H1N1: What are the Real Risks?

Travelling during a global pandemic is a risky business! I just got back from a trip to another province of Canada, a four hour flight away. While Ontario is handing out Swine Flu vaccine to the "priority groups" - small children, seniors and health-care workers, BC is facing a shortage and Alberta is dealing with bioethics issues arising from the public outcry over vaccination of the Calgary Flames, and a debate over whether firefighters are a high-risk group. One of the participants of a meeting I attended refused to shake anyone's hand for fear of getting sick, and last week I heard from a friend that children in her neighborhood of Toronto were not allowed to go Trick-or-Treating, because of influenza fears.

During my flight home I wasn't feeling the greatest and my colleague said, a little too loud, "I hope you aren't getting sick". I quickly told her not to say that too loud and looked around for the lynch mob that might throw me off the airplane at 10,000 feet. Every year there is a percentage of people getting the flu who die from it. In the USA, approximately 36,000 people die every year from the flu, although many of those are cases complicated by additional infections such as Pneumonia and Staphylococcus. This year, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a new PCR-based diagnostic kit for detection of H1N1, which will not only help diagnosis but will aid in collection of more accurate statistics. In many past cases, flu patients also had known risk factors that compromised their immune system, but many don't, including roughly half of the pediatric cases. The CDC estimates mortalities due to H1N1 at somewhere over 1000, 114 of which were children, as of the end of October. Initial reports were that this strain had actually turned out to be fairly mild, so while people weigh the risks of taking the new vaccine against risks of getting, or even dying from H1N1, confusion abounds and we are experiencing the same sort of panic that prevailed in Toronto during the SARs epidemic.