Sunday, May 03, 2009
News, Health + Fitness, In this Issue...
Swine flu
Don’t freak out. It’s not as bad as bird flu.
Georgia Division of Public Health’s Recommendations for Preventing Infection
- Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
- Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
- Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
- If you get sick, stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
There is no vaccine available at this time, so it is important to take steps to prevent spreading the virus to others. If people are ill, they should attempt to stay at home and limit contact with others. If you are caring for a sick family member in your home, CDC has provided valuable information for home care and for protecting yourself and family members at www.cdc.gov/swineflu.
For up to the minute updates, visit www.health.state.ga.us, or sign up for the state Division of Public Health’s twitter account at www.twitter.com.gadhr.
BY DIANE LOUPE
The last time the nation got all worked up about the swine flu, more people died from side effects of the vaccine than from the flu itself. And while a reported case of swine flu in Georgia and news of deaths elsewhere are alarming, it may be helpful to know that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 36,000 Americans die each year due to complications from plain old seasonal flu.
“What we should be doing is washing our hands,” Chad D. Costley, a general practitioner in Decatur, wrote in an e-mail to his patients after news coverage of the swine flu prompted a rash of worried inquiries. “What we shouldn't be doing is panicking.”
But news of the outbreak, and the accompanying media frenzy, sent folks worldwide into a dither. A Texas child died, a woman was hospitalized in Georgia, and cases of the new swine flu strain had been confirmed in at least 13 states as of press time on April 30.
According to news reports, Georgia’s first confirmed case of the swine flu was that of an unidentified Kentucky woman hospitalized in LaGrange, about an hour's drive southwest of Atlanta. The woman recently visited Cancun, Mexico, where many cases of swine flu originated. State health officials say the woman left Mexico on April 21 and was hospitalized April 26.
The World Health Organization thinks the disease will reach a pandemic stage, meaning it can spread easily from person to person across the globe. Georgia health officials say they expect to see more cases here, and perhaps some deaths. That’s scary until you understand that most strains of flu trigger deaths, principally in the very old, very young and infirm.
The word “pandemic” may be fear-inducing because of its association with the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed between 20 million and 40 million people. But the word merely denotes the presence of a virus throughout the world, not that it will be as deadly as the 1918 flu, says University of Georgia scientist Ralph Tripp, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in animal health vaccine development.
“They’ve got a lot of folks thinking this is Armageddon, but this is inaccuracy in reporting,” says Tripp, who is actively working on genetic strategies to combat the new flu strain. “Most of the cases reported to be swine flu have not even been confirmed to be flu.”
Back in 1976, a 19-year-old Army private in New Jersey became ill and died from a strain of swine flu, a type completely unrelated to the current strain. The subsequent outbreak sent people into a panic, prompting federal officials to order a massive vaccine campaign. President Gerald Ford made pleas to the public to get the shot. But that vaccine was blamed for 400 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disease that causes paralysis. After more than two dozen people died and hundreds of others were paralyzed, the vaccination program was called off.
THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER’S SWINE FLU
Many different strains of virus trigger influenza, so health officials make an educated guess on which ones will prevail during a flu season, then prepare vaccines to combat those strains. Unfortunately, current vaccines aren’t effective against the new swine flu, known in science shorthand as H1N1.
“What we see in the United States, or have been seeing so far, has been milder, has been less severe than what has been reported out of Mexico,” CDC acting director Richard Besser said during a news conference last week.
This new strain of flu is nothing to sneeze at, though. It spreads easily, and the CDC states on a special Web site devoted to it: “Most people will not have immunity to this new virus and, as it continues to spread, more cases, more hospitalizations and more deaths are expected in the coming days and weeks.”
The CDC is working with state and local health departments, investigating cases and working with the World Health Organization, the Pan-American Health Organization, Canada and Mexico. Last week, the CDC recommended postponing nonessential travel to Mexico, and posted guidelines on things individuals can do to reduce their risk of infection if they do go there. The CDC is also reaching into a strategic national stockpile of antiviral drugs and giving them to the states.
“This is to ensure that if these drugs are needed, states have them on hand, and they don't have to wait,” Besser said.
The new swine flu is far less deadly than the much-publicized “bird flu,” says UGA’s Tripp. “Bird flu,” or H5N1 avian flu, has a “substantially higher” mortality rate. But the modern version of swine flu—H1N1—has one insidious trait.
“What makes this strain interesting is that is has a tripartite composition of swine, avian and human genes,” says Tripp. “Given this, most of the human population likely has limited immunity to the new H1N1 strain, increasing its pandemic potential.”
An effective antidote may well have a Georgia Bulldog pedigree. Tripp and his colleagues are testing ways to defuse the current strain, as well as to learn how it spreads and how deadly it is. Working in UGA’s biosafety level 3 facility, which was built to contain emerging viruses, Tripp and his team are tinkering with the genetics of the virus to deactivate it.
In middle school biology class, students learn that RNA is part of the genetic material that allows organisms like viruses to replicate. Tripp’s team is working with molecules of small interfering RNA that can get into a cell and stop or split up the messenger RNA that helps viruses reproduce.
Similar approaches have been used to combat respiratory syncytial virus, the most common cause of pneumonia in infants in the United States. This sort of antiviral strategy for use in humans against the current version of swine flu could be developed within a year, says Tripp.
Meanwhile, public health departments, schools, churches and other institutions are trying to figure out appropriate ways to react to the new sickness. At Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport, airline officials are working with the CDC and health officials to monitor and report cases of communicable disease aboard aircraft.
“We are well prepared for incidents such as this and are currently working closely with the CDC, other federal agencies and the airlines,” says Hartsfield-Jackson spokesman John Kennedy.
It would be very difficult for a passenger to prove that they contracted this illness from traveling in an airplane, says Atlanta attorney Don Mitchell, a former Delta executive and an expert in aviation law. Even in the case of an Atlanta man with tuberculosis who traveled via airplane last year, no fellow passengers ever contracted his disease.
Swifter than the transmission of flu is the flow of information about it.
"From e-mail, Twittering and texting—and whatever technology might develop in the future—people have the opportunity to be in touch with one another in a way that has never been the case during a prior epidemic, and that will make a huge difference in keeping track of the disease," says Richard Rothenberg, a former CDC official who is now a professor at Georgia State University's Institute of Public Health.
Patients of Dr. Costley are getting frequent informational e-mail updates and recommendations from the primary care physician, who praises the CDC’s response to the outbreak.
There’s no reason to walk around with a mask over your face, says Costley, because the odds of encountering a person with the swine flu are very low so far, although that could change quickly as the virus spreads. Still, he advises against panic.
“Lots more kids have died of car accidents than of swine flu,” he says, “but we’re still driving.”
SP
Editor’s Note: Part 3 of the series “Gangs, Juveniles and Crime” has been put postponed so The Sunday Paper could publish this story about swine flu. It will appear next week.