H1N1 Update
March 22nd, 2010 by PotatoSpring is in the air, and the flu season is pretty much over. Colds are a different matter: everyone I know seems to have caught this nasty cold that’s going around. I’ve been fighting it myself for almost 3 weeks now: I’ll be miserably sick for a day or two, then feel almost all better for a few days, just to have it sneak back up on me again when I’m not looking.
The H1N1 seems to have burned itself out in North America, and indeed it’s been months since I’ve even heard it mentioned on the news. Steven Novella over at the Neurologica blog provides an update of how it played out in the US. I believe the numbers for Canada are similar, but I haven’t gone to look them up yet. What’s interesting is that we were hit quite hard here in London with it, very early on in the flu season, but then it fizzled out shortly after the vaccination program/holidays. I can’t say whether it’s because the vaccination (and hand hygiene) program was so effective, or if it would have gone away on its own… but either way, it wasn’t all that bad. What’s interesting is that the normal seasonal flu didn’t look to be as bad this year for us too.
Now I expect people will start to second-guess the vaccination program, since there was so much hand-wringing about it to begin with. I’m still not really convinced H1N1 was “overhyped” that much — it did look like it had the potential to be quite serious, and based on the information I had at the time, I don’t regret at all getting the shot myself.
March 22nd, 2010 at 10:33 pm
I caught a cold about a week and a half ago. Got right on the Cold F/X and really only had about 2.5 bad days (luckily it was Friday/Sat/Sun). I did notice though, after a couple days of feeling better, my throat kind of got scratchy again, but after that day everything was fine. Three weeks is pretty tough man!