Which, Then?
Canada and the United States are currently on the downward slope of H1N1 infection. The world's latest World Health Organization-recognized pandemic has demonstrated itself to be relatively innocuous, as pandemics go. It was the swift rate of transmission, human-to-human, that qualified it for the pandemic status, not quite the rate of viral-infection mortality.
Since the facts appear to demonstrate convincingly that more lives are lost annually to seasonal flu than this H1N1 flu.
It has expressed itself in a peculiar way for some people, attacking previously-healthy young people so brutally that they've lost their lives in astonishingly short order. And while seasonal flu presents as a danger to the elderly and the very young, it appears, from statistics, that this flu has bypassed the elderly to focus on people in the chronological mid-range; between 30 and 56 in the majority.
It appears to have been this virus's ability to settle, in rare instances, in the lungs, that has led to its deadly effect on an unfortunate minority of those mortally stricken. And there remains the fear that this strain may alter itself and become more deadly, and also more resistant to current-usage drugs, although the truth is that no one, including medical specialists, really knows.
Now, an expert in infectious disease dynamics in Toronto is convinced that H1N1 transmission is at such a relatively low ebb that further mass inoculations are unnecessary. That there are currently so many within the population who are effectively immune both through vaccination and through having become previously infected, that the general population is no longer at great risk; the critical level of immunity has been reached.
On the other hand other experts, for example the country's medical officer of health, insist that people must still be vaccinated to ensure that millions of people still at risk of infection are spared. It's a conundrum; the benefit to inoculation diminishes as we proceed into the future, with the diminishment of H1N1 activity.
And the public health record suffers in that most normal public health programs have been put on hold while public health focuses primarily on the delivery of vaccination for H1N1 prevention. And then there's the issue that we don't really want to admit may have influenced our reaction to H1N1; that the drug industry lobby may have influenced the WHO's H1N1 decision.
Since the facts appear to demonstrate convincingly that more lives are lost annually to seasonal flu than this H1N1 flu.
It has expressed itself in a peculiar way for some people, attacking previously-healthy young people so brutally that they've lost their lives in astonishingly short order. And while seasonal flu presents as a danger to the elderly and the very young, it appears, from statistics, that this flu has bypassed the elderly to focus on people in the chronological mid-range; between 30 and 56 in the majority.
It appears to have been this virus's ability to settle, in rare instances, in the lungs, that has led to its deadly effect on an unfortunate minority of those mortally stricken. And there remains the fear that this strain may alter itself and become more deadly, and also more resistant to current-usage drugs, although the truth is that no one, including medical specialists, really knows.
Now, an expert in infectious disease dynamics in Toronto is convinced that H1N1 transmission is at such a relatively low ebb that further mass inoculations are unnecessary. That there are currently so many within the population who are effectively immune both through vaccination and through having become previously infected, that the general population is no longer at great risk; the critical level of immunity has been reached.
On the other hand other experts, for example the country's medical officer of health, insist that people must still be vaccinated to ensure that millions of people still at risk of infection are spared. It's a conundrum; the benefit to inoculation diminishes as we proceed into the future, with the diminishment of H1N1 activity.
And the public health record suffers in that most normal public health programs have been put on hold while public health focuses primarily on the delivery of vaccination for H1N1 prevention. And then there's the issue that we don't really want to admit may have influenced our reaction to H1N1; that the drug industry lobby may have influenced the WHO's H1N1 decision.
posted by Pieface @ 1:50 PM
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