Ah, swine flu. The deadly killer. The docile bug. No worse than the seasonal flu. A possible pandemic.
What's up with the swine flu? Frankly, I'm ill just thinking about it.
The media is spending their time wondering, "Did the media overblow the possible pandemic?" I love that word: pandemic. It sounds so panicky, it's almost an onomatopoeia.
The same day NPR was reporting that the threat wasn't so bad, my Newsweek arrived in the mail with the daunting story of, "Fear & The Flu: The Path of a Pandemic", complete with biohazard signs.
Media are pointing fingers: They covered it too much. Chief among the blamed is Twitter, because people can post "news items" there that are blatantly false. (Hi. It's the internet. People can post things anywhere that are complete fabrications, which is why it's important to link to sources whenever possible.) Actually, "swine flu" was mentioned more than once per second by those who tweet. Not me, of course. I had the ol' "Pahsaw!" about the pandemic. (Or maybe I was reverting to that high school thought, "It'll never happen to me; I'll live forever or at least until Prom.")
But though the mere mention of the bug makes me sick, I think it's important to discuss one looming swine flu worry: the vaccine.As I may have told you once or twice or a thousand times, my family avoids vaccinations. My older son was minimally vaccinated and my younger son not at all, both under the care of their pediatrician. My 13-year-old stepdaughter is not getting the Gardasil vaccine, either.
I'm not completely paranoid about vaccines. I don't think that the autism/vaccine worry is as simple as correlation = causation. Even the FDA wouldn't allow vaccines if it were.
And actually, I haven't found anyone in the online autism community who believes things are black and white like that. They just want the vaccine schedule studied by independent scientific groups for efficacy and safety. Not too much to ask, I think. Especially when we're dosing up immune-sensitive children with 4 or 6 shots a go. No thanks!
So on to the vaccine. The media are also pressing for the answer to this dire question: When will it be ready? I don't know about you, but it's A-OK with me if the manufacturers take their time and don't try to cash in on people's fears.
Do you know how vaccines are made? I didn't, but luckily the BBC covered this topic. Start with eggs, add a bit of dead viral matter, and viola! You have a frosting-on-top flu vaccine. Yum!
(Wait...tell me again about egg allergies and how we're not supposed to feed infants them before age 1? Sure, injecting that into their blood stream is probably better.)
The seasonal flu vaccine, as it is generally currently administered (all but 8 million doses in 2007), contains thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative. Mercury is a known neurotoxin. The CDC says we should vaccinate all kids for the flu. But let's not all jump on the flu shot bandwagon, okay?
Because how effective is the regular flu shot, anyhow? According to CNN:
The flu shot is only as good as the educated guesses of a group of vaccine researchers across the globe. Every February, they try to predict which flu viruses will work their evil during the next fall and winter. Their three top choices are put into the vaccine. The CDC claims that vaccine will be 70 to 90 percent effective against just those strains of flu.
The CDC isn't exactly telling the truth, here. As I reported in a previous flu vaccine blog, a Harris Poll shows that people who got the flu shot for the winter of 2007-2008 were just as likely to get the flu as those who did not get the shot. Huh. Nothing like paying for nothing, eh? And the three previous years didn't make them a whole lot healthier, either.
There are 36,000 deaths annually due to the seasonal flu in the U.S. There have been 3 deaths in the States in a month and a half due to the swine flu, if you include the child from Mexico. Not exactly comparable, is it?
And now we should trust the powers that be with the swine flu vaccine.
I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat. I don't believe, like some, that these diseases were made simply for the drug companies to profit. That's silly talk! I do, however, believe that we're all on edge over seeing all those masks in the media (which don't protect you from getting the swine flu, but would protect you from giving it to others) and hearing about the deaths from the disease. Death and destruction, doom and gloom, make for a good story; I get it. But though the media were entirely hysterical over tracking the spread of the swine flu, I don't see them freaking out over something like, say, autism spectrum disorder, which affects more Americans and is a lifetime battle.
But the media hysteria might make a whole lot of people more likely to step in line right when swine flu vaccines are offered.
As you could probably guess, I don't like the idea of giving money to the drug companies at any time. But my pocketbook is closed tight when it comes to poking us with a vaccine that hasn't had the time to be fully studied. From what I've learned so far, they're not sure if one shot will be enough, or if boosters will need to be administered. (Gardasil, anyone?) Either way, the shots will contain thimerosol.
Let's all take a deep, cleansing, swine flu-free breathe, here. And think. If we as women limit our intake of fish when we're pregnant and we as parents ask the pediatricians to space our children's personal vaccine schedule, maybe let's reconsider our predilection to jump for this shot.
Image: the one we've all received in our e-mail box, but I snagged from xamino on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
The second: Andres Rueda on Flickr, also under a Creative Commons License.
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