This poor kid’s first symptoms were pains in her legs? Then she dies within three days of influenza A and B with sepsis? How would the Flu cause sepsis? That develops after a severe infection gets into the bloodstream.
This years flu is devastating. I’ve seen several reports of kids dying in just a few days. This 6 year died in his father’s arms in the ER.
Here it is 2015 and modern medicine is still this helpless against influenza? WTH is going on?
My grandmother told me horror stories of the 1917 pandemic. She was only 7 then and witnessed a lot of deaths in families her parents knew. Nothing seems to have changed.
Doctors don’t give antibiotics for the flu because its a virus. I guess in this case the doctors missed a secondary infection she was developing.
I don’t understand why they can’t get an update vaccine produced. They’ve known for months that this years vaccine isn’t effective against this strain of flu.
I disagree with the OP. The symptoms aren’t confusing at all. Body aches and pains are one way that doctors know it’s flu.
However, people aren’t used to flu being very serious – because the flu vaccines are usually good and at least reduce the severity of the illness. This year’s virus is hitting more people than usual because there was some drift between what researchers put into the shot and the main virus that actually emerged.
I have the influenza A virus, demonstrated by serotesting (the doctor putting that stick up my nose was fun). I’ve been sick since 12/27 or so, and that’s with a flu shot this year (partial immunity, maybe), and with partial immunity from previous exposures to various flu viruses over my lifetime. Throw in my lifelong asthma, and it’s been a fun time.
This has been a very strange ride at our house. I had chills and sweats even though my actual fever never went over 99F. It’s very difficult to get people to take an illness seriously if the fever isn’t super high.
The coughing is so exhausting now, ten days in my back is shot and my neck hurts from it. One morning I woke and my lungs sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies “Snap! Crackle! Pop!”
Due to a quirk of the immune system influenza in general hits me harder than most people, but this has been a real bear.
“The flu symptoms this year are confusing and deadly.”
No more so than many other years. The symptoms are always similar to orher illnesses, so there’s the confusing. And the flu often kills people who have other complicating conditions.
Every year, the media plays up specific anecdotal stories to stir up emotions. At the end of the flu season, I’ll bet the final numbers show that 2014-15 will not be that much more deadly than other years.
LOTS of people die EVERY year from influenza. Between 1976 and 2007, annual influenza-associated deaths in the United States ranged from 3349 to 48,614, and the annual rate of influenza-associated deaths ranged from 1.4 to 16.7 deaths per 100,000 persons.
Antibiotics are unlikely to save you, if influenza causes overwhelming sepsis. You’ll need an ICU. And you’ll still be lucky to survive.
This is NOT news, people. It’s been going on like this for centuries. There’s nothing particularly new or different about this year’s strain of the flu, or how it’s affecting people, other than the sad fact that the most prevalent strain isn’t covered by the vaccine. Deciding which strains to make a vaccine against each year is still more art than science.
As for treatment, Tamiflu can shorten the course a bit, and decrease the severity, IF used within 72 hours of onset of symptoms. But it’s not a cure. And people can still die from the flu, even if Tamiflu is taken in a timely fashion. Tamiflu prophylaxis for folks exposed to known influenza cases may help prevent infections also. But these measures should be reserved for the people most likely to have bad outcomes from the flu; people with chronic respiratory issues and immunosuppression. Otherwise we’ll soon see widespread influenza resistance to tamiflu, just like we do with amantadine. Most current Influenza A strains are now resistant to amantadine, thanks in part to general use of that drug to combat the flu.
No easy answers. Get vaccinated, and wash your damn hands!
Modern medicine is probably just ignoring it, and sitting around raking in tons of dough instead. They could probably wipe out influenza if they wanted but, nah.
Ignore influenza treatment and eradication treatment
Sepsis is another name for an infection that invades the blood stream, in so doing reaches every organ, leading to multi-organ failure and death.
Influenza kills children every year. That’s why immunizations are so very important.
Unfortunately, this year’s flu is multi-layered, with at least 3 and probably more strains at the forefront. This year’s vaccine has only 2 or possibly 3 of the many strains covered.
To protect yourself and your children, wash your hands, wash your children’s hands, if necessary, wash your neighbors’ hands.
If someone in your household does get the flu, go to your healthcare professional for Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate). It will help, but the first line of defense is the immunization.
Yeah, all this sounds like … The Flu. Not “a flu” but the heavyweight champion flu. I had The Flu several times in grade school and it was pure, unrelenting misery. My entire body ached – even holding my hand above my arm to just barely touch the tips of the hairs (no skin contact) made them ache. I’d get fevers that tylenol/ibuprofen couldn’t touch; I had to stand in a lukecool shower that felt like the ice bucket challenge because I was so hot (the highest temp I remember was 104.). I would stand there literally sobbing because of how miserable I was. Combine that with unbelievable weakness and just the idea of leaving the bed/couch to go to the bathroom made me want to cry; actually walking the 15-20’ made me stop to lean against the wall to rest a couple times.
It permanently skewed my “how sick are you feeling?” range. Anything less than The Flu level is, “eh, not TOO bad.”
I guess we’ve come to expect too much from modern medicine. They’ve come so far and learned so much. It’s a bit of a jolt to realize there’s still illnesses that can kill a healthy person in just a few days. Maybe in another hundred years we’ll be better equipped to prevent sudden deaths from disease.
I’ve seen news reports that our local health officials are doing everything preventive possible. Going into the classrooms. Teaching the kids to wash their hands, don’t come to school with a fever and so on. They’re trying hard to keep this in check.
IIRC, that used to be the recommendation here, like 20+ years ago. Now it’s recommended that everyone get the flu shot. You can get them not only in doctor’s offices, but pretty much anywhere there’s a pharmacy - so drug stores and supermarkets too.
A lot of people say they have “the flu” when it’s really just a bad cold, too. There’s a big difference. So then when they hear that people die from the flu they think, “Wait, people die from THE FLU??? That’s crazy!”
They don’t realize how bad the flu really is, and think it’s just like a severe cold.
To add to what Qadgop wrote, based on a recently (April 2014) published review of the effectiveness of Neuraminidase inhibitors (Oseltamivir, Zanamivir) in the Cochrane Library:
On average, in otherwise healthy adults, oseltamivir (Tamiflu) reduced the time to first symptom alleviation on average by about 16.8 hours, reducing from 7 days to 6.3 days (a 0.7 day or 10% decrease). In asthmatic children, no significant reduction was found. In otherwise healthy kids, based on one of the 20 studies included for review for Tamiflu, they found a much better reduction in time to first symptom alleviation of an average of 29 hours. Zanamivir (Relenza) likewise reduced this metric in adults by about 10% (from 6.6 to 6 days), although in a sub-analysis of 7 trials comparing zanamivir without relief medication to placebo with relief medication, no significant difference was found between the two groups, and overall zanamivir had no significant effect in children.
The same review found no significant differences in rate of hospitalisation between Tamiflu and placebo groups, in adults and children both, when used to treat or to prophylax. Likewise, no difference in complications classified as severe or which caused withdrawal from a study were found for either oseltamivir or zanamivir versus placebo groups.
While some trials (6) found a modest reduction in secondary pneumonia in adults on oseltamivir, these studies used a self reporting, investigator mediated, unverified approach. Those that used stricter diagnostic definitions for pneumonia or used radiological confirmation found no difference between treatment group and placebo group. Zanamivir was likewise found to not show any difference, except in self reported, investigator mediated unverified pneumonia in adults using it for prophylaxis, while oseltamivir did not show any difference between groups.
Bringing us to 4) While oseltamivir prophylaxis did significantly reduce symptomatic influenza in individuals (Risk Difference (RD) 3.05% CI 1.83-3.88%, NNTB=33 CI=26-55) and households (RD=13.6% CI 9.52-15.47%, NNTB=7, CI 6-11), it did not do so in asymptomatic influenza or influenza-like illness. I included the Number Needed to Treat to Benefit (NNTB) intentionally, since it’s in essence saying that in order for one person (or household) to benefit from prophylactic therapy with oseltamivir, you have to treat approximately 33 people or 7 households. Given that a prophylactic course of Tamiflu is anywhere from $115 - $155 per person cash, and that anecdotally I’m seeing quite a few cases where insurance companies are either not paying for the drug or charging high copays (quite a few in the $70-100 range in the past couple of weeks when I’ve been at work), you’re looking a significant overall healthcare expenditure (if we use a cash/discount card price and settle on $120 per person, 1 successful prophylactic treatment in 33 total works out to approximately $4000) to prophylactically treat one person or one household, while simultaneously exposing the general public, healthcare workers, and other patients to a strain of influenza they aren’t protected against or may be only poorly protected against (if they got vaccinated). So while I absolutely agree with both you and Qadgop on getting vaccinated and washing hands, I don’t think it’s the best idea to encourage prophylactic use in otherwise healthy individuals, particularly when you couple that with the dangers of the increased resistance Qadgop mentioned.
WTH is going on?
I’d get fevers that tylenol/ibuprofen couldn’t touch; I had to stand in a lukecool shower that felt like the ice bucket challenge because I was so hot (the highest temp I remember was 104.). I would stand there literally sobbing because of how miserable I was. Combine that with unbelievable weakness and just the idea of leaving the bed/couch to go to the bathroom made me want to cry; actually walking the 15-20’ made me stop to lean against the wall to rest a couple times.