Why do pandemic flu's target healthy young people?

yep deb - i have a needle thing too <ouch...sweats...withering stare at the nurse sorta thing>

I didn't have a flu shot 2 years ago and got really sick Christmas 07.. huge sick - so had one this year (well, a few months back) and fortunately alls been well so far

We're also being told that the shots we've had will be wearing off by now - not sure which way our government will go on this - thing is... you can be scared of everything really - I worry about working in a school at times with chickenpox etc..... at the end of the day - you just gotta do what you think is best for your body

do you think if a pandemic (if fatalities increase dramatically) is declared that agencies, expecially in the health care system and those sectors, could be forced/compulsory - to have shots if they could show it could reduce the virus spreading? That could be pretty serious stuff a? I'm completely unknowledeable about such things or whether that has ever happened before???? I doubt it.... but you never know. I guess they prolly couldnt - bit like kiddie shots? Who knows?

I think that those deterministic pandemic influenza simulators - InfluSim and FluAid - give quite a dramatic idea of what could happen IF .... (103,000 deaths in Germany, IF nothing is done)

Well, unless we develop a vaccine for THIS particular flu, it wouldn't make any sense! Usually, there's too much lag time for a vaccine to be developed when it's really needed.

Also, I was listening to a radio program on the way to work yesterday arguing quite convincingly that the apparent good effects of seasonal flu vaccines on at risk groups is an artefact of the fact that those in such groups who choose to get the vaccine are in better health, and don't die as much at ANY time of the year. That is, the so-called vaccine effect is present when the flu isn't.

IF this is a flu pandemic, and IF a vaccine is developed before the flu dies out, I will certainly have THAT vaccine, but I don't plan to worry about the seasonal flu vaccine.

Dunno about compulsory vaccines....we used to have to have TB screening when I was a weelowan...but I doubt there'd be time to organise such a campaign, even if a vaccine is developed fast enough.

If it's a pandemic, it'll move pretty fast, and a lot of the folk who would organise such things will be home in bed being miserable, or maybe even dying.

Yep - hear ya...

kinda scary really - I don't think I've ever really heard about a pandemic before - hoping this will not be the case tho everyone seems to be taking it pretty seriously now - apparently our airports are screening people who look a little "fluey" as they get off the plane... and whisking them away into isolation.

I remember watching the Foot & Mouth fires here - when all the animals had to be killed and all the farms and livestock around me were....slaughtered. Fires burning everywhere. Not an animal in sight. I know, thats animals but...

Hard to imagine so many people dying - well, I can't. Gonna stay in my Iz-bubble on that one and not think too much. Like bio-warfare - IF..... can't and don't want to imagine. IF scares the bejeebus outta me - so .... bubble it is.

Keep safe deb <passes mask and sprays with lysol>

At this point I'm rolling my eyes, except for Mexico City and surroundings, and for the immune compromised in general. Pulling the bleary from plane passengers, give me a break.

I know............. hardly seems possible - I think of how totally crap I looked after travelling for 40 hours being wheeled off the plane coz I felt rough.......... heck - most people look pretty rough after a long haul flight or red-eye flight!

If they were real sick on the flight - well, you could expect them to be examined, as would anyone when they flight landed... but, isolating sweaty, stinky, airconditioned wrinkled, stinky sprayed plane, clean air dreprived folk who walk off the plane and just want to get to have a decent lie down before feeling semi-human again .... oh my!

On the other hand........ I guess that's what it comes to when the word pandemic is used.

Who knows. Just a tad worrying all round - pandemic, IF that's what it is and over-reaction, under-reaction - which reaction to take? Wouldn't like to be the one to make the call on that.

Flu pandemics are regular occurrences. We're well overdue.

If not now, it'll be later.

Shrugs.

All countries (pretty much..I bet Somalia doesn't) have a flu pandemic plan.

Whether it is, or isn't one, precautions will be taken as a preventive, or, at least, slowing down, measure as per plans.

It's no big deal to be checked coming off a plane.

Pandemic, if I remember right, just refers to the breadth of the spread and not re the statistics about fatality. But, should a virologist show up here and straighten me out, I'd be glad to see him or her.

I could check wiki, but I'm variously a nodder at and eye roller at wiki, which is what it is.

I will admit it is a problem - what expert to talk with - when many of our med research facilities are essentially coopted by funding by pharmaceutical companies, which wasn't happening in my long ago time when we were funded by NIH.

For which I have a funny memory.. Sharon, pouring a sephadex column while standing on the lab counter (how else?) and dropping it, approx gallon size, when the NIH well-suited folks walked in our door...

we got the grant despite that drama, and Sharon, a great tech, is no longer with us, rest in peace, and she sang Motown very well.

Here's a nice Pandemic Flu Map from Google.

"Why do pandemic flu's target healthy young people?"

It's because of all that "extreme sport" nonsense. Healthy young folks like to go surfing during a cytokine storm.

I read that on average 36,000 people die of seasonal (regular) flu (or complications related to Flu) in the US every year. Is that correct (or approximately correct)?

I've heard that cytokine storms have the biggest waves.

Well there have been drownings.

So far this flu doesn't seem to be very dangerous compared to regular seasonal flu's. And I don't really see any selective advantage to mutating into a deadly form (other than pure accident). The biggest selective advantage is to become communicable, not deadly. I can understand the concern that it might mutate into something much nastier by pure chance, but is there any real reason to expect that it will do that?

At the moment, how is this flu really differentiated from a seasonal flu (other than by the swine vector)?

The evolution of the current H1N1 virus?

I'm an eye roller, as I've stated before.