Donna Evleth

Dans l'article <[email protected]>, The Reids
<[email protected]> a écrit :


    > Following up to Miguel Cruz
    >>What it turns out I was really asking (though I didn't know it at the time)
    >>was "What is the flu?"
    > Influenza
    > A highly contagious viral infection affecting the respiratory
    > system, which is transmitted by coughs and sneezes. Symptoms
    > include headache, fever, aching joints, weakness, etc. Bed rest,
    > with aspirin or paracetamol, enable most cases to recover within
    > several days but a few may develop pneumonia or secondary
    > bacterial infections requiring antibiotics. `Flu' epidemics can
    > occur when new strains of the virus appear, to which the body's
    > immune system and existing vaccines are ineffective. However,
    > elderly people and vulnerable groups (e.g. those with heart
    > disease) are recommended to have injections of influenza vaccines
    > in the autumn.The worst epidemic of infuenza in the 20th century
    > occurred in the aftermath of World War I (in 1918–19), when some
    > 20 million lives were lost worldwide.

I had the Asian flu in 1960. I was two months pregant and I was lucky not
to lose the baby or have it born with defects, as these are known
complications of the flu. I was extremely weak, just stayed in bed for two
weeks. My husband had it at the same time, and he did the same thing. I
did not eat during that period because I was too ill to shop or cook. We
lived on canned applesauce. I lost 10 pounds.

Donna Evleth
    > --
    > Mike Reid
    > Wasdale-Thames path-London-photos "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" <-- you can
    > email us@ this site
    > Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" <-- dontuse@ all, it's a
spamtrap

Watcher

[email protected] (Miguel Cruz) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
    >
    > This may seem like (or be) a stupid question, but what is the point of the
    > flu shot? I've never had one except when working in a healthcare facility
    > and they lined us all up for it, and it doesn't seem to have impacted my
    > life in any way.
    >
    > miguel

Well, if you've never had the flu, you're very lucky. I've had it
several times. Usually it was like a very bad cold -- fever and
achiness, not congestion, with some vomiting. But four years ago I
got a VERY bad case of it, it went on for days, I couldn't even get
out of bed. At first I was afraid I would die, then I was afraid I
wouldn't. So I've gotten a flu shot for the past three years. Just
got one last Saturday. I was feeling poorly all day Sunday -- my
joints ached and I had a headache and some diarrhea -- but it was
worth it.

nitram

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:42:35 +0200, Earl Evleth <[email protected]>
wrote:

    >in article 201020041138052149%[email protected], Go Fig at [email protected] wrote
    >on 20/10/04 20:38:
    >> The 'common cold' and the flu are very close relatives (both viral),
    >> the flu is generally marked by a sustained temperature over several
    >> days in excess of 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
    >I have had some flues which only lasted about a day. High fever but
    >chills, the incapacity to get warm, and then passage into a pleasant
    >warm state. 24 hours and it was over. I have not have a multi-day flu
    >in 10 years, not one of the one day ones recently.
    >My wife describes the Asian flu in 1960 and it was really severe.

It was in 1957 in UK. I had it.

    >It gave symptoms close to hepatitis, which I had here in France
    >once, it incapacitated me for over a month. In fact it has
    >flu like symptoms which fool you until one`s eyeballs turn yellow
    >followed by one`s urine going nearly black. That is due to the
    >decomposition of the liver, which fortunately stops before
    >it is complete, if one survives.

I don't recollect any of those symptoms with Asian flu.

nitram

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:24:40 +0000, "Donna Evleth"
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >I had the Asian flu in 1960.

You too!

It was in 1957 in UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/3086843.stm

Bogus Address

    > In 1918-19 this deadly influenza pandemic erupted during the final stages
    > of World War I. Nations were already attempting to deal with the effects
    > and costs of the war. Propaganda campaigns and war restrictions and rations
    > had been implemented by governments. Nationalism pervaded as people
    > accepted government authority. This allowed the public health departments
    > to easily step in and implement their restrictive measures.

That last bit seems a tad dubious given the Bavarian and Hungarian
revolutions in the aftermath of WW1. Epidemics are quite commonly
followed by revolutionary agitation, as few events demonstrate the
uselessness and mendacious brutality of governments so graphically.
Hence the uprisings that followed the cholera epidemic of the 1830s.

People only accept authority as long as they can be persuaded that
authority knows what it's doing. When you're starving from food
transport restrictions and unburied bodies are piling up four deep
in the local church you start to get a bit sceptical if the Blair
of the day asks you to trust him.

========> Email to "j-c" at this site; email to "bogus" will bounce <========
Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html> food intolerance data & recipes,
Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files and CD-ROMs of Scottish music.

Frank F. Matthews

B Vaughan wrote:
    > On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:17:26 -0500, [email protected] (Miguel Cruz)
    > wrote:

    >>What it turns out I was really asking (though I didn't know it at the time)
    >>was "What is the flu?"
    >>It wasn't clear to me before reading some of the other posts that it was
    >>such a serious issue for so many people - I'd just sort of assumed that it
    >>was only a concern for the elderly and infirm.

    > Even if it only had a serious effect on the elderly and infirm, there
    > would be a good reason to vaccinate others who spread the disease
    > around, such as doctors and nurses. Or school children, if it's true
    > that they are a prime means of spreading the flu around.
    > Barbara Vaughan

I've found it strange that they recommend vaccinating medical folks
because of exposure but ignore elementary school teachers.

Frank F. Matthews

Earl Evleth wrote:

    > in article [email protected], Frank F. Matthews at
    > [email protected] wrote on 20/10/04 17:17:

    >>Sorry, Earl, but it is certainly shrub's fault. His health advisors
    >>have been warning for years that the number of providers was dropping
    >>dangerously low. He is responsible for the government that took no
    >>action to alleviate the problem. He can't continually duck
    >>responsibility for every problem.

    > I am quite willing to blame Bush for everything bad, most of time I would
    > be right.
    >
    > How does one force drug companies to produce something when they
    > can invest elsewhere and earn more? In socialist "command type" economy
    > this is possible, with the Government guaranteeing a profit.
    > Doing so is not in keeping with a free market ideology, which has
    > icon status in the US.
    >
    > That is what I meant by the "system" being faulted.

    > The same problem arose with anti-biotics. Companies like to have
    > exclusive patent protected rights to exploit a drug at a high price.
    > Most anti-biotics are no longer covered by patent protection,
    > generic is where the market is.
    >
    > We were sitting at dinner the other night with a visiting American
    > who pays $90/month for his anti-cholesterol drug alone. How does
    > that compare with a single $7 flu shot?
    > Earl

Refusal to set a price level that would attract enough providers is one
of the mistakes that I blame on the current administration. While the
problem has been developing for a while it has been recently that the
clear warnings have come. While the per shot price is small the market
is significant.

Earl Evleth

in article [email protected], Frank F. Matthews at
[email protected] wrote on 21/10/04 5:46:

    > Refusal to set a price level that would attract enough providers is one
    > of the mistakes that I blame on the current administration. While the
    > problem has been developing for a while it has been recently that the
    > clear warnings have come. While the per shot price is small the market
    > is significant.


The IHT this morning reprinted a NY Times editorial which pretty much
points out the administrations faults. Having half the shots manufactured
outside the country and not having control by the FDA was the real problem.

Earl

****

*



Supplying flu vaccine

The New York Times
Thursday, October 21, 2004

It is almost unbelievable - and surely unacceptable - that the world's most
medically advanced nation should suddenly find nearly half of its expected
supply of influenza vaccine wiped out by manufacturing problems at a single
plant in England. Yet that is the shocking reality that has panicky patients
lining up for flu shots that are not available and has price gougers trying
to profit from their misery.

There is plenty of blame to go around for this fiasco. The primary fault
lies with Chiron, an American biotechnology company based in California that
had planned to supply some 46 million to 48 million doses of vaccine to the
United States from a plant in Liverpool it acquired last year. That plant
had a history of problems under a succession of previous owners, and Chiron
may well have put it under additional stress with a huge ramp-up in
production for this year's flu season. The result was a major malfunction.

In late August, Chiron detected bacterial contamination that might have
infected millions of doses. But the company remained confident - and the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration remained hopeful - that the problem had
been contained. Then came the blow - British regulators suspended the firm's
flu vaccine license early this month because of unspecified failures to
comply with good manufacturing practices, suggesting a more deep-seated
problem.

American health officials had no clue that almost half of the nation's
vaccine supply was about to be impounded. The question that has to be
explored is whether the FDA was asleep at the switch. There had been hints
of trouble in the past. An FDA inspection of the plant in June 2003 found
quality-control problems and bacterial contamination at an early stage of
the production process, but those shortcomings were reportedly resolved,
allowing Chiron to produce clean vaccine for last year's flu season. Now,
even more severe contamination has emerged in this year's production,
forcing Chiron to the sidelines. Congressional committees will need to
determine whether the federal drug agency pushed hard enough over the past
year to ensure that the Liverpool plant could be relied on.

They will also need to find out if the FDA responded fast enough after the
first reports of contamination in August. Events leave the impression that
the company deluded itself into thinking the problem had been isolated and
that the drug agency more or less accepted its reassurances. We are left to
guess whether more aggressive intervention by government experts might have
helped the company surmount its difficulties.

By late August there was little hope of finding enough additional vaccine
elsewhere. But a nearly total breakdown in communication between British and
U.S. regulators slowed America's response to the crisis. The British failed
to alert the FDA that they were inspecting the plant for deficiencies in
late September, and they gave no hint that they were considering a license
suspension until the deed was done. The FDA seems to have made no great
effort to stay on top of what the British were doing. With some 90 percent
of the plant's flu vaccine headed for the United States, that seems an
unforgivable lapse by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. U.S. health
officials need to press their British colleagues for a better alert system.

Underlying this crisis is the increasing fragility of the vaccine
manufacturing base. This may be mostly an American problem rather than a
global problem. There are six major manufacturers in the world who produced
some 200 million doses for other nations this year, but only two of them are
licensed to produce the 100 million doses of injectable vaccine for the U.S.
The British coped with the loss of Chiron's vaccine far better than the
United States, mostly because they order far less vaccine and have a
diversity of suppliers that can fill in if one supplier falters.

Experts are pondering ways to induce more companies to make flu vaccine for
the American market. The issue is not that manufacturers are worried about
lawsuits over liability, as President George W. Bush has suggested.
Litigation is seldom, if ever, cited in authoritative analyses of vaccine
shortages. The main problem is that influenza vaccine needs to be
reformulated every year, and companies suffer huge losses if they
overestimate the amount that will be needed because they end up having to
destroy millions of doses. The administration needs to find a way to expand
and stabilize the vaccine manufacturing base. The lesson of the Chiron
debacle is that a diversity of supply is critical.


*

The Reids

Following up to Miguel Cruz

    >Yes, that's why I posed it as a question and pre-acknowledged my potential
    >stupidity.

slip up on usenet and everyone dives in to clobber you!
--
Mike Reid
Wasdale-Thames path-London-photos "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" <-- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" <-- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

The Reids

Following up to Watcher

    >At first I was afraid I would die, then I was afraid I
    >wouldn't.

that's when you know you're ill, when you don't care anymore!
--
Mike Reid
Wasdale-Thames path-London-photos "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" <-- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" <-- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

Tim Challenger

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:28:40 +0100, nightjar wrote:

    > "Tim Challenger" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:1098261139.RZF0ARJ746JB1vQlbe7x3Q@teranews...
    >> On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 08:42:49 +0100, nightjar wrote:
    >>> There is a known problem with vaccinating people who
    >>> have an allergy to eggs and egg products and there is some evidence of a
    >>> low
    >>> incidence (about 10 persons in a million) of other side effects from
    >>> vaccination.
    >> And of course, any bird-flu that might jump the species barrier (a
    >> possibility in Asia at the moment). Such a virus is likely to be virulent,
    >> and unfortunately a vaccine can't be made cheaply and simply by infecting
    >> birds' eggs as the virus will also kill the eggs.
    >
    > However, then we are probably looking at a pandemic, which nobody expects
    > the vaccination programme to stop.

No not stop, but reduce, slow, hinder or anythng. Remember Spanish Flu.
--
Tim C.

Tim Challenger

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 20:37:57 +0200, [email protected] wrote:

    > On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 13:36:23 -0500, [email protected] (Miguel Cruz)
    > wrote:
    >
    >><[email protected]> wrote:
    >>> [email protected] (Miguel Cruz) wrote:
    >>>> me <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>>>> You seemed to have tried to find the stupidest way to ask this question
    >>>> It's a special skill I have.
    >>> You learnt it from Mixi.
    >>>> It wasn't clear to me before reading some of the other posts that it was
    >>>> such a serious issue for so many people - I'd just sort of assumed that it
    >>>> was only a concern for the elderly and infirm.
    >>> only to those who catch it.
    >>I see I'm not the only one who's been taking lessons!
    >
    > It's infectious :-)

And serious.
Or at very best, flippant.

--
Tim C.

Tim Challenger

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 03:32:35 GMT, Frank F. Matthews wrote:

    > I've found it strange that they recommend vaccinating medical folks
    > because of exposure but ignore elementary school teachers.

Because the children should have been vaccinated already?
Teachers generally or on the priority 'list', at least here. iirc.

--
Tim C.

Tim Challenger

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:28:13 -0500, Miguel Cruz wrote:

    > Jeremy Henderson <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> [email protected] (Miguel Cruz) said:
    >>> This may seem like (or be) a stupid question, but what is the point of the
    >>> flu shot?
    >> Umm - it's to help you not get flu.
    >>
    >> I've had the shot for the last five years, and I haven't had flu during
    >> that time. Before that I used to get it every year or so, which I din't
    >> particularly enjoy.
    >
    > Ah, see, I don't think I've ever had it (had a cold a few years ago though
    > and that was unpleasant enough, so if this is worse, I can see why you
    > wouldn't want it).
    >
    > miguel

What many people actually have when they think they've "gone down with the
flu" is just a common cold (which can also kill)
--
Tim C.

Tim Challenger

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 03:46:06 GMT, Frank F. Matthews wrote:

    >> We were sitting at dinner the other night with a visiting American
    >> who pays $90/month for his anti-cholesterol drug alone. How does
    >> that compare with a single $7 flu shot?

Most common-or-garden 'flu vaccines are relatively cheap to produce.

--
Tim C.