Saturday, October 24, 2009

H1N1 Vaccinate or not to vaccinate

The news is over flowing with H1N1 news adn I am not sure what to do.  Do we all go and get the vaccination? The lines are full already this morning of people waiting for their shots.  They expect to run out before the day is over. What a scary time. But how bad is this?
According to the Washington Post,"the campaign aims to vaccinate at least half the country’s population within a few months, something never done before.
The first of the vaccines will begin arriving in October, after testing on human subjects as young as six months old to determine the drug’s safety.

they have arrived.  Desert Schools Federal Credit Union gave out free employee shots yesterday. This morning that is the top story.  
According to World Health Organization’s (WHO) global statistics, 2,185 people have died from the H1N1 virus, while another 209,438 are confirmed to have caught it, as of Aug. 23.

What this also means is that 207,253 people recovered from the virus—a recovery rate of 99 percent. Bear in mind that all of these recoveries were before an official vaccine for the H1N1 virus was released. The common, seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people each year, globally, while causing severe illness in between 3 million and 5 million people, according to the WHO. 

When the first cases broke out there were daily swine flu counts of the number of people world wide.  I believe that has caused a very real panic over something that is not as hazardous as the name first implied.  


As of today I have not had a vaccination and tomorrow.. who knows.  I will watch a little more news and see what they think is happening world wide and chose after that.

3 comments:

  1. ugh, don't give in to the media fear mongering. Did you know it's a nasal vaccine? And that if you get it, you aren't even allowed in some places because it is a live strain and just sneezing can spread the it?

    Wash your hands, avoid places crawling with diseases, and be smart about it and you will be fine.

    Plus, several people from my friends list on facebook in Alabama have had h1n1 this year - and they have survived it just fine. Cindy Bush (Remember her?) got it, so did her husband, and all 3 of their kids.

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  2. can spread it* I was going to type "the flu" but changed that to "it" and didn't erase it all :)

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  3. I wondered if it was the media trying to get a good story going with their epidemic pandemic catch phrases. But I didn't know how others felt too. You were the second person to respond that it is not as bad as they are implying.

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