Health Epidemics

Throughout history many health epidemics have been reported.  Almost everyone has been affected in some way by an epidemic.  The most recent epidemic has been the swine flu, which has returned.  Many people knew someone that had swine flu, whether it was a family member or a close friend.  Just like any other epidemic people took many precautions to prevent themselves from acquiring this serious flu.  Any time someone gets the flu its serious, but as this flu arose back from the past it seemed to be hitting strong.

To protect the public from getting the swine flu five different manufacturers sent vaccines to around 90,000 distributers, unlike the seasonal flu shot that had to be bought by the doctor.  Many people received this vaccine but not as many as expected.  There were 85 million extra, unused vaccines that the countries were trying to get rid of.  Many of these vaccines were in the form of a nasal spray; these were only recommended to children, non-pregnant woman and people with no health problems. The recommended age for the nasal spray, FluMist, was from the age of 2 to 49.  The majority of the flu vaccines will be given in shots.

The scare of the swine flu sent the vaccine to public places such as schools and city clinics, where the vaccine was given out like the polio vaccine was in the 1950’s.

A presidential panel suggested that they estimated about 30 to 90 thousand people to die from the outbreak of this flu. And to their surprise 10,000 actually died from the flu. That is a number far below the range of expected deaths. Which, I consider this a good thing.  In, Facts about Swine Flu, an article by the Atlantic Monthly states that,

“At this point, it is proving to be relatively mild and less fatal than the average flu, according to data from some countries in the Southern Hemisphere that already experienced their winter flu season. Unless the virus mutates, it appears that the most serious threat is largely to people with underlying health problems.”

Symptoms of the swine flu include: fever, cough, runny nose or stuffy nose, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills, fatigue,  diarrhea, and vomiting.  As you see the symptoms in the swine flu and the regular seasonal flu are very similar, and it would be very hard to distinguish the two based on symptoms. So the test that can be done to test for swine flu is: a nasal swab or blood test.  These tests were said to be highly inaccurate.  The difference in the swine flu and the normal seasonal flu is that, the seasonal flu is a variety of different flu’s each year.   Whereas the swine flu is specifically the H1N1 vaccine.  Each year the flu’s that arise are different, and the CDC sort of guesses each year, according to past research, which vaccines to give out each year.

This article is more of an informative article rather than an opinionated article. It is very professional and full of facts that intend to notify the reader that the swine is more than just a cold and is potentially deadly.   With that being said, I believe that we are over blowing this flu.  The swine flu is no more dangerous than the seasonal flu.  Many people, including myself, were terrified of getting the swine flu.  We used germ fighting agents after touching each door, stair rail, or elevator button.  We took every precaution we could to keep from catching this blown up flu. 

I vividly remember waiting outside my class room one day and the class before my class walks out saying, “ a girl in our class had the swine flu.”  We were all terrified of going into that class in fear of that class being contaminated.  We all instantly brought out our germ-x and passed it around to be sure that everybody got, “ de-germed.”  We also sprayed Lysol all over the room and on all the tables. We wanted to be sure and clean ALL the tables because after all we didn’t know which table the, sick girl, sat at.

So, by the previous paragraph don’t you think people over reacted?  I believe so.  Yes, that room was probably somewhat contaminated but we went way overboard with the de-contamination precautions. 

Lastly, throughout history there have been many epidemics such as polio and small pox, and the most recent epidemic the swine flu.  Some were worse others but all in all they are all epidemics, and they effect almost everyone. 

--Shawnette Church