by Charles Simmins

Created on: April 29, 2009

The two primary sources of information about the swine flu for you ought to be the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. There are a great many people working around the clock on the swine flu epidemic at both places. but I suspect that the website updaters are daytime employees. The frequency of updates at both sites is limited.

The media is full of reports of "confirmed" cases. Take those with a grain of salt. Local testing in the U.S. is followed by testing at the CDC. Until the CDC says so, the cases are "probable". Some cases are turning out to be the seasonal flu.

We can anticipate additional cases in the United States and worldwide. Influenza can take from 1-7 days to develop after exposure, with most cases taking 2-3 days. The primary killer is not the flu itself, but pneumonia. In seasonal influenza the young, elderly and immuno-compromised are at highest risk of death.

While the data is sketchy, this swine flu appears to be attacking a different age group. The U.S. cases, 64 in number as I write this, range in age from 7 to 54. The Mexicans, according to media reports, are reporting most cases in the 20-50 age group.

Keep in mind, however, that few of the Mexican cases have been tested and less than 30 are positive for swine flu out of the thousands who are ill. Some of the samples tested come back as seasonal flu. Leaving the swine flu out of the discussion, it does appear that the Mexican are having a bad year for seasonal influenza.

Influenza like illnesses, ILIs, abound. SARS is one, as an example. Many viruses produce ILIs which can then proceed to pneumonia. Without far more testing than has been done to day, there is no way to determine which illness[es] are causing the widespread sickness and deaths in Mexico.

There is no cure for any viral illness, including the swine flu. Antivirals if taken in time may prevent illness or shorten the duration and lessen the severity of the illness.

There is no vaccine for the swine flu. Creating one will take nearly six months. The CDC is pessimistic about the seasonal vaccine having any benefit in preventing the swine flu.

Swine flu symptoms are virtually identical to those of the seasonal flu. Upper respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, extreme fatigue. Vomiting and/or diarrhea are more common in children with seasonal influenza. It has been suggested that adult swine flu patients seem to experience more gastric symptoms than normal.

All of the U.S. cases to date have been mild. There has been one hospitalization. The outbreak at St. Francis Prep in NYC constitutes the majority of U.S. cases. A few students went on Spring Break to Mexico and the illness appears to have spread from them. Most of the cases are in patients who travelled to Mexico in the last month, or in their families.

St. Francis Prep's cases seem to confirm human to human transmission, which is why the WHO raised the pandemic alert level.

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