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Had Your Flu Shots Yet?


Kimmo

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Huge spike in flu cases upends hospital operations

By Patrick Svitek, Chicago Tribune reporter

January 9, 2013

 

More than a dozen Chicago-area hospitals started their week overwhelmed with influenza cases, having to send incoming ambulances elsewhere at times as they dealt with what health officials have described as the worst flu season in nearly a decade.

 

On Monday, 11 Illinois hospitals had to go on bypass status, meaning they could not handle any more patients without life-threatening illnesses, said Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health. Throughout Tuesday, four to eight hospitals across the state were on bypass at any given point.

 

One of them, the University of Chicago Medical Center, has had to pair patients with similar infections in previously half-occupied rooms and order more supplies, including surgical masks and testing materials.

 

"We are seeing a ton of influenza cases," said Dr. Emily Landon, epidemiologist at the medical center. "Our hospital is incredibly busy."

 

The spate of diversions is the latest evidence of what doctors have called the earliest and most active flu season since the turn of the millennium. For the first week of 2013, 24 Illinois hospitals went on bypass for nearly 400 hours, Arnold said. That's a fourfold increase in the amount of time that hospitals weren't accepting noncritical patients compared with the first week of 2012, when seven hospitals logged fewer than 100 hours of bypass time.

 

On Friday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed Illinois among 29 states experiencing "high" flu activity through the last week of 2012.

 

From Sept. 30 to the end of 2012, nearly 100 people spent time in intensive care units of Chicago hospitals with flu-like symptoms, according to the city's Department of Public Health. Last year, only one person had been sent to an ICU with the flu in about the same time period.

 

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2259774/Flu-epidemic-worst-decade-Boston-declares-state-emergency-Chicago-hospitals-turn-away-ambulances.html

 

By DAVID MCCORMACK

PUBLISHED: 15:13 EST, 9 January 2013 | UPDATED: 18:12 EST, 9 January 2013

 

Flu epidemic could be the worst in a decade as Boston declares state of emergency and Chicago hospitals turn away ambulances.

 

* U.S. experiencing what is shaping up to be the worst flu outbreak in a decade with 20 children dead

 

* Boston has had a ten-fold increase in the number of cases compared to last year

 

* At one stage 12 Chicago hospitals were so swamped that they were turning patients away

 

* Elsewhere hospitals are taking extra precautions including limiting visitors or setting-up tents in their parking lots

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from nbc.com

 

"The bad season has been blamed on an especially virulent flu strain, the A H3N2 strain. Another A strain, H1N1, and two influenza B strains are also causing illness. Vaccines prepared for this year are a good match for three of the viruses, although one strain of influenza B is not covered by the vaccine and may be accounting for 8 percent to 10 percent of flu cases, according to infectious disease experts.

It can take two weeks for the flu shot to provide full protection, and in the interim, people may still get sick, health officials caution. The shots don't provide 100 percent protection, only between 65 percent and 80 percent in a healthy person, but they can lessen the severity and duration of symptoms. The earlier people get shots, the sooner they'll be protected, health officials add."

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In Bozeman MT, they are banning those 18 or less yrs. old from even entering the hospital due to the chance they would infect the hospitalized with virulent flu. Ivan and Joseph speak truth or you must argue with doctors and nurses everywhere.

 

I myself have never had a flu shot but I am nearly a hermit. But I am always convinced by science and not opinion.

Edited by matt_warfield
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... on stupid vaccinations, for something that for 99.9% of population has zero long term effects.

 

It's hard to overstate just how profoundly ignorant that statement is.

Name long term effects in healthy people, if you are so enlighten. I can name a few from obesity. N1H1 had about 300 fatalities, about 1500 had long term complications. Now, there are about 2 million 500 thousand deaths related to obesity every year. Any questions.

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... on stupid vaccinations, for something that for 99.9% of population has zero long term effects.

It's hard to overstate just how profoundly ignorant that statement is.

Name long term effects in healthy people, if you are so enlighten. I can name a few from obesity. N1H1 had about 300 fatalities, about 1500 had long term complications. Now, there are about 2 million 500 thousand deaths related to obesity every year. Any questions.

Profit or non-profit, the vaccines themselves have little to nothing to do with the problems of which we've created in the industry. Throwing them under your bus is less than helpful.

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... on stupid vaccinations, for something that for 99.9% of population has zero long term effects.

It's hard to overstate just how profoundly ignorant that statement is.

Name long term effects in healthy people, if you are so enlighten. I can name a few from obesity. N1H1 had about 300 fatalities, about 1500 had long term complications. Now, there are about 2 million 500 thousand deaths related to obesity every year. Any questions.

Profit or non-profit, the vaccines themselves have little to nothing to do with the problems of which we've created in the industry. Throwing them under your bus is less than helpful.

The problem is that science is not behind flu vaccines. Contrary to what you are saying I am listening to the science. The results clearly shows, that on average the flu vaccines do not prevent transmissions of infections, neither they prevent the illness itself. So what the industry is selling is essentially a snake oil, financed by tax payers in a form of 9 billion a year. If there are vaccines preventing flu, I will be the first one to get it. So what is tossed under the bus is science, and what is fueling this is profit.

BTW, I have more skin in the game, compared with 95% of posters here, since I treat people hands on in a closed room.

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The problem is that science is not behind flu vaccines.

The problem is that folks like you just don't get the science.

 

Contrary to what you are saying I am listening to the science.

Dude, I have a background in microbiology, there's no aspect of the vaccine science that's lost on me.

 

The results clearly shows, that on average the flu vaccines do not prevent transmissions of infections, neither they prevent the illness itself. So what the industry is selling is essentially a snake oil, financed by tax payers in a form of 9 billion a year. If there are vaccines preventing flu, I will be the first one to get it.

You so just don't understand the science, the efficacy of the vaccines, or how vaccination works in general or you wouldn't have just written that. It's a gross misinterpretation of almost all aspects of flu vaccination. And, hey, check it out, even the harshest technical critics of our flu vaccine program take the vaccine and recommend every one do the same.

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