Swine flu declared a national emergency

On Thursday, President Obama signed a proclamation that declared swine flu a national emergency. On Saturday, the white house made a statement to the press saying that “The proclamation enhances the ability of our nation’s medical treatment facilities to handle a surge in H1N1 patients by allowing, as needed, the waiver of a certain standard federal requirements on a case-by-case basis.

Sixty million people have gotten the winter flu vaccine – probably because they’ve been paying more attention to flu warnings in general, caused by the current outbreak of swine flu. There have been an unprecedented number of seasonal flu shots for October, but usually they don’t administer the vaccine until later in the fall. There are 85 million doses of the seasonal flu vaccine available now; usually there aren’t as many vaccines available so early in the fall. Roughly 100 million doses are used during the fall season.

The swine flu has caused more than 1000 deaths in the U.S. so far, also the flu has been more widespread than it has ever been in previous years. CDC Director Dr. Thomas Friden told reporters on Friday. “To be in the peak of flu season in October is extremely unusual”. He went on further to say that “We expect that the influenza will occur in waves and we can’t predict how high, how far of how long the wave will go or when the next wave will come. At the press conference on Friday, Friden said that the government doesn’t test everyone to confirm swine flu, so there aren’t an exact number of infected people.

Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity. The only states that don’t have swine flu are Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and South Carolina. Friden said that there a re at least two different types of flu causing illnesses; test from about 5,000 patients suggest that nearly all flu cases are swine flu. This year’s seasonal flu vaccines won’t protect against swine flu; a different vaccine is needed. Vaccine production takes several months to be produced. Some scientists say they have already started working on vaccines when swine flu was identified in April. But apparently, it was to late in the season for scientist to include swine flu in any of the seasonal doses.

Because of all the vaccine delays, the government has updated their optimistic estimate of 120 million vaccine doses that would have been available by mid- October. There have only been 11 million vaccines available for health departments to distribute. Dr. Friden stated that “It’s frustrating to all of us. We wish there are more vaccines available.” The World Health Organization reported more that 414,000 laboratory confirmed cases of H1N1 worldwide, with nearly 5000 deaths.

I believe that if people take time out to truly practice proper hygiene, you wouldn’t have H1N1 spreading all over the place. Today, people can be really disgusting, and I have experienced this first hand. For example, last year I took a trip to Albany. When I was on the plane, it was very crowded and hot; usually I would be able to go to sleep and forget how uncomfortable I was, but something compelled me to stay awake. I turned my head, to find this man sneezing without covering his mouth. At first it didn’t bother me, but then he started sneezing repeatedly without covering his mouth. Then his final sneeze ended with a long string of mucus emanating from his nose. He then rolls the snot in his hands and wipes it on the seat next to him. I was never the same again, and hopefully that man changed his ways as well.

Hopefully you guys have learned form my experiences and try to improve on what you already know. I’ve posted three videos about swine flu prevention with a little rap video form Dr. John Clarke which I thought was funny.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33458709#33459468