H1N1: It’s Coming To Get You, Oh Wait Not Anymore.
Earlier this week Katie went in to the doctor with most of the symptoms of H1N1. Thankfully it turned out to just be a run of the mill upper respiratory viral thing. What floored me was what the doctor said off offhandedly. H1N1 has peaked and is already on the way out. I guess I must have missed the memo.As I sit here in bed, feeling the first stages of Katie’s little viral friend introducing itself to my immune system (my reward for taking good care of her I guess), I ask myself where was the frolicking in the streets in jubilant celebration over avoiding this next coming of the black death that the media made H1N1 out to be. How can it have peaked here in the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere and I missed it. <Insert living under a rock joke here> While the World Health Organizations says pneumonia and influenza mortality is still elevated above epidemic levels as of Dec 11th we’ve been seeing a decline for a few weeks now.
To find some answers, I did a quick search on CNN for H1N1, I was going to search Fox News but I didn’t really need Glen Beck telling me I have to buy gold to ward of H1N1. Now the first thing CNN.com asked me is if I meant “hun.” Yes I actually was looking for information on a millennial past horse tribe from the steppes. Here are a couple of headlines that caught my eye… “Poll: America Losing Confidence in H1N1 Battle,” this one was from the middle of November so about a month after the peak of the infection rate. I’m glad I’m not the only person who missed the memo. I’m now worried about uninformed people taking polls, thanks CNN. My favorite headline though was “Cat Catches H1N1″ I’m very glad when this news story broke we didn’t have a repeat of the good old plague days when we would have just gathered up all the cats in a sack and tossed them in the river.
Now this is not to say that globally the situation is over but in our little corner I think we can breath a sigh of relief, just not in each others faces please. If you would like to read more about the global situation as it relates to H1N1 I strongly encourage you to read the WHO Pandemic Updates. If that’s not your bag then I encourage you to go back to surfing the news waves for the next tid bit about Tiger Woods and have a good day.
December 16th, 2009 at 11:54 AM
Not only that but it has had a whopping .02% fatality rate.