Supposedly "Mild" H1N1 Stalking Other Age Groups, Too
Despite the CDC's emphasis on vaccinating children, asthma sufferers and pregnant women, recent data from California hospitalizations suggests that risks to the elderly and others with health issues (even mere obesity) can be severe — even fatal.
Earlier messages, perhaps intended to forestall panic, tended to emphasize this version of the flu as "mild," but that characterization may have been misleading.
In a Reuters story out today, a JAMA report by Dr. Janice Louie of the California Department of Public Health describes very recent study of more than a thousand California hospitalizations. The previous warnings of particular risks to the young were confirmed, showing that the average inpatient was younger than for typical flu seasons.
But there's more.
The Reuters reporter interviewed Louie by phone. "One of the perceptions we've been trying to dispel is that this is a mild disease. This can be severe. In this paper 30 percent of the patients required intensive care." Even more sobering, overall 11 percent of the patients who were hospitalized died.
Among the 50 and over population, 18-20 percent died, hardly the result of a nuisance infection.
Louie also identified an unusually high percentage of severe illness with obese patients (BMI of over 30).
This story shows the challenge public health officials face in trying to get the message right. By recommending a preference for vaccinating the young and pregnant, they may have inadvertently created the impression that the flu must be mild for everyone else.
The notion that the H1N1 flu is more mild than usual, and that therefore a vaccine is unnecessary, a view widely held in the U.S., may itself be due for a stay in the ICU.
The body count for those 50 and over in California may serve as a drum beat for some to take the epidemiology — and the pandemic science — more seriously.
Photo by Andrew Richards
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