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Strollerderby
A universal flu vaccine has been tested and could be the holy grail of influenza prevention
My heart breaks when I see a sick baby, even if the child isn’t mine. After all, little ones often struggle to express what aches they’re experiencing, so often times all they can do is moan or cry, and it can be tough to help them without really knowing what’s wrong.
What makes me even sadder is knowing a child is sick, but the illness was preventable. Take, for instance, the flu. A shot is available annually that protects against the most common strains of influenza, but many parents opt against getting it for their kids due to unfounded fears of vaccinations.
Hopefully it’ll be good news for all parents upon hearing that a new vaccine has been tested that would prevent against all strains of influenza for 10 years at a time, and could be used to prevent around a billion people a year from contracting the disease.
The good news is that getting a flu shot will be easier than it was last year when the swine flu pandemic peaked before the vaccine was widely available.
About 30 million doses are already available through doctors’ offices, pharmacies and other retailers. That’s the first of a total of 165 million flu vaccine doses which are being shipped to the United States, according to USA Today.
The even better news it that thanks to the federal Affordable Care Act, this is the first time that Medicare and private health insurance companies are offering flu vaccine without co-pays or deductibles. Under the federal Vaccines for Children program, even uninsured children are covered for flu shots.
So you ready for the bad news? Continue reading »
A mom who opted out on the swine flu shots for kids at her daughter’s school is spitting mad – the school immunized the child anyway.
Natasha Jones told WSOCTV she’d told the school nurse at her daughter’s South Carolina Elementary School she specifically didn’t want the girl inoculated against swine flu. Continue reading »
Workers at a children’s hospital aren’t being forced to submit to an H1N1 vaccine, so why are they suing the hospital? Because the facility is forcing those who don’t take the shot to wear a mask to protect the sick children from possible contamination.
A rep for the nurse’s union at the Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego told 10 News it’s like a scarlet letter that they’re being forced to wear. Continue reading »
You might have heard by now that some families are deliberately exposing their kids to H1N1 in the hopes of building up an immunity to the virus while it is in a relatively mild form and few people are dying from it.
That’s not necessarily as crazy as it sounds. In the days before the chicken pox vaccine, chicken pox parties were a good way to ensure that your child got chicken pox before she or he outgrew the window where it’s a relatively minor illness. Chicken pox in adults is serious, and the only immunity to be had was through suffering it out as a kid.
Swine flu is another matter. A relatively new illness that could be mutating fast, swine flu is not something we all have to go through, and it is known to be dangerous. Continue reading »
Some pundits are saying that the horrific Foot Hood shooting yesterday was a “terrorist act.” Some describe the shooter, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, as a “Muslim extremist” because of comments he made online. Hasan reportedly is suffering from PTSD, and is an Army psychiatrist who himself was trained to treat PTSD. Here’s a video of Hasan taken a few hours before the terrible shooting. Continue reading »
The numbers of kids dying from swine flu are climbing in the United States, and last week was a doozy. According to the CDC, nineteen kids died of confirmed cases of H1N1 between Oct. 18 and 24.
That brings the number of kids (everyone under eighteen) killed by swine flu to one hundred fifteen since the pandemic began in April. Sixty-five of those cases have happened since school began (after August 30). Continue reading »
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