Opinion Sept 16, 2009:

I am now seeing 10 cases of swine flu a day.  Most are not very sick.  I am sure the news will come out and say how many thousands of kids are getting the flu.  Closing the schools last Spring just delayed the spread to now.  The CDC finally came out and said to only treat the high risk patients with Tamiflu.  I have preached that for years.  If we treat everyone with Tamiflu then the germ will become resistant.  There have been already a handful of resistant H1N1.  If it becomes resistant like the old flu did, then we will not have anything to help the kids with cancer or the pregnant moms.  So most likely we will not be treating your child.  Also the flu test misses 50%.  So if they act like the flu we will approach the child as if they have it without testing.  If the test is pos then they have the flu, and if neg then they probably still have the flu and the test does not change what we do.  We hope to have the swine flu vaccine by late Oct. Please come in if you are in the high risk group (See below for list) .

For more info…. see:

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/antiviral.htm

http://www.dallascounty.org/department/hhservices/documents/DCHHS_Flu_Report_2009_2010_Week_35_Final.pdf this has great graphs on the big increase in flu in this area and see how rare in these months of the  year.

Here is the CDC chart of deaths in children and you can see there is an increase number because of the increase number of cases… not because it is more deadly.  This is the deaths out of 80 million children so still very rare.

This graph shows the cases last Spring (in pink).   Just wait till you see the graph that includes this Fall.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

The death of the 11yr old girl that died this week was caused by a mean bacteria and she did not die of the flu itself.  Watch for secondary bacterial infections.  Any fever past the 5th day would be a signal and come in right away.

Roger Knapp MD
SOURCE