The Little Flu that could

The little flu that could

Once again humans have reunited under a single banner of hope. The developed countries have banned together before to squish diseases and pesky little viruses, and won against them. We have eradicated polio from the Americas in 1994 .

However there is a new foe that is infecting and killing individuals with deficient immune systems, the young, the old and the pregnant. H1N1 is a strain of type A influenza, more commonly known as swine flu by the media and the public.

The sad and scary thing about this strain of flu is that it really isn’t much different from other strains of flu floating around. But with the powers of mass media and the forever constant ability to access “news” an epidemic of fear of death has spread.

So this little flu is chugging away. It was first detected by the CDC in the United States in April of 2009 and by June 11 the World Health Organization decided the H1N1 flu deserved the title of pandemic.

Rather depressingly the media and at least the people of the United States became paranoid about being infected by swine flu. People wanted to boycott pork, and anything else relating to the word swine. Naturally the uniformed are the mass majority of the paranoid.

The CDC and other government groups tried to point out the silly facts that people were ignoring. People don’t realize that this flu is transmitted like all other flu’s, from contact with an infected person.

But much damage was done from the nickname of swine flu. Even though the H1N1, swine flu, has two flu genes that normally are found in pigs, avian and human in Europe and Asia (CDC).

So the little flu that could has started a worldwide craze for a vaccine. As usual the ignorant or uniformed don’t realize that if a vaccine is made in time before they are infected that it is only effective if this strain of flu does not mutate.

According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary a vaccine is a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease.

This vaccine is being created to prevent further deaths and serious complications from H1N1.

However I foresee there being problems with this vaccine. Typically vaccines like all medicines have to be tinkered with and pushed through many mandated trials and are reviewed before being issued and pushed onto the public.

But with this “pandemic” only a short few months after the H1N1 strain has started circulating there is promise of an outcome of vaccines. According to ABC news, there will be six to seven million doses of this vaccine ready in the first week of October. That’s only a week or so away.

Vaccines like to be given good press, in hope of preventing deaths in the populations where people have higher interests in, like children, pregnant and the old. However when the government states the people who are vaccinated are to going to be track and watched just in case of side effects.

Yet again this little flu that has been deemed a pandemic is causing paranoia. The H1N1 strain of the flu is causing more children and young adults to die from complications from the flu than normal.

The sad thing about this pesky little flu is that it really isn’t that serious. It hasn’t killed anymore individuals than the run of the mill flu. But we have hyped it to be so much more.

Kristen Kendall