I'm not close to her or anything but my sister knows her family and goes to the same church. It's horrific for her kids, who are still pretty young. I think she may even have a grandchild.

I'm hating on H1N1.

Stephanie, I'm so glad they accepted your offer! The house sounds wonderful!

That's such a shock, Cash. I have ended up in a couple of exchanges with people who say they're not getting the vaccine because it's "too dangerous." I keep pointing out that the flu kills thousands of people every year.

That's such a shock, Cash. I have ended up in a couple of exchanges with people who say they're not getting the vaccine because it's "too dangerous." I keep pointing out that the flu kills thousands of people every year.

The swine flu vaccine in '76 killed more people than the flu did. It's not wildly paranoid to be afraid of that happening again with H1N1. [link] [link]

Approximately 40,000 Americans die each year from flu and flu-related conditions.

The 1976 swine flu vaccine caused one unusual side effect: an increased incidence of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which, while dreadful, is usually not fatal. Each year, approximately 1 out of every 100,000 people in the U.S. come down with Guillain-Barré. Its cause is not fully known, but it seems to be related to severe infections. Experts estimate that an additional 1 out every 100,000 people who received the 1976 vaccine were diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. The vaccine did protect people against that strain of flu; the effort became a political nightmare because the flu did not reach the epidemic proportions predicted.

H1N1 can also cause something called a Cytokine Storm, which is what has been responsible for many of the H1N1-related deaths that occurred in otherwise healthy people in their 20s-40s. It's very freaky.

I just read a thing online that says it's possible that nicotine can help prevent a cytokine storm by blocking some doohickey in the stuff.

Those are all medical terms, ya know.

I'm also glad that my thyroid is gone as Thyroid Storm tends to hit people with hyperactive thyroids, which is what I had.

t pets scar

Yeah, a better measure would be what percentage of people who got the shot died from it versus what percentage of people who did not get the shot died from the flu. And even that's not a great measure, because it doesn't take into account herd immunity.

Approximately 40,000 Americans die each year from flu and flu-related conditions.

That number never fails to shock me.

'76 had shenanigans -- the drug companies petitioned congress for liability immunity and got it, there was political posturing on all sides.

The flu wasn't that virulent, not that many people ever caught it, even without mass immunization (fewer than 33% of the public) and even though several deaths attributed to the shot (which caused panic) proved not to be caused by it, more people did actually die from that shot (25) than that flu (1).

There are enough similarities between this "special" flu scare and '76s "special" flu scare that its churned up old fears.

I'm not saying "so don't get the H1N1 shot," I'm saying that people freaking a bit on this isn't completly out of woo-woo left field.

The "special" thing, of course, is the ghost of 1918 when the flu fatalities weren't the usual imunocompromised/elderly demographic but the young and healthy. The one '76 fatality was a soldier on active duty at Fort Dix -- and everyone freaked the 'eff out.

That number never fails to shock me.

The really shocking number is the 20-100 million deaths in 1918-19. (They used to say 20 million, but current research is leaning towards 50 million plus deaths related to the flu pandemic.)

Also that number is just deaths. I think over the course of two year half the world or a quarter of the world or some such staggering percentage caught it.