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No Reason To Panic Over Swine Flu

Despite first U.S. death, officials call for calm

April 29, 2009

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Addressing the swine flu issue earlier this week, President Obama said, “While these is cause for concern, there is no cause for alarm.” Even with the first confirmed U.S. death from swine flu, health officials say the president’s view is correct.

“As of now, there is no need for people to panic. So far, there have been very few cases reported,” said William Sutker, M.D., chief of infectious diseases at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. “At this point, it is unclear if the swine flu outbreak will develop in to a full-blown pandemic.”

Although there are many myths and misconceptions floating around, Sutker says the facts about swine flu are these:

Swine flu or H1N1, is a particular strain of Type A flu. Swine flu is typically associated with pigs and usually contracted by those who have close contact with the animals. However, this strain can be spread from person to person.

Swine flu is treatable. In fact, a lot of the antiviral drugs in use this year were not effective against regular, seasonal flu, but do work against swine flu. Those drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, are available by prescription. However Sutker says these medications should be used carefully as overuse could lead to drug-resistant strains of the virus.

So far, fewer than 100 people in the United States have been diagnosed with swine flu. In comparison, anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of the population in the United States is diagnosed with human strains of the flu every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The symptoms of swine flu are mild. Although the symptoms for swine flu are similar to those of the regular flu, such as fever, chills, body aches and coughing, they are no worse than regular flu symptoms. However, there seems to be an increase in nausea and vomiting amongst those infected with swine flu. Again, these symptoms can be associated with regular strains of the flu as well.

The official concern about swine flu is about what it might look like in the future: because it can be so easily passed form human to human, it might pose a significant health problem if it were to mutate into a more deadly strain.

But at the present, even though it receives a fraction of the press coverage, seasonal flu has much more impact on health. The CDC estimates that 36,000 Americans die from seasonal, garden-variety flu complications each year.

Find out everything you need to know about swine flu.

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