With all the hype over the N1H1 Flu Virus, many people are going to doctor’s offices and hospitals that would have never considered it previously. According to Dr. Geoffrey Weinberg, the professor of pediatrics at the University at Rochester Medical Center in New York said, “It’s a burden on the offices because they’re fielding so many phone calls. At the same time, according to the British Medical Journal article appearing September 3, 2009, indicates that school closings last spring can incite societal fear. Medical laboratories are also inundated with specimens to be tested for the N1H1 virus. Have health officials blown this out of control with all the media hype and rush to get vaccines, causing even more stress on American citizens?Dr. Weinberg also explains that parents are calling doctors offices requesting the vaccine immediately for their children and it’s putting a great strain on staff. Although the US has been through similar epidemics, such as the West Nile Virus, SARS, Ebola virus and the bird flu, all have seem to have gone away. In a crisis, people focus on the benefit of certain measures, rather than the possible risks, according to Dean Bloomberg, associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California, Davis Children’s Hospital. He also noted that in previous epidemics “People were stockpiling antibiotics. It didn’t really resulting a shortage, but it could have.”
During 1976, which was the last H1N1 outbreak, the illness never spread beyond 240 soldiers stationed at Fort Dix, NJ. The Federal Government decided at the time to vaccinate 43 million people, but provided the wrong strain of the virus to the public. As a result, 500 American came down with the rare neurodegenerative condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, in which 25 of those patients died. Currently, the H1N1 outbreak sickness is still mild and we are far from a worse case scenario, without a huge number of hospitalizations.
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