I
was trying to figure out what to write about this week, and then I came across
this article about this year’s flu causing unusual deaths. When we think about the flu we usually think
that the very young and very old are the ones at the highest risks for
deaths. However, this article on ABC
News from January 10, 2014, was written during the middle of the flu season. ABC wrote this article because
of the attention the United States Centers for Disease Control was giving on how
hard the flu has been on adults’ ages 18 to 64.
They make up 61.5% of patients hospitalized by the flu compared to the
previous year only making up 34%. There
are two high profile death cases mentioned in the article; a mother who is 29
years old and a 41-year-old man. The ABC
News Chief Health and Medical Editor believes that healthy young adults are
more susceptible because they are less likely to get the flu vaccine. This weakens the herd immunity amongst the
young adult population. The flu
vaccination is even more important for these individuals because of their
lifestyle of living in close quarters in college campuses, work, among several
other things. The influenza virus is not
yet at an epidemic level, however, the increasing number of states with
widespread geographic influenza is concerning.
During the time of this article, the number of states with widespread
flu increased from 25 states to 35 states in a week alone. Although the total number of deaths after the
flu season was over is unknown by the information in this article, at the time
of the publication the CDC reported a number of ten deaths total. I think it would be interesting to see what
the total number of deaths actually accumulated to, and how many of them
actually got the flu vaccination.
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