Told you I'm a med student, and day by day I see patients in the hospital with the AH1N1 flu. It's a disease that CAN be prevented if people just cared about it, example: if you got the symptoms, you really need to get tested. That way we can prevent so many cases in the whole world... but then, we're only people.
About the vaccine... well, let me tell you that a virus (especially this one) mutates A LOT during one year. So, this vaccine will ONLY be effective against certain type of flu. If the virus continues in the world for a couple of years more, it'll be different every single time. A vaccine is made of dead (or only weakened) virus that interacts with your body and in that way you can create antibodies. By itself, the human body is weak against this flu unless it gets treated. It developes quickly, lows your defenses and let another disease (bacterial, fungus or anything else) get into your body. The so called "swine flu" does not kill you, the opportunistic infections do.
Why the eldery people and the childs? As you have said, they're a group of persons that can easily get the flu. But then, what happens to the rest of the people who doesn't gets the shot? They get the flu. If you read the reports of deaths, you can see that most of them were (and will be) of the group of persons between 18 and 40 approximately, I don't have the exact numbers right here with me. That's the real risk group, by now. But of course, also childs and elder people dies. No one is safe, really. It's just a flu, after all, and everyone can get it like it was another flu.
It's serious, this AH1N1 flu issue, and let me tell you, I beg ya, that dying of this is an awful way of dying. I've seen it, and I'm afraid I'll see it for a long time now.
Wanna take the shot? Go ahead. Don't wanna take it? Go ahead. The problem is that it will become available first to us, the ones that are in direct touch with those patients, and of course people in risk groups. If there's more vaccines, then probably it will be distributed to certain populations. Don't worry, just take care of yourselfs: follow the recommendations of washing hands, avoiding clumping of people, etc... and don't go into panic, 'cause that's the worse thing we can do.
If you need some especific information about the flu or anything related, let me know.
Greetings from first line of the battle,
México.
Originally Posted by murlodin
