What can I do about swine flu?

Factual Questions
1

Here’s the skinny. I have a neuromuscular disorder similar to MD which severely impedes my lung capacity (<10% normal). My immune system is fine, but if I get a chest cold it can easily lead to pneumonia or worse. I can deal with all other symptoms just as well as normal folk, but when my lungs are impacted I need constant machine assisted breathing therapy to get a productive cough.

Swine flu is here, and the media is saying it’s “unstoppable.” I just read a post in MPSIMS where the OP’s wife was infected. Swine flu targets the lungs with a particularly nasty pneumonia which is what causes my concern. It can knock off people with regular lung capacity, so if I got it I’d probably be done for.

  1. What can I do to help prevent being infected? Besides being careful to who I’m exposed to and washing my hands religiously, which is what I do anyway. I’m going to be going to grad school soon, so being exposed to germs is inevitable.

  2. If I get swine flu, is there any medications to take that would help? Something anti-viral?

Any input from medical minded Dopers would be appreciated.

2

Any high risk individual should stay in contact with his or her doctor especially from September on and be sure to get an H1N1 vaccine as soon as it is available. There almost certainly will be a shortage and a high risker wants to get in at the front of the line before the media fans a run on supplies (nothing like something being in short supply to make everyone want something.)

Currently both Tamiflu and Relenza are working as anti-virals and a high risker should be started on one or the other at the first sign of an influenza like illness (fever, sore throat, cough, uri, muscle aches, you know the drill). That said there have already been a small number of Tamilflu resistant cases and it is only a matter of time before that spreads more widely.

Someone at significantly high risk (say, with only 10% of functional lung capacity) may want to wear a snug fitting mask changed somewhat often when in public when the season starts to really pick up.

And off course someone at that high of risk will continue great handwashing and frequent use of a hand sanitizer.