Nationwide Shortage In Supply of Swine Flu Vaccine 579
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that as the number of swine flu cases grows to levels unprecedented for this time of year, health officials predict a shortfall in the supply of swine flu vaccine. Forty-three children have died from swine flu since August 30 — about the same number that usually die in an entire flu season.' These are very sobering statistics,' says Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, 'and unfortunately they are likely to increase.' Projections of the supply of swine flu vaccine have widely varied. During the summer, health officials said 120 million doses would be ready in October but later dropped the estimate to 40 million doses. Now officials expect only 28 million to 30 million doses, adding that the exact number is impossible to predict and could change daily as vaccine manufacturers report that production was behind schedule. 'Vaccine production for influenza is pretty complex,' says Schuchat explaining the delay, 'and the complex process this year is taking a bit longer than we had hoped.' Schuchat warned parents with sick children to be alert for signs that medical attention is required including not eating well, difficulties breathing, and turning blue or gray. A particularly important sign is when children start to get better, then have a relapse, usually a sign that pneumonia is developing, and immediate treatment should be sought."
Re:Which nation? (Score:1, Informative)
Who was it the other week saying there wasn't an American lean to this site?
Uh, no one? This site's flagrantly American. Unless otherwise stated; measurements, dialects, traditions, and locales are understood to be U.S. American.
Re:False Statements (Score:5, Informative)
From the CDC Website: ( http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/about/qa/0607season.htm#children [cdc.gov] )
During the 2003-04 Season, 153 flu-associated deaths in children were reported to CDC.
During the 2004-05 Season, 47 deaths in children were reported to CDC.
During the 2005-06 Season, 46 deaths in children were reported to CDC.
As of August 6, 2007, 68 deaths in children occurring during the 2006-07 season have been reported to CDC.
Re:Which nation? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:43 healthy children? Or 43 total children? (Score:4, Informative)
Look at the distribution of deaths. Most flu deaths occur during the winter, when people generally have weaker immune systems and spend more time crowded together indoors making transmission easier. Lots of people have been claiming that the mortality rate for swine flu is lower than for other seasonal flus, but they have been comparing swine flu statistics in the middle of the summer to other flu statistics from the winter. If you look at the weekly reports of flu deaths over the last few years from the CDC [cdc.gov], you will see no children dying in the summer, and up to around 12 dying a week in the middle of the winter, with around one a week over the milder parts of winter. Compare that with this year, and you see a spike of 3-8 per week in a period that has had zero for the previous three years.
Re:Do not want (Score:4, Informative)
"One would think that constant vaccine's, medications, antibiotics, etc just make the immune system lazy."
If you had any clue about how vaccines work you would realize how silly this statement is. A vaccine trains your immune system similar to a runner training for a marathon.
Re:Do not want (Score:3, Informative)
My son seems to have gotten swine flu last weekend, and is recovering fine. He tested positive for type-A influenza, of which H1N1 is a sub-type, and had a mild fever of 102F. He's on Tamiflu now. The doctor thinks it is probably swine flu, even though symptoms are mild. Our local school seems to have a bunch of similar cases, with low-grade fevers. I think I also have it, but my symptoms are even milder.
Is this really the swine flu? If so, it's not bad around here, near Raleigh, NC.
Re:Same News Cycle Every Year (Score:5, Informative)
[Citation Needed]. Do you have any quarterly/annual reports to back that up?
The reason this country has gone from 20+ flu vaccine manufacturers a decade ago to 2 today is because it's so unprofitable. It's possible the companies will make a profit on it this year because of the virulence of H1N1, but claiming some sort of profit motive for annual fly vaccine is, from my understanding, wildly innaccurate.
Re:Do not want (Score:2, Informative)
What? That's insane and selfish.
A) Without the vaccine you can develop pretty serious health issues.
B) You will then spread it to others. H1N1 is contagious 3 days before symptoms show up. So you will spread it to someone else, possible someone less healthy then you.
C) the that are vaccinated the smaller the impact of the disease.
Really, two pokes and 5 minutes is better the H1N1.
dude, wake up. really. the kill ratio of swine flu turned out to be no more serious than any regular flu. and the doctors aren't even sure that the current vaccine is effective against all the variations of the disease. blind trust into the word "vaccine" is misleading. especially if the illness isn't so severe.
malaria kills 1000 times more people per year than swineflu. why aren't you vaccinated against that one ? (and no, there is no iron garden that would defend you from getting it anywhere in the world (except alaska and siberia in winter time), just the chances are really low).
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do not want (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do not want (Score:2, Informative)
36,000 people die from the flu and that's in a vaccinated populace. Without vaccines it would be in the hundreds of thousands.
That's a pretty high mortality rate in my book.
This is why H1N1 is killing many more people, so far. For the given period of time.
And now a few facts (Score:3, Informative)
Google Flu Trends. [google.org] The season is just starting. Have a look at how it matches to the last several years at their peaks.
It's an influenza vaccine. The only difference between it and any seasonal one is the virus it's made with; all the rest are the same process (grown in eggs, filtered, yada yada yada.) If we waited for full-up trials every season, by the time the vaccine was available we'd be in the next season and the strains in circulation would be different anyway.
HOWEVER! We have done clinical tests with the vaccine, the only way that we can in such short time frame: we injected it into volunteers and measured the antibody response, then compared that to the response from previous seasons where we have after-the-fact data to go by. We've been building that data collection for decades now, and it's pretty flipping good.
As with anything in real time, if you wait for perfect data you might as well not bother.
Re:Do not want (Score:1, Informative)
no human can develop an immune response to either H1 or N1
not totally true, human can develop an immune response to H1 or N1 but we don't currently have it since the last human transmissible h1n1 virus was in the 70's
Re:Do not want (Score:2, Informative)
Better analogy would be health care workers being FORCED to get the shot, just like they are FORCED to get the Hep B shot(s). If you have patient contact, you're vaccinated against Hep B. And in this season, you'd better be vaccinated against swine flu, too. Health care workers who have a problem taking their flu shot need to be dealt with just like pharmacists who refuse to dispense plan B or birth control pills - they need to find a new fucking profession.
Re:Do not want (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the problem: You're lying. Nothing you just said is the truth.
First, let's talk about those dead kids. 2/3rds of them had 'high risk' medical conditions [medicalnewstoday.com], "24 of the 36 children".
Next, let's talk about that fatality rate. 477 people. Now, that is, in fact, an order of magnitude LESS than the seasonal flu. In the unlikely event that you were to die this year, the chance it was of swine flu is one quarter of one tenth of one percent.
You're just another hysterical idiot freaking out because the teevee told you to.
Re:Holy Strawman Argument, Batman! (Score:2, Informative)
Equally, all experimental data supporting efficacy of Influenza vaccination is wishful thinking, and imprecise analogy.
Re:Do not want (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Do not want (Score:2, Informative)
I'll give you the first one - I was thinking of the overall statistics, including young adults. That being said, 1/3 vs. 1/2? Healthy kids shouldn't be dying from flue at all.
As for your second "point" (although I'm loathe to grant it even that status) is incomplete. 477 isn't a rate - it's a number. A "rate" is a ratio. In this case, the important ratio is the Case Fatality Rate, which is # deaths/# infections. Right now H1N1 is somewhere between .4% and .6%. The CFR for regular seasonal flu is Project Runway, but I just do that for my wife), and I mostly get my news from NPR, and I have a contact that is more educated in pandemic virology than you and I combined, I think I'll follow my own opinions instead of yours, which seem to be wholly of the form "not(someone_else's_opinion)"
please please stop (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that no human can develop an immune response to either H1 or N1 (as that would be deadly).
Um, what?
If a virus were to infect a cell, and the mexican flu would infect the same cell, there is some chance that the mantle of flu would be copied around the much more dangerous virus, which would beat any immunity or vaccine we currently have, would react differently to most treatments and be capable of spreading through open air (through coughing).
If such an event were to take place, that event has a good chance of making the 1917 flu pandemic look like a tiny issue. That disease literally blocked the world economy for over 2 months, making millions of victims.
The problem is not the flu in the H1N1 form. The problem is that pneumonia might "be infected" and transform into an H1N1 virus. The problem is, in essence, the evolution that it might cause in other viruses. Cases of gene transfer between viruses are well-studied, and the current consensus is that it's commonplace.
No, actually the PROBLEM is that such drivel got marked "Informative" on slashdot...
Seriously?
I have to say that after college, medical school, graduate school, and over 12 years of virology and immunology research, I've read a lot of stuff (including popular science that was meant to be educational) that was ridiculous. But the above post ranks in my top 5 examples of manic garbage. It's a collection of bits and pieces of something you've overheard, put together somewhat like a neanderthal would try to piece together the space shuttle. It may contain a couple of the correct parts, but the result does not only fail to take off, but is not identifiable as the correct object, no matter from what angle you look at it.
The CDC Swine Flu Website (Score:5, Informative)
The CDC's 2009 H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) [cdc.gov] site is handsomely designed and rich in resources for all ages and interests.
The geek will find public health spreadsheet simulations for Windows and Excel here: H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu): Preparedness Tools for Professionals [cdc.gov]
Interesting stuff, no specialist knowledge or skills required.
Social networking and mobile resources, widgets, buttons and badages: Social Media - Novel H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu [cdc.gov]
Re:Not fear of death, it's not wanting to get sick (Score:3, Informative)
Another reason to get a flu shot: So you don't transmit it to someone else who then dies.
Re:Influenza Vaccines are Ineffective at Best (Score:4, Informative)
I'm most familiar with the question of vaccinations being related to autism, as the father of two autistic children. Let it be said, my autistic twins were clearly "different" from my other two kids before they got any vaccines. And every study that's looked at the question has failed to find a link. But that doesn't stop fear-mongers from you from spreading their dung.
I promise you, the Flu's more dangerous than the vaccine.
Re:Same News Cycle Every Year (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Do not want (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, no, if you actually read the article you pointed to, you would know that the standard polio vaccine given in the rest of the world is a shot with a dead virus, but in Nigeria, for cost reasons, they were using an attenuated LIVE virus. That's why the virus mutated. They screwed up and did something they shouldn't have done. Also, there was a multi-year period in which immunization was halted due to unfounded fears that the vaccinations were really a Western plot to sterilize Africa. Not joking. Their government leaders really thought this. Attempting to derive any useful statistics about the efficacy of immunization from a population of people who are known for blatantly ignoring vaccination protocols and going utterly off the deep end is an exercise in futility.
A few people who got contaminated polio vaccines in the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S. were exposed to SV-40. This was not by any means the norm; it was caused by contaminated monkey tissue that was used to grow the virus. The industry has had screening in place for decades to prevent that from ever happening again.
Also, cancer could theoretically be caused by ANY virus infecting your cells. That's why immunizations are so important. They ensure that your body reacts quickly, minimizing the amount of damage those viruses can cause by leaving behind cells with damaged DNA.