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jimmy m
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19 Sep 2019, 8:12 am

There is some speculation that the upcoming flu season may be severe in the U.S.

This is based on the current flu season in the Southern Hemisphere, which is offset by 6 months from the Northern Hemisphere.

In Australia, which reaches peak flu season in August and is still going strong in mid-September, the predominant circulating strain is H3N2 – not exactly the strain that you want to catch. H3N2, which is one of the strains of swine flu, is especially prone to mutation, so much so that it does so during the manufacturing process the virus mutates making the vaccine less able to cover circulating strains.

So, based on data from Australia, it is reasonable to conclude that we are indeed looking at a potentially bad flu season.

Source: NBC News' Ridiculous Flu Scare


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Fnord
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19 Sep 2019, 8:21 am

jimmy m wrote:
There is some speculation that the upcoming flu season may be severe in the U.S...
Someone says that every year, and the Media hypes it way out of proportion to the alleged threat.

:roll:


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jimmy m
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19 Sep 2019, 8:23 am

Fnord wrote:
jimmy m wrote:
There is some speculation that the upcoming flu season may be severe in the U.S...
Someone says that every year, and the Media hypes it way out of proportion to the alleged threat.

:roll:


Fnord please read the article. The article captures your perspective.


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Fnord
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19 Sep 2019, 8:45 am

jimmy m wrote:
Fnord wrote:
jimmy m wrote:
There is some speculation that the upcoming flu season may be severe in the U.S...
Someone says that every year, and the Media hypes it way out of proportion to the alleged threat.
Fnord please read the article. The article captures your perspective.
I know. That's why I posted a summation.


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jimmy m
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19 Sep 2019, 8:54 am

Gee whiz! I misinterpreted your summation for contrarianism.


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Fnord
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19 Sep 2019, 8:55 am

jimmy m wrote:
Gee whiz! I misinterpreted your summation for contrarianism.
I've been getting that a lot lately, and from many other people (especially self-righteous SJWs).


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28 Sep 2019, 10:44 pm

Influenza is just a fact of life that we have to learn to deal with and minimise risk. It isn't going to go away and aside from reasonable precautions there's not much we can do about it!

Adults who take reasonable care of themselves are at low risk of major problems from 'flu.
People who are very young, very old, immunosuppressed or physically inactive are at much higher risk.

Yes, by all means get the vaccination. It is quite safe but don't expect the sort of performance you get from other vaccinations (eg. Tetanus vaccination provides better than 99.9% protection, Measles vaccination better than 97% effective). FluVax is at best 60% effective and that's only to the 4 strains that are in the shot that year.

You mentioned H3N2, influenza A strains (like H3N2) are always much more common than influenza B. Old fashioned things like sneezing into tissues, washing hands and avoiding being in closed in quarters with other people are your best defenses.

Most importantly though, don't stress over it. If it happens it happens, your immune system should be able to deal with it just fine. I work with people who are ill, including those with or suspected of having 'flu. I probably have a similar chance of falling ill as I would from walking around the local shopping centre.



jimmy m
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15 Jan 2020, 10:35 am

There's more bad news about the flu: The main strain of flu that's circulating right now doesn't exactly match what's in this year's flu shot, according to a new report. The news comes amid a particularly severe flu season in the U.S.; the season started early, and it's unclear if flu activity has peaked yet.

So far this season, 32 U.S. children have died from the flu, according to the CDC. That's the highest number of pediatric flu deaths reported at this point in the flu season since the CDC started tracking child flu deaths more than 15 years ago.

At the start of the season, officials noticed something very unusual: The main strain of flu virus circulating was a type called influenza B. Typically, influenza B does not cause as many cases as influenza A strains (H1N1 and H3N2) and tends to show up later in the flu season, not at the beginning. Indeed, the last time influenza B dominated flu activity in the U.S. was during the 1992-1993 flu season, according to the new report. Some evidence suggests that influenza B may be more deadly in children than in adults, Live Science previously reported.

The new report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), details cases of flu among children in Louisiana, where flu has hit particularly hard. (Louisiana was one of the first states to experience elevated flu activity this season, all the way back in October 2019.)

At one pediatric hospital in New Orleans there were more than 1,200 cases of influenza B and 23 hospitalizations among children between July 31 and Nov. 21, 2019, a time when flu activity is usually pretty low, the report said.

Officials looked at the genetic sequence of influenza B strains in a sample of 198 children in Louisiana, finding that nearly all the individuals were infected with a subgroup of influenza B that's not in this year's flu shot. (Specifically, the strain in circulation is known as influenza B/Victoria V1A.3 subgroup, while the strain in the flu shot is known as influenza B/Victoria V1A.1 subgroup.)

Source: This year's flu shot doesn't match virus circulating: report


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Fnord
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15 Jan 2020, 10:44 am

jimmy m wrote:
There's more bad news about the flu: The main strain of flu that's circulating right now doesn't exactly match what's in this year's flu shot...[/url]
And people wonder why I don't bother with the flu shot. Whether I get the flu shot or not, I get the flu.


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15 Jan 2020, 12:31 pm

You can check prevalence in your (US) state here:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm

Click the animation to see the season develop. It's widespread across almost the whole country now.


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jimmy m
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15 Jan 2020, 10:44 pm

If you want to avoid the flu this season, there is one variable to keep an eye on - that is room humidity. For the past couple decades I have been controlling the humidity at work and at home during the winter months. I would take a spray bottle of water into the office and when it became really dry, I would spray the air around my desk a few times to bring the humidity levels up a little. At home since we used wood heat which can make the house very dry, we took steps to increase the humidity level.

I hadn't really though about this until I just read an article that my daughter sent me a couple months ago.

Harvard Medical School graduate and lecturer, Stephanie Taylor, is something of an Indiana Jones of medicine. “Anything that seems scary, I say I need to learn more about that,” she explained in a recent interview. While practicing pediatric oncology at a major teaching hospital, Taylor wondered why so many of her young patients came down with infections and the flu, despite the hospital’s herculean efforts at prevention. Her hunch: the design and infrastructure of the building contributed somehow.

She and colleagues studied 370 patients in one unit of a hospital to try to isolate the factors associated with patient infections. They tested and retested 8 million data points controlling for every variable they could think of to explain the likelihood of infection. Was it hand hygiene, fragility of the patients, or room cleaning procedures? Taylor thought it might have something to do with the number of visitors to the patient’s room.

While all those factors had modest influence, one factor stood out above them all, and it shocked the research team. The one factor most associated with infection was (drum roll): dry air. At low relative humidity, indoor air was strongly associated with higher infection rates. “When we dry the air out, droplets and skin flakes carrying viruses and bacteria are launched into the air, traveling far and over long periods of time. The microbes that survive this launching tend to be the ones that cause healthcare-associated infections,” said Taylor. “Even worse, in addition to this increased exposure to infectious particles, the dry air also harms our natural immune barriers which protect us from infections."

Since that study was published, there is now more research in peer-reviewed literature observing a link between dry air and viral infections, such as the flu, colds and measles, as well as many bacterial infections, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding more research. Taylor finds one of the most interesting studies from a team at the Mayo Clinic, which humidified half of the classrooms in a preschool and left the other half alone over three months during the winter. Influenza-related absenteeism in the humidified classrooms was two-thirds lower than in the standard classrooms—a dramatic difference. Taylor says this study is important because its design included a control group: the half of classrooms without humidity-related intervention.

According to her research, and subsequent studies in the medical literature, the “sweet spot” for indoor air is between 40% and 60% relative humidity. An instrument called a hygrometer, available for about $10, will measure it. Every hospital, school, and home should have them, according to Taylor, along with a humidifier to adjust room hydration to the sweet spot.

Source: This Inexpensive Action Lowers Hospital Infections And Protects Against Flu Season


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