Swine Flu, yet again

[oxystat]

Prologue: These things are never as short as I intend at the start

Comments

[oxystat]

My pleasure... glad to be of service, my dear.

[keastree]

Is the Canadian Health Service actually testing all cases for the H1N1 virus?

In the US, as of 30 August, the CDC stopped testing and started using indirect modeling to determine the spread of the H1N1 virus. I think that as a math guy, you see the problem with this approach. Thus, it is not actually known how much of the mortality and morbidity is caused by this specific disease, and how much is attributable to seasonal flu, and how much is due to other causes. The lack of science is troubling.

[oxystat]

Testing is no longer being done for all influenzas, so there is a bit of fuzziness in infection rates.

Anyone hospitalized (and individuals who are otherwise of interest) are typed and something like 99% of the flu isolates tested recently have been swine flu. In effect, there is no seasonal flu circulating in the province.

[keastree]

Unfortunately, they are not doing any extensive testing here, even in hospitals. CDC issued a bunch of very fluffy symptomatic guidelines for diagnosis that are being extrapolated with a mathematical model into cases where I don't think H1N1 is the issue.

Of course we take the standard flu season precautions in my house, because of my bucket of problems, but that has never included a flu shot, and won't this year either.

[oxystat]

One of the advantages of not having children in public schools, I imagine, having that option.

[misslynx]

Thanks for posting all this. I've linked to it from my LJ.

[oxystat]

Great. Emailing you to tell you to do what you wanted with the material was on my to do list.