What If a Family Member Get's H1N1?

Heres what Globe and Mail say about it!

Q: My three-year-old daughter got the flu two weeks ago. The doctor said it was H1N1 but it was not confirmed because the region doesn’t do routine testing. My husband and I did not get sick. How can this be? We took no special precautions. Now we’re wondering: Should we get the vaccine or are we immune to this flu?

A: You have raised several interesting issues related to H1N1 and vaccination. First, about 90 per cent of all the flu cases in Canada today are caused H1N1. There is very little seasonal flu so far. That’s why doctors assume that cases of the flu are H1N1. Testing everyone is not considered a good use of resources.

Second, there is a common assumption that everyone exposed to the H1N1 virus will get the flu. In fact, the large majority of people exposed to the virus will not get sick.

Even though you were in close contact with someone sick with swine flu, healthy young adults like yourselves have powerful immune systems that fight off a constant barrage of pathogens. When you are exposed to a virus, your body will produce antigens and develop immune resistance. In some people, this happens with very few disease symptoms; others will get quite sick. A vaccine does the same thing by tricking the body into thinking it is being exposed the virus.

Many people argue that there is no need to be vaccinated, that we should depend on our immune systems and bolster them with good nutrition. That is a bit of a gamble.

With H1N1, a new strain, it is anticipated that about one-third of the population will get sick. To date, it is estimated that about five per cent of Canadians have fallen ill with H1N1, so a lot more sick people are expected in the coming months.

While it is true that most cases of the flu are “self-limiting” – meaning you get better with rest and fluids, in rare instances people can get gravely ill and die. Again, the risk of complications is greatest in those with weaker immune systems – babies, children, people with chronic health conditions – but some healthy people will get severe illness.

So far in Canada, 1,779 people have been hospitalized with H1N1, including 351 who ended up in intensive care and required ventilators. There have been 92 confirmed deaths.

That is why public health officials recommend that everyone by vaccinated unless they had a laboratory-confirmed case of H1N1. That would include you and your daughter. Even if you have immunity to H1N1, the vaccine will do no harm.

Should I Get the H1N1 Shot?

Health and safety

Should I get the H1N1 shot?

Volunteer Kevin Fairbairn holds a sign as he encourages residents of the Downtown Eastside to enter a clinic to receive the H1N1 flu vaccine in Vancouver, B.C., on Monday October 26, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS

We answer six key questions on Canada's largest-ever mass immunization campaign

Caroline Alphonso

TORONTO — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009 12:00AM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009 1:53PM EDT

Provinces and territories have embarked on Canada's largest-ever mass immunization campaign. But with poll after poll showing less than half of Canadians willing to roll up their sleeves, and doubts swirling about the safety of the H1N1 pandemic vaccine, public health officials have a tough slog ahead in debunking the myths. Canada's chief public health officer, David Butler-Jones, expressed frustration at the anti-vaccine sentiment. Canadians, he said, have a choice: Protect themselves with a safe and effective vaccine, or risk severe disease and even death. "We have the potential to prevent tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths by a simple process of taking advantage of the vaccine that we have," Dr. Butler-Jones said Monday.

1. Will the vaccine give you the flu? AND what about side effects?

The vaccine cannot give you influenza, because it doesn't contain a live virus. In fact, it contains antigens that trick the immune system into thinking it has been attacked by the H1N1 virus so it produces antibodies. It takes about a week to 10 days for immunity to develop after being vaccinated. While some people are scared or nervous about getting a needle, after the initial jab the side effects are similar to those seen with seasonal-flu vaccines, including headaches and sore muscles.

2. It's a new vaccine. But has it been tested enough?

Health Canada says that, based on the results of thousands of clinical trials around the world, it is satisfied the vaccine is safe. And the adjuvant, a chemical product that boosts the immune response, has been tested on thousands with the H5N1 avian flu drug and proven effective, the regulator says. The vaccine confers more than 90-per-cent immunity in healthy adults, more than the seasonal flu vaccine. Researchers cannot do studies in millions of people before licensing a vaccine, which would be too time-consuming during a pandemic. Post-licensing surveillance, in which people report their side effects, will be conducted in Canada.

3. Can you trust the adjuvant?

Canada's vaccine uses an adjuvant which consists of squalene (shark liver oil), DL-alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) and polysorbate 80 (an emulsifier also used in ice cream). There were claims that squalene, part of the adjuvant used in the anthrax vaccine, was to blame for Gulf War syndrome, but the evidence just wasn't there. Claims that mercury in vaccine causes autism have also been debunked. The amount of mercury in a typical vaccine is less than in a can of tuna. The adjuvant used in Canada has been tested with the bird flu vaccine and there was no negative response to it.

4. Should you get the vaccine if you're pregnant?

Pregnant women are one of the most at-risk groups. Their chances of getting very sick and potentially dying from swine flu are four to five times higher than for non-pregnant women, according to experts, and there is also a risk to the fetus. Michael Gardam, director of infectious diseases prevention and control for the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion, noted recently that there is no evidence that any component of this vaccine is harmful to the fetus. Women more than 20 weeks pregnant and those in earlier stages of pregnancy with a history of chronic illnesses should consider getting the adjuvanted vaccine, until the unadjuvanted vaccine is available, public health officials say.

5. What should you do to prevent the spread of H1N1?

• Frequent hand-washing with soap and water curbs the spread of germs;
• Cough into your arm and stay home if you're sick;
• Antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu, will help fight off the virus. But they should be prescribed by a doctor and used for treatment, not as a preventive measure;
• Don't all rush to get the vaccine at the same time. The vaccine is slowly trickling in to provinces and territories, and health officials want pregnant women, adults with chronic conditions, health-care workers, people living in remote places and schoolchildren to be first in line.

6. Should you get vaccinated?

Consider this: 5,000 people have died worldwide, and hundreds of thousands of people have been infected with H1N1. The most recent death in Canada was a preteen girl from Cornwall, Ont., who had no pre-existing medical conditions. True, there have been few H1N1 deaths overall in Canada, but this virus attacks the young, unlike the seasonal flu, which burdens the elderly. Adults get one dose; children between the ages of six months and nine years get two half-doses at least 21 days apart.

Swine Flu Virus Found In Ontario Turkey Operation

Since Neko has to work on a Project, She is going to be sharing some articles written by other people! Have a good article you want to share? Give us a link!
This article is from The Globe and Mail!

Swine flu virus found in Ontario turkey operation

Bad things happen “There are about 2,400 miscarriages a day in the U.S. You’ll see things that would have happened anyway. But the vaccine doesn’t cause miscarriages. It also doesn’t cause auto accidents, but they happen.” Jay Butler of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says some people will have heart attacks, strokes or miscarriages after getting the swine-flu vaccination, but they shouldn’t blame the shot REUTERS

Ontario's top medical official says outbreak a "clarion call" for poultry, livestock workers to get both the seasonal and H1N1 flu shot

TORONTO — The Canadian Press Published on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009 12:21PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009 3:05PM EDT

Ontario's top medical official says an outbreak of swine flu among turkeys is a “clarion call” for poultry and livestock workers to get both the seasonal and H1N1 flu shots.

Dr. Arlene King, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, says “the risk to human health from this situation is minimal” after some turkeys tested positive for the H1N1, or swine flu virus.

Provincial officials say the outbreak affected an Ontario breeder's flock of turkeys which were not destined for the food chain.

Dr. Deb Stark, Ontario's chief veterinarian, says the situation likely involved human to bird transmission.

Dr. Stark says the flock operator voluntarily quarantined the infected birds and put “movement controls in place.”

She says the finding “does not pose a food safety risk.”

While officials declined to name the farm, the Turkey Farmers of Canada said on its website that the birds belonged to Hybrid Turkeys, a breeder based in Kitchener, Ont.

The findings will be of keen interest internationally, coming just days after the publication of a study that suggested turkeys are not susceptible to the pandemic virus.

The work, done by researchers in Italy, was published late last week in the online journal Eurosurveillance.

Well-known influenza researcher Dr. Ilaria Capua and colleagues at the OIE collaborating centre for infectious diseases at the human-animal interface in Venice tried to infect turkeys with the new H1N1 virus. The OIE is the acronym used by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.

Turkeys are generally very susceptible to influenza viruses and one would expect to see illness among birds if they became infected with a flu virus, Dr. Capua said in an interview Tuesday.

But while her team exposed turkeys to massive doses of H1N1 virus, they saw no evidence of infection in the birds. Nor did they find any evidence of virus in the lungs or tissues of the turkeys.

Dr. Capua said teams of researchers in Britain and the U.S. have also tried to experimentally infect turkeys, also without success.

Ontario isn't the first jurisdiction to report finding H1N1 virus in turkeys. Officials in Chile announced in August that they had found the virus in turkey there.

But some leading influenza experts have quietly expressed skepticism about that earlier report, musing whether lab contamination could be responsible for the finding.

Dr. Capua said a lot of questions need to be answered about the new discovery in Ontario, including whether the full genetic sequence of the virus has been checked to ensure that it is the pandemic virus and not another H1N1 variant.

“Before we say that this virus can spill into turkeys or into birds, I would really make sure that it's the right virus. And that there's no possible concern about any human error or contamination and that all the internal genes have been sequenced,” she said.