WHO Says Swine Flu May Have Peaked In the US

Hugh Pickens writes "The World Health Organization says that there were 'early signs of a peak' in swine flu activity in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the US. The American College Health Association, which surveys more than 250 colleges with more than three million students, said new flu cases had dropped 27 percent in the week ending on November 13th from the week before, the first drop since school resumed in the fall. Nonetheless, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of vaccination and respiratory disease at the CDC, chose her words carefully. 'We are in better shape today than we were a couple of weeks ago,' she says. 'I wish I knew if we had hit the peak. Even if a peak has occurred, half the people who are going to get sick haven't gotten sick yet.' Privately, federal health officials say they fear that if they concede the flu has peaked, Americans will become complacent and lose interest in getting vaccinated, increasing the chances of another wave. However, Dr. Lone Simonsen, a former CDC epidemiologist, says she expects a third wave in December or January, possibly beginning in the South again. Based on death rates in New York City and in Scandinavia, Simonsen argues that both 1918 and 1957 had mild spring waves followed by two stronger waves, one in fall and one in midwinter, adding that in the pandemic of 1889, the bulk of the deaths occurred in the third wave. 'If people think it's going away, they can think again.'"

Relevance

[Pete Venkman]

Isn't the peak something that you talk about later when you are analyzing the data? Of what relevance is it to discuss a peak in this current cycle?

Where does the money go?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm somehow sceptic about the whole hype around the swine flu based on the fact that the U.S. Government alone paid nearly a billion $ for the vaccine http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/07/13/daily26.html [bizjournals.com], much more globally. I mean, the swine flu is even less hazardous than the normal flu, and with some good care for the immune system it does not cause much problems, so is it really necessary to spread a big panic and spend that amount of money? I mean, that's a lot of money. Really.

You mean...

[ChinggisK]

...we're *not* all gonna die? Shocking, I tell you, shocking.

BS

[dagamer34]

You can't know something has peaked or bottomed out until way after the fact. It's like having a sign of relief when in the eye of a hurricane or ignoring the possibility of aftershocks from earthquakes.

Re:Where does the money go?

[Afforess]

Because the lost productivity from having massive amounts of the workforce absent due to illness, never mind the costs of delays and other problems would cost us more than one billion.

(Swine Flu) A virus that was super-contagious and infected nearly everyone, and got them sick for 2 weeks, but barely anyone would die from would be far more economically damaging than a virus that was not very contagious, but killed all those it infected. (HIV)

This is because our economy was never meant to handle a mass exodus of workers. We're lucky it wasn't worse than it was. In places in Michigan, 1/2 of entire counties got sick, and schools and businesses were closed for days.

Just because You didn't get sick doesn't mean the illness is trivial.

Theory, not history.

[Vellmont]

I'd be a lot more inclined to believe a well proven theory than simply looking at the history of past epidemics. With so much talk about history predicting the present, it indicates to me that the knowledge of how epidemics work and how viruses mutate is extremely poor. As an example, we can fairly accurately predict where a hurricane will move in the next few days, but I've never heard anyone say "well, in 1992 Hurricane Andrew went west, then south, then east. It's possible Hurricane XYZ might take a similar route!"

What WOULD be an interesting historical perspective would be comparing deaths, hospitalizations, etc of H1N1 with past pandemics. This wouldn't be predictive in any meaningful way, but it would put this pandemic in perspective. Obviously this is nothing compared to 1918, but how does it compare to the 1957-1958, or the 1968-1969 pandemics? Was the media response as crazy then as it is today? That might actually be very informative, rather than these nonsense largely ignorance based "predictions".

yea, right

[frovingslosh]

So glad to hear it. Pay no attention to the mutated Tamiflu resistant versions that were reported in both Norway and North Carolina just yesterday.

Re:Is there supposed to be only one peak ?

[Escape From NY]

We might also see another peak if, for some reason, large numbers of people suddenly decide to congregate in a set geographic location like a shopping mall. Or maybe if groups of people gather in a self contained tube for hours at a time. Luckily, I can't imagine any reason for people to do either of these things in at least the next week or so.

Re:Where does the money go?

[tomhudson]

(Swine Flu) A virus that was super-contagious and infected nearly everyone,

... except that H1N1 isn't "super contagious" - it's not even as contagious as regular flu. The hype from Mexico was wrong - of the 152 people who supposedly died from it (which is what made people thinkit was highly contagious), revised figures showed only 7 actually did.

The big lesson here is don't listen to Fox News and CNN, and don't let Fox News and CNN dictate government policy. (And I'd blame WHO and CDC for part of this as well - they have a financial and institutional interest in keeping the hype going well after it was obvious it was mostly bullshit).