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Strollerderby
By the time H1N1 vaccines reached the West Coast, where I live, it was hard to ignore that nagging feeling that, while standing in remarkably long lines last year, I was overreacting. “Was I participating in a nationwide panic?” I thought more than once. After all, I wasn’t also spending hours a week tracking down seasonal flu shots. Just H1N1 — it sounded so serious.
As the so-called “swine flu” pandemic marks its anniversary this month — and the CDC and health experts all over the nation look back on the numbers — one mother still lives with her regret. Jessica Holt had heard all about H1N1, but knew it wasn’t going to happen to her.
Then her son got sent home from school, and the very worst happened. The very worst. Continue reading »
New evidence shows what health authorities have known all along – H1N1 is disproportionately hard on young adults and children.
Since April 2009, the pandemic flu virus has killed 17,000 Americans – far less than a typical flu season. But up to 13,000 of those were adults under 65, and 800 to 1,800 of them were children.
H1N1 infected, in all, up to 57 million people. Those numbers are based on computer modeling, since there’s no accurate way to count flu cases.
In a different study, researchers were surprised to discover a rare heart infection occurred in four children with H1N1 in less than a month.
The swine flu season is still in full swing, but many parents say they’re not going to get the second swine flu shot for their kids.
And that doesn’t make health officials happy. Continue reading »
With just four days left in 2009, the time has come to look back on the year that was. It was a year dominated by headlines, one that began with the inauguration of America’s first African-American President and ended in a massive run on robotic hamsters. In between there was swine flu, the finding of Jaycee Dugard, Jon Minus Kate, and Balloon Boy.
Watch as Whirled Interactive “waves” goodbye to 2009 on Google Wave. Considering our collective addiction to all things social media, it’s an appropriate way to bid adieu to the year that was:
I’ve never been a fan of perfect attendance awards. I realize that might not be a popular opinion, but it seems like they reward one of two things: 1) Good luck, or 2) Presenteeism. Either kids are exceedingly lucky and never get sick on a school day, or they do get sick and come to school anyway, spreading germs to everyone else.
It’s a mixed message, one that is sort of blindly accepted in a normal school year. But swine flu is changing the rules this fall, and it has school administrators rethinking their perfect attendance awards.
Swine flu is the big bad of respiratory illnesses this year, but as cases wane experts are reminding us that swine flu isn’t the only thing causes kids to cough and wheeze.
A mother’s decision not to give her child the swine flu shot has landed her in court. But it isn’t the government sending her there. It’s the child’s father.
Neither of the parents are being named to protect the identify of their nine-year-old daughter, but the Telegraph reported Dad wants his daughter to get the shot. Continue reading »
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Monica Bielanko 
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Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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