San Diego County's first swine flu death reported

[MindPilot]

Source: San Diego Union Tribune

SAN DIEGO – A 20-year-old woman is the first person to die of swine flu in San Diego County, local health officials reported Tuesday.

(snip)

She started having respiratory problems Sunday and went to the emergency room of a local hospital the next day, said Wooten, who wouldn't identify the medical center.

The patient died in the emergency room without being hospitalized. Infectious disease specialists confirmed that she was infected with swine flu, also called H1N1 influenza A, just before 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Wooten said the victim was apparently healthy before this illness and had not traveled outside the region.


Read more: http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jun/16/bn16flu2-first-sd-death/?metro

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Whoa! 20, healthy and downed by the flu! And check out the comments at the end of the article; word on the street is the outbreaks are way under-reported.

[murielm99]

1. Someone at DU posted that their child had been

diagnosed with H1N1. Fortunately, the child recovered nicely.

But they were discouraged from reporting it.

They don't want to panic people? But shouldn't we be prepared?

[tiptoe]

3. H1N1 Flu and Vitamin D (May 2009, John Cannell, MD) - x

H1N1 Flu and Vitamin D - x   (What to do about the possibility of an H1N1 flu pandemic)

[lapfog_1]

2. The last time I ran the numbers

the mortality rate for this outbreak of H1N1 was about .5%... which sounds fairly benign...

until you understand that this variant seems to be extremely infectious, with little natural resistance in the population. The other difference between this particular variant is the infection rate in otherwise healthy adults. Normally when we have 30,000 people a year die from other flu infections, the majority of victims are elderly and possibly in assisted living facilities. Not much is made of 3 or 4 people dying in the old folks home every winter. 3 or 4 people in your office building... that is going to scare some people.

Anyway, at .5%, if 30 to 40 million become infected in the US in the next 12 months, that's 150,000 deaths.

Pretty sure that's why the CDC and WHO are still pushing the panic button on this one, even though it's disappeared from the news cycle for the most part.

Hopefully the .5% is too high and the virus actually weakens as time progresses. The large concern is that it mutates and incorporates a few other genes over the summer, becoming even easier to contract next winter.

[northernlights]

7. it already spreads quite easily

not only person to person, but I think there has been at least one report of person to pig at a farm.

Personally, I think the real concern is that it picks up some serious virulence factor genes *or* resistance (to tamiflu and/or relenza) genes...or both. That would be my nightmare scenario.

[Sigh Sister]

8. They have found a mutation in Brazil

They don't yet know what it means in terms of virulence.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jOVEa-TOAEQ3t1NAik9vzooON1FA

[tiptoe]

9. CDC rejects report of mutant H1N1 strain in Brazil

CDC rejects report of mutant H1N1 strain in Brazil = x

[Sigh Sister]

10. Thanks for the update. n/t

[Kind of Blue]

4. I really dislike the "in the region"

report and nondisclosure of the hospital. What's the big deal about where "in the region" the poor girl was from?

[MindPilot]

6. I think that means the woman hadn't been to Mexico

Yeah, it does seem like a bureaucratic doublespeak way to say it.

[Sigh Sister]

5. I found this site

that is continually updated with H1N1 news articles from around the world. For those interested:

http://trancy.net/

[Kind of Blue]

11. SD County health officials announced

on the news today that the woman's immune system over-reacted to the infection. But not in the article on the website of the same station that I heard this news.
http://www.10news.com/news/19772522/detail.html