UPDATE #1: January 12: Aetna said this week it has seen a spike in flu cases this year but it is not resulting in more inpatient admissions and it is budgeting about $40 million to $50 million for a normal flu season. That compares with $100 million it spent during the flu season in 2009. -- Thx to Sheri Nakken for the citation
UPDATE #2: (FROM JAN 11, Gail Collins in the NY TIMES)
“We have an epidemic of flu every year,” said the New York City health commissioner, Thomas Farley. If there are alarming headlines, he added, it’s because public officials are “trying to get out the message to get your vaccine.” In a phone interview, Farley explained that the city declares an epidemic when more than 5 percent of the people going to emergency rooms are complaining of flu symptoms, which is unusual only in the sense that it doesn’t happen in warm weather. He also managed to work “get your vaccine” into virtually every sentence...
Maybe the national über-angst is because the last two years were really light ones for flu, and we’ve forgotten what a bad one feels like. Also, it’s possible that we’re talking about it more because there isn’t all that much going on.
2 comments:
Your blog is maybe the only source of up-to-the-minute "pandemic" information about influenza. As a front line health care worker, I agree that fl has already peaked, and it's not as bad as everyone has made it out to be anyway.
I stumbled across your blog searching for statistics on the flu and deaths. Excellent reading. The statistic which was quoted to me was eighteen million US deaths from swine flu. Ridiculous. And this is not a foolish person, in most other aspects of life. I have book marked the blog and look forward to future articles.
Post a Comment