over the government’s planned mass vaccination programme.
A poll of doctors for Pulse magazine found that 49% would reject the vaccine with 9% still undecided.
56 of the 115 GPs surveyed said they did not intend to receive the jab, according to the UK’s leading medical weekly publication for health professionals.
A second poll conducted by GP magazine reveals that Up to 60% of GPs have severe doubts over the proposed vaccine. Of 216 GPs surveyed, 29% say they will outright refuse to be vaccinated, while a further 29% remain unsure. Only 41% of doctors said they would definitely take the shot.
Of those who said they would not take the shot, 71% said they were concerned that the vaccine had “not been through sufficient trials to guarantee its safety”. Over half, 50.4%, said they “believe that swine flu is too mild to justify taking the vaccine”.
The Department of Health sought to dismiss the results, declaring that the small number of responders to the surveys was not reflective of the opinions of all doctors.
However, these figures also dovetail with those from a much larger Nursing Times magazine poll, that revealed 30% of all NHS nurses said they would refuse to be immunized, with another