Swine Flu Shot Protection? Maybe By Thanksgiving

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

(08-24) 16:11 PDT ATLANTA (AP) --

It will likely be Thanksgiving before a significant number of Americans who get the swine flu vaccine are protected, health officials said Monday.

Roughly 50 million doses of vaccine are expected to be available by mid-October. But for those who get initial doses right away, that will only mark the beginning of a vaccination process that will take five or more weeks.

Here's why: Health officials believe most people will need two shots, spaced three weeks apart, and it will take a week or two after the second dose before immunity kicks in. That's five or six weeks in all.

That means large numbers of Americans won't be fully immunized until Thanksgiving, said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, speaking to reporters in Atlanta.

Health officials don't really know if that's good or bad news. Since it was first reported in April, swine flu has turned out to be not much more dangerous than seasonal flu, overall. Government experts say it may soon become just another variety of the flu, and perhaps will conform to the seasonal flu calendar — vaccinated against in the fall, suffered through every winter.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/08/24/national/a143125D38.DTL

[Sancho]

1. I've had my first shot...my family doctor had them.

Included the swine flu, too. I can't tell how much of this is hype and how much is real. What happened to the bird flu?

[MidwestTransplant]

2. The pig ate it.

[hedgehog]

3. Did your doctor tell you to come back for your second shot?

[KoKo]

5. You are covered, buddy. the rest of us will DIE!

[Bragi]

8. I don't think the vaccine is in distribution yet. Are you in a test? /nt

[northernlights]

14. I believe avian flu still crops up now and then

But it has not yet mutated to where it passes human to human, only bird to human with close contact. That is fortunate, as it has a very high (33%) mortality rate.

The swine flu is mild so far, but at least one clinical study this summer showed that, unlike seasonal flu, it has the ability to infect the lungs. So it has the potential to mutate into a more virulent strain.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713212231.htm

I suspect a major reason the guv is so concerned is because the bulk of the population has no immunity to it at all, there is likely to be a high incidence of the flu during the regular season. This could result in a lot of one or two-week long school and business closings...enough to impact the economy.

[lagavulin]

15. The President of Ecuador contracted this flu a couple weeks back...

...he admitted it was very mild, and he only took a working-vacation of a couple days.

I suspect there'll be more time lost from fear-mongering -- with people using any office outbreak of H1N1 as an excuse to take a vacation -- than from people actually coming down with this virus.

[KoKo]

4. OMG...I'll be one of the 90,000 DEAD ONES! Not enough VACCINE!

Now whose stock is UP, UP and AWAY on this news? :shrug: I gotta invest right away!

[Sancho]

6. likely the waste of a shot since we're doomed by living in Florida anyway...

with global warming, the entire state will be underwater soon.

[KoKo]

7. True...if the hurricanes don't get 'cha the floods of global warming will...but

still...it's nice down there for a lot of the time. So, just take your chances and enjoy what you can.

:shrug:

[SheilaT]

9. Why does this flu need two shots?

Huh? Why? I have been under the impression that all other flu vaccines were effective with just one injection. What's so amazingly different about this flu?

Plus, the notion that it will turn incredibly deadly is just that, a notion. It was a very mild flu this past season, and there's no indications whatsoever that it will change. Just the usual "It happened in 1918 so it might happen again."

[hedgehog]

18. I can't find out why most of the vaccine manufacturers are

recommending two shots. (A Chinese company announced a single shot vaccine against H1N1) My wild ass guess is that this virus is different enough from other viruses that it requires two challenges to ensure the immune system is activated. Hepatitis A and B vaccines require multiple shots as well.

[lagavulin]

10. Here's my question: why WOULDN'T a healthy person want to get this flu?

It's incredibly mild, clearly less dangerous than the average yearly flu strains, and judging by the number of older people who apparently still have immunity to this current virus from exposure to a similar strain that propagated several decades ago, contracting the actual virus itself seems far safer and more beneficial in the long run than the controversial effectiveness of the so-called vaccines.

Now of course you'd want to take care of yourself, and avoid exposing others during recuperation. But frankly, I can't wait to hear of someone close to me contracting this flu. I'll host a "flu party" in a heartbeat, similar to the chicken pox parties many homemakers still send their kids to. To contract it intentionally...to recuperate intentionally...

And before anyone replies with any caustic "OMG you're one of those crazy anti-vaccine freaks whose going to kill us all", I'm only offering my opinion that, after doing a great deal of research on the matter, I fully believe that in this particular case it'd better to trust my own Nature-given immune response -- for this admittedly very mild (if virulent) flu outbreak -- over the dubious corporate-western-medical prescriptions we're being sold on.

[Mithreal]

11. Same thoughts here. nt

[kimmerspixelated]

16. Well said!

It's not so bad being an anti-vaccine "nut" It's fun to play with the ignore feature.

[hedgehog]

19. I don't think you can predict how any one person will react

to this flu. IMO, "mild flu " is a misleading phrase, sort of like suggesting that a hurricane isn't of concern because it's only Category 1.

I haven't heard that it is less dangerous than average strains. I believe the mortality rate is roughly the same, but that it tends to kill young people and pregnant women rather than the elderly.


My impression is that the flu virus behaves like a slot machine. Every flu virus has say eight positions to slot in a gene segment. Get the right combo of genes in those positions, and you get a killer virus. Again, my impression is that this virus has picked up the right genes in 7 of 8 positions, and it only needs to pick up the last code to become a killer.

That's grossly simplified, and I don't know how may genes are involved or how close this virus is to turning bad, but you get the idea.

The virus reproduces inside infected animals, including us. When it reproduces, it can swap genes with nearby viruses. So effectively, the more people infected, the more opportunities for a virus to pick up that last gene needed to turn into a lethal variety.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

20. In the last H1N1 pandemic the first wave of the virus wasn't very virulent or lethal.

Of course it went on to kill 100 million people. Basing expectations on how severe the first wave was is a very bad idea. Cytokine storm is something you might want to look up also.

[Robb]

12. That's waaaaaay into regular flu season.

I hope all the poo-pooers are right, or this is a significant escalation of a problem.

[demigoddess]

13. I'm not sure I want to be 'protected'

i've never had the flu, my siblings never had the flu, and my kids never had the flu. I know that at risk people die from the flu but isn't that kind of natural. If you are ill, you can get pneumonia and die, or the flu and die etc. Why all this fear of flu in the last few years?? We all should have a natural immunity to almost any flu now, after being exposed year after year, and that should make it milder and less of a hit population wise.

[kimmerspixelated]

17. Handwashing and built up immune systems are still the best

defense. To answer your question...because Big Pharma wants to make an enormous profit! They realize that most of their crap is worthless and/or dangerous and that the sheeple(some) are wising up to the toxicity of all they produce and voila, they need to make more money. It's always about the money,money,money, no matter what the cost, such as lives and health!