No, he’s pitting people who don’t have symptoms, or have the slightest inkling of a sniffle and go to the doctor. He didn’t specifically say that, but that is the vibe I’m getting and it is happening at doctor’s offices all over the country. He’s pitting the hysteria surrounding H1N1. Bird flu, West Nile virus, African killer bees, oh my.
How on earth could he possibly know what symptoms random people sitting in a waiting room have?
Srsly. I get ear infections a lot, and have had to make many a late-night trip to the ER or urgent-care clinic because I’m having intense pain in my ear that feels like someone is trying to icepick their way through my eardrum and into my brain.
If you were to see me sitting in the waiting room, I would look perhaps somewhat more pale than usual, and that’s it.
And anyway, like psychobunny said, regular seasonal flu hasn’t really gotten started yet, so if someone has the flu right now, it’s most likely H1N1, so if that waiting room nurse wasn’t privy to the diagnoses of all the people in the waiting room (and since they were still in the waiting room, I fail to see how she could have been), she has no idea whether they have H1N1 or not. My guess is that she was probably just smiling and agreeing with RickJay because she was busy and didn’t have time to chit-chat with a parent who was upset about the wait time.
I will.
Give your kid some cranberry juice, teach her to wipe the right way, and tell her to man the fuck up.
I don’t see “sniffles” in the OP and I don’t see anything that says that the “qualified medical professional” said anything about the people there not needing to be there.
Screw it, I’m agreeing with RickJay. I’ve had the flu probably just as much as anyone else had and I never went to the clinic for it, even when I was a child (I’m assuming by “clinic” he means a place where you can walk in without an appointment but, unlike an emergency room, has regular business hours). What can they do for you or your child anyway? Provide Tamiflu, which is expensive and of marginal efficacy?
It’s nothing but hysteria. It’s just like after 9/11, when there were huge lines at the gas stations for reasons nobody could explain.
I sincerely hope you read up on the Flu vaccine.
"Things to think about:
Modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among Amish children who go unvaccinated. Beware
This flu is simply another flu. It is not unusually deadly. In fact, the H1N1 swine flu in circulation is less deadly than many other influenza outbreaks. The first 1000 confirmed swine flu cases in Japan and China produced zero deaths. The Centers for Disease Control alleges 36,000 Americans succumb to the flu each year, but so far, since March through August of 2009 (6 months), the swine flu has been attributed to ~500–600 deaths in the US.
Health authorities admit prior flu vaccination programs were of worthless value. Both seasonal flu and swine flu vaccines will require two inoculations. This is because single inoculations have failed to produce sufficient antibodies. This is an admission that prior flu vaccines were virtually useless. The same people who brought you the ineffective vaccines in past years are bringing you this year’s new vaccines. Can you trust them this time?
In addition to failure to produce sufficient antibodies, this swine flu vaccine is brought to you by the same people who haven’t been able to adequately produce a seasonal flu vaccine that matches the flu strain in circulation.
LewRockwell.com"I think we’re getting a little overly analytical here. I’m not suggesting he went around the waiting room and examined people and took notes or interviewed a medical doctor. I am merely suggesting, based on the way I interpreted the OP, my own opinion and anecdotes, that there are possibly more people than usual seeking medical care this flu season for symptoms milder than they might otherwise seek care. This behavior may be partly influenced by a large amount of media attention being given to a specific strain of flu. After a brief exchange with a clinic staff member he believed to be a nurse the OP possibly came to a similar conclusion. And having to wait longer than usual with a presumably uncomfortable and unhappy daughter, this made him go Grrrrr.
I was one of the neurotic people taking up valuable waiting-room space.
I’m 19 weeks pregnant, have a toddler, and went to the damn clinic because I had a continuing high fever plus all the other H1N1 symptoms. So we were concerned.
So I’m on Tamiflu, confined to bed most of the time, and not supposed to leave the house till Saturday at the earliest. This is a miserable illness. I’ve had lots of flu before, and I’ve never been this sick.
This is a really interesting phenomenon. When I used to live on the coast of South Carolina, we would get one or two hurricanes headed our way every year. A lot of the time, they’d change direction and hit somewhere else on the coast or veer out to sea. A couple of them hit us, with varying degrees of damage, depending on how close the eye was. Every single time, as people were making arrangements to evacuate or boarding up their windows, there were certain people who were scoffing - “It’s no big deal - what are you getting yourselves all worked up over? - the media’s exaggerating - it never hits here.”
The whole H1N1 thing is going the same way. Some people are panicking, no doubt. Most of us are doing what the CDC says - washing our hands, getting vaccinations, coughing into our elbow, watching carefully when we get sick, going to the doctor if we think it’s warranted. As usual, though, there are the scoffers. Anyone who is taking any precaution at all is “going bananas” and thinks they’re going to die. It’s not the plague! It’s just the sniffles! I had the flu back in 1963 and I didn’t even bother to take an aspirin! You all are running around like a chicken with its head cut off and the media is getting you all worked up!
I’m wondering if this is some sort of defense mechanism. You can’t do much about H1N1 except take a few common sense precautions, so none of us has much control over this. Maybe you can convince yourself that it’s all a bunch of hooey and everyone else is nuts.
I’d like to see a cite on that one.
No. You are exhibiting a worrisome symptom that should be checked out by medical personnel. Especially if you’re pregnant and on bed rest.
I totally agree. It’s like Y2K.
I feel bad about the hijack, but is it possible that the majority of the testing is only being done on the cases that are showing severe enough symptoms to be H1N1? I realize the CDC is probably pretty rigorous and the data seems extensive, but that site doesn’t really have a layperson-friendly summary. Could it be that people who aren’t feeling particularly crappy but still have flu symptoms aren’t getting tested and aren’t going to the doctor/urgent-care/ER? That would skew the 99% figure. Sure it would be 99% of the tested, but not 99% of total flu cases.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but it is like that. A few people panicking. A bunch of people scoffing. A group of people who listened to the warnings and took the recommended steps to avoid anything - from disaster to annoyance - from happening. Y2K turned out to be no big deal, but it wasn’t because the scoffers were right. It was because people did what they had to do to fix the problems that would cause it to be a big deal.
I don’t think that “aren’t feeling particularly crappy” and “have flu symptoms” are compatible phrases. 
Also (again according the CDC), H1N1 can range from mild to severe, just like the regular flu. H1N1 is going to hit the population hard, from what I can tell, because 1) nobody has natural immunity to it, so it will spread widely, and 2) it tends to be a little harder on young healthy people than the regular flu is. But in general, I think it looks pretty much like regular flu.
And anyway, according to the cite I referenced earlier, even if every single untested case was non-H1N1, that still leaves 70% of reported flu as H1N1.
From what I have read, by the way, it’s not that H1N1 is this monster that is just outcompeting regular seasonal flu, it’s that regular seasonal flu hasn’t really gotten started yet. Once it does, the percentages will obviously change.
The above is all from the perspective of someone who is not a medical professional but does read a lot on the Internet, so take it with a grain of salt.
Maybe I’m reading the chart wrong but isn’t that saying of all specimens tested, 99.8% were Influenza type A, and of that subset around 70% is H1N1? A high number to be sure but not 99% of the flu cases.
Yeah. I’m pretty much being sarcastic. I’m not a scoffer. I just get a little tired of the hysteria.
We were not the people in the waiting room.
My daughter was ill this last week - high fever and respiratory symptoms - including the barking cough. But she isn’t high risk, didn’t have an emergency signs. So we kept an eye on her, pushed fluids, managed her temp with Tylenol, and after six days and no fever for 24 hours, sent her back to school with instructions to cover her mouth when she coughs with her elbow. No reason to stress the stressed health care system if what the response is going to be is “rest and fluids.” Which is what most of the parents running their kids into the doctor around here are getting - no Tamaflu (that’s being held for people who are at risk), no testing (the swab isn’t accurate and the accurate test expensive), “probably H1N1, rest and fluids.”
My clinic doesn’t have the vaccine yet. (On the plus side, my sister’s small town had ALL the vaccine shipped to the hospital, where they are running vaccination clinics by risk order. A healthy young adult can’t get it yet - just young kids, the elderly, people with asthma or compromised immune systems, etc.)
I haven’t had H1N1 yet, (fingers crossed), but I’ve had the flu a few times. I’ve never had the flu bad enough that I felt I needed medical care for it. The reports that I’ve read state that H1N1 does have symptoms that could require medical care. It’s possible that there are people out there who have the flu that don’t feel bad enough to go to the doctor that have a non-H1N1 strain (and thus won’t be tested). Those people won’t be represented by the stats, and could possibly skew results. Of course, it’s also possible that there are many folks with H1N1 that aren’t seeing a doctor about it either, let alone getting tested.
I’m not discounting your perspective MsWhatsit, just trying to think critically about it, especially since the media does have the potential to be wrong (or sensationalist) now and then.
True, although another 29% of that subset were not tested for subtype, which means that of all Influenza type A specimens that were subtyped (is that a word?), almost all were H1N1.