I’m a healthy 39-year-old with no chronic health conditions that put me into one of the H1N1 vaccine priority groups. Still, when I found out yesterday at a routine visit that my ob.gyn was offering the vaccine to all patients, I couldn’t roll up my sleeve fast enough. I felt a little guilty given shortage [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘influenza’
October 27, 2009
On Hand-Washing And Fred Zinnemann
From Semmelweis University Medical School, Budapest
Question: What did Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis have in common with Hollywood legend Fred Zinnemann, four-time Oscar-winning director of such classics as High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and A Man for All Seasons?
They shared a common interest in Dr. Semmelweis. Indeed, Mr. Zinnemann’s first Academy Award was for That Mothers Might [...]
October 12, 2009
The Selling of the Vaccine
Last week, the new vaccine for pandemic influenza H1N1 reached the American public, with some 4 million doses available nationwide and promises that an additional 20 million doses will reach U.S. vaccine dispensers weekly through the rest of this year.
Along with the vaccine came a high-intensity publicity campaign by government officals urging the American public to [...]
October 7, 2009
What H1N1 Tells Us
Here’s the answer: The current H1N1 flu pandemic tells us we need a better, faster way to make flu vaccines.
Monday, Oct. 5 was an important day in the influenza world: It was the day the new H1N1 vaccine rolled out, it conincidently was the CDC’s official start to the new U.S. flu season (even though H1N1 infections have [...]
September 17, 2009
Is the H1N1 Vaccine Safe Enough?
from a meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, Washington D.C.
Vaccine safety is a contentious topic, and it looks like the new vaccines against pandemic H1N1 flu will face some skepticism as they start to roll out to the American public in early October. This was clear in a brief but telling exchange during a meeting Sept. [...]
July 29, 2009
The Masque of the Red Death
Forget the Senate Finance Committee’s Gang of Six – the hottest health care story in Congress may soon be the Senate Page Program Five.
As in Edgar Allan Poe’s pre-SARS tale of uninvited pestilence surprising opulent wealth, America’s political Princes Prospero have unmasked an unwelcome H1N1 party crasher in the midst of their gilded ballroom of bloviation.
Five party crashers, to be precise.
To be even more [...]
May 18, 2009
The Untimely Death of Mr. Wiener
With New York reporting its first swine flu death this weekend, the nation’s attention is once again focused on the 2009-H1N1 influenza outbreak that began in April. The May 17 death of New York City public school assistant principal Mitchell Wiener of complications of H1N1 influenza occurred as Japan announced it is closing more than [...]
March 9, 2009
Flu Stays One Step Ahead
From JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
The influenza virus continues to lay low any infectious disease experts who claim to truly understand it, as two articles and an editorial in JAMA recently showed.
One report from the CDC found that influenza A (H1N1) resistance to oseltamivir, one of the main drugs used to treat [...]
