If you haven’t had a flu shot yet this year, get one. This from the CDC, which issued an urgent call for flu shots today, warning that this year’s flu season is turning out to be particularly deadly and still has weeks or even months to go. And if you’re an adult between the ages of 18 and 65, they mean you.
“Flu can be serious for anyone, and it can kill,” said Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Tom Frieden, M.D. “Vaccination is the single most important thing you can do to protect yourself.”
Most worrisome to officials is who’s getting sick – because it’s not the elderly and infirm, as you might expect. Instead, more than 60 percent of those hospitalized were between the ages of 18 and 64, according to CDC reports published today in this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). And a scary 60 percent of flu deaths have been among those 25 to 65.
This is a big change from past flu seasons, in which adults under 65 have made up just 35-45 percent of those seriously ill enough to be hospitalized.
The CDC is calling for flu shots for everyone except babies under 6 months, including pregnant women. The flu can kill a healthy child in as little as three days, CDC officials warned in a report issued in the October 28 issue of Pediatrics.
This year’s biggest flu threat is the H1N1 virus, informally known as swine flu, a virulent strain of the virus that caused a worldwide pandemic in 2009.
More here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/02/20/urgent-cdc-warning-of-threat-from-h1n1-swine-flu/
1|1|Thanks for nothing..My mom died at 57 of the Swine Flu shot|pattyo|pattyolc@aol.com|02:20:47|02/26/2014|
No need to go into detail
2|2|Don't blame the messenger....|inthesticks|jbsimon@ymail.com|09:04:09|02/26/2014|
....eom