Rising pneumonia, reassuring vaccine safety

On the busiest travel day of the year in the United States, there was unwelcome and welcome news from the US CDC.  On the one hand, Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC, announced that the H1N1 flu pandemic has been driving a surge in bacterial pneumonia, especially those due to a germ called pneumococcus.  Importantly, the reports indicate that relatively younger Americans – ages 25-49 years old – are being most affected by the pneumonias.  More reassuringly, she reported that the studies of side effects following H1N1 vaccine do not indicate any unexpected adverse effects.

This has been a difficult season for many Americans as they tried to figure out what to do about the flu.  Many friends have called and emailed me with a lot of legitimate questions about the risk of the disease vs. the risks and benefits of the flu vaccine.  These are smart people but they are struggling to figure out if the flu is really something to fear or if it is just “media hype”.  Add to that a vaccine that has come fairly late in the season but was produced at a record pace and you have legitimate questions about the vaccine’s safety. 

Also, Americans are getting information from everywhere these days.  Consider for a moment that fellow Huffington Post blogger Bill Maher’s column on flu and the vaccine was shared more than 1100 times on Facebook and you can see how people can struggle to sort the facts from opinions and to figure out what to do.  

It’s useful to remember that when the pandemic started, Dr. Schuchat’s job was pretty hard.  There was little experience with this virus so most of what she had to go on was information from pandemics of nearly 100 years ago and some limited information from Mexico.  With this information, she and her colleagues had to make recommendations, set priorities, communicate basic, factual messages to millions of Americans.  And in spite of all this uncertainty, in the lead up to this pandemic, an increase in bacterial pneumonias was projected.  In fact, this blog called pneumococcal vaccination the “low hanging fruit of pandemic prevention”.

So, maybe the news today will help people to consider the balance and in retrospect, illustrate why the CDC has been worried about this virus all along.  The flu is driving up the incidence of a serious, life-threatening secondary infection.  These infections are affecting 25-49 year old, not just the elderly or young babies, a sign that this can still pack a punch.  Finally, the surveys of adverse events are reassuring that the vaccine is not causing anything unexpected.

If you do and want to protect your family and yourself, here’s some of what you can do about it.  Get the vaccine.  Wash your hands often with soap and water, or an alcohol-based wash if soap is unavailable. Stay home when you’re ill and avoid exposure to other sick people.  Get to know the symptoms of more serious pneumonia and seek medical attention immediately.

At the end of the day we all have to judge the facts for ourselves.  For me and my family, we chose the vaccine for our kids and us.

 

Follow Dr. Orin Levine on Twitter: www.twitter.com/orinlevine

Comments

[quidam56]

07:17 PM on 11/26/2009

Our very health care system we depend and trust to keep us and our communitie­s healthy and safe are infecting us with a fatal hospital acquired infection. As a former embalmer I can tell you've I've seen some serious stuff like AIDS and what it does to a body, the new AIDS is called MRSA/VRE and no one in the state of Tennessee or Virginia have been listening for over five years of my concerns, eleven children dead in Tennessee this flu season, how many more children's deaths are acceptable before we demand our health boards and agencies make hospitals clean up their filthy facilities­. My father got MRSA and it took ten months to rot him to death. http://www­.wisecount­yissues.co­m/?p=62 The hospital swore in court his care was "the acceptable standards" for this area. I wonder if even one of those children might be alive if someone had at least listened back in 2004.

[Dr. Orin Levine]

09:19 PM on 11/30/2009

Antibiotic resistant infections­, like MRSA (stands for methicilli­n-resistan­t Staph. aureus), are important and another reason for reducing unnecessar­y antibiotic use and using bacterial vaccines like pneumococc­al vaccine (Note that pneumococc­al infections are often resistant to leading antibiotic­s as well). The particular bacteria you're referring to is both a major problem in hospitals and in communitie­s themselves so bear in mind that we need to both improve our personal hygiene and also do everything possible to prevent passing the germ in the hospital.