flu vaccineThe twenty-something son of good friends of mine had some scary symptoms with swine flu last week and recovered. My son at college had a mild go of flu, most likely the H1N1. How worried should we be and where’s the best advice?

Swine flu is estimated to have killed 800 people in the US already. This is much less than the 36,000 who are said to die of the flu every winter in the US, so is there little to worry about? What are your feelings about this at the moment?

Is there fear-mongering going on, or is there actually “complacency-mongering?” The first time I’ve seen that word combo in print is in an article in New Scientist this week, that is clearly concerned that people are taking it all too lightly. The piece describes eight “myths” about swine flu and lays out the countering facts as understood by a smart science journalist who has been following the pandemic for a while, Debora Mackenzie.

Of course, as soon as anyone writes about a medical issue on a spiritual and politically progressive website like this, one dives into the heated pool of opinions about holistic vs. western or allopathic medicine. Children and young people are particularly at risk, so should you get your child vaccinated? Are vaccines, beloved of western medicine, safe? Particularly flu vaccines, that there was a problem with in the 1970s.? Will healthy living, eating and exercising protect you? What about homeopathic remedies? Should you wear a mask?

Most people I know choose between western or alternative medical approaches according to where each is strongest. Our opinions about that differ, and I do know people who have refused cancer surgery, convinced of the power of alternative healing (two women I think of in particular, one of whom died leaving a nine year old daughter, while the other is still healthy over two decades later), and I know people who have gone with back surgery with unhappy results when I would have done way more work first with Alexander Teachers. I’m in the middle: I’ve had cancer surgery and but credit the Alexander Technique and at one point naturopathy with curing chronic ailments that western med failed to.

So I’m more than ready to take the New Scientist’s guide to the swine flu seriously and skeptically at the same time. My conclusion from reading it is that if I would certainly vaccinate my under-age child (if I had one), and am glad my wife and I pressed our son to get the vaccination as soon as it arrives at his college. The article goes into the whole issue of vaccine safety and I buy their argument that the risk of flu is much higher than the risk of vaccine. I am interested to learn that the evidence so far is that masks don’t help, handwashing does help for young children in particular, being healthy and organically fed isn’t enough to protect children on its own, and the forecast is that the epidemic may get better or worse, it isn’t clear.

All this is the same kind of advice you get from the official Government CD site here.

Last point: please note that this mainstream science journalist points out that

There is no obvious pattern to flu pandemics: the ones we know about were in 1580, 1729, 1781, 1830, 1847, 1889, 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. But the way this one emerged tells us we may be in for more soon. It is the product of intensive farming, and that is increasing.

So giving up factory farmed meat of any kind, but especially in this context pig and bird meat, is a small step anyone could make towards reducing the likelihood of future flu pandemics.


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