I wonder if I had the Swine Flu. I vigorously avoid the doctor, so unless I am bleeding from my eyeballs, I pretty much just ride out whatever ails me with some extra vitamins. My husband caught a ‘bug’ a month ago which he then kindly passed on to me a week or so later. We both had the same symptoms—onset with a sore throat (a bad one!), runny nose, low-grade fever, cough and fatigue. Felt like a nasty cold—but maybe, just maybe, we caught the dreaded Swine Flu!!! Neither of us went to see a doctor, so who’s to say. Comparing the symptoms, it could very well have been the flu. Seeing the news this week, I am kind of hoping that we did have it.
Word on the street now is that if you already caught the ol’ H1N1, then you are one lucky bugger because round two this fall is slated to be a killer!! I was thrilled when I could turn on the news again without hearing a state-by-state count of flu cases—now I get the daily count of how many doses of Tamiflu are going to be available and when. Great.
Health officials are predicting the flu will affect 40% of all Americans within the next two years with a death count in the hundreds of thousands. In a typical year, 36,000 die from flu—a number which, frankly, surprised me. But to imagine that number quadrupling is staggering. Of course, this prediction is based on the flu pandemic of 1957 which killed about 70,000 people. Seems rather an inexact science. In fact, the CDC says that influenza is “notoriously hard to predict” which makes me wonder if it is such a good idea to throw panic-inducing numbers out there to an already jumpy public.
Once those 160 million doses of Tamiflu are ready in October, will chaos ensue? Will there be riots? If folks start dropping like flies, it’s gonna get ugly, I guarantee.
I feel sorry for the kids at camp this summer. I read an article in the “New York Times” yesterday detailing camp life up in Maine. As children disembark their busses, they are greeted with a thermometer. If they have a fever, they are escorted to the “quarantine camp” with the other infested children. Sounds like a lot of fun.
As of today, the CDC estimates that more than one million Americans have already contracted the illness and will, hopefully, have some sort of an immunity built up against the version coming to theaters this fall. (Netflix, anyone?!) I feel some relief, though, that out of the one million plus, only 263 have actually perished. Seems like pretty good odds and a long way from ‘hundreds of thousands.’ The media does so love those big numbers, don’t you know.
So, keep the sanitizers handy, maybe buy a box of masks before they sell-out again and godspeed.
