New Flu Facts

Did you know that a person with the H1N1 flu can affect people as far away as 10 feet? I learned that when I watched 60 Minutes last night. Then this morning I read a Facebook dialogue between two young mothers who are very worried about their children getting the flu. They talked of sanitizing the handle of the grocery carts when shopping, not letting their young children touch anything when they go out and constantly sanitizing their hands. Now these are all good steps but the truth is it still won’t protect them from the flu. How could they know that the woman two places behind them has the flu and is affecting everyone in a 10 foot radius? This is not to say stop disinfecting your hands and other objects but the truth is you’ll still probably get the flu. Unless, of course you get the flu shot.

Getting the flu shot seems like a no brainer and yet I have overheard a number of conversations where people are saying they refuse to do so. This gets me extremely angry with their stupidity, especially since I am one of the few legitimate folks who can’t get the shot. Why am I exempt? Well about 10 years ago, I would make sure that I got the shot every year. But the last few shots made me ill, not in the normal way of giving you flu like symptoms but instead gave me severe stomach cramps. Long story short, I had developed an allergy to eggs. I learned that the flu shot is egg based and apparently I became allergic to both the shot and eggs. So I now can not take any shot that is egg based.

Even without the shot I wasn’t feeling very worried about this flu for my sister who is a nurse had said that it was hitting younger people a lot harder than older people. She said older folks had lived through similar strains of flu in the past. She was basically correct except for one small detail, her definition of old. The 60 Minute show said the same thing she did except that they defined old as anyone born before 1950. Oops. Turns out that I am not in that protected group of “old people” as I had thought because I was born in 1958 which is after the cutoff date. So again, anyone born since 1950 needs to get the new flu shot.

Then this morning the Drudge Report had an article from yesterday’s Sun Sentinel. This report was about the health officials from my state, Florida, drawing up a plan to deal with critically ill flu patients. I was reminded of something I first learned about by watching MASH – the TV show about a mobile hospital during the Korean War. In the show, when the doctors were inundated with wounded soldiers they would first do a triage, separating the soldiers into three categories: soldiers who were dying or couldn’t be saved were put in one group; the second group contained soldiers who were severely injured but could be helped and the third group were the soldiers without life threatening problems. The first group was made comfortable while they were dying, the second group was immediately rushed into surgery and the third group was assisted only after they were done with the first group.

It now appears as if my state, and probably yours, too, is looking into doing its own triage to meet the growing H1N1 problem. Today’s triage is really no different than the old TV show where doctors made life and death decisions. The report stated that the Florida Health official’s goal would be “to focus care on patients whose lives could be saved and who would be most likely to improve”. So just as in the TV show, patients who are critically ill, who aren’t responding to the ventilator and who they deem have a slim chance of recovering will be made comfortable but will not be placed on any of the scarce ventilators. Can you imagine the reaction when people are told that their elderly grandmother or son with AIDs or sister with cerebral palsey are denied life-saving treatments?

On the other hand, patients who show no life threatening problems, only typical flu like symptoms will be told to go home, drink fluids and rest. The patients, however, who do have life threatening problems, which are primarily respiratory, and have been deemed to have a strong chance of survival will be admitted to the hospital and will be put on one of the few ventilators. However they will be monitored every 2-3 days and if the patient isn’t responding or is getting worse they may end up in that first group and their ventilator given to someone else with a better chance of survival.

The H1N1, according to 60 Minutes, is similar to the flu pandemic of 1918 which killed over 50 million people worldwide, but today's flu is not nearly as virulent. H1N1 is expected to kill less than 1 percent of the population but this is still a significant number. And it assumes that people act responsibly and get the flu shot. After learning all these new flu facts I almost think not getting a shot should be criminalized because many of those without shots will end up hospitalized and using scarce resources that could have saved someone else’s life. So please, get the shot, to save not just your own life but somebody else’s life, too.