Breaking news on Sky - A primary school child has died of swine flu (london)

[poopscoop]

that'd be one of my nearest too edam

v sad for those families

Blu - totally agree re your comment. Thanks for saying it. We have a dd who is given the flu vaccination every year as she is 'vulnerable' and sometimes, if I am a bit down, swine flu scares the shit out of me

End of August not soon enough -

I hope it happens then before the autumn. I am feeling anxious to he point of not well over this so may try to avoid thinking about it till then! I am guessing GPs will contact those who are in line for the vaccine first.

I know what you mean about 'underlying health issues' - applies to about a third of the population over the age of 37, so that's an awful lot of people, plus all the ones younger than that...

(Including me and dh btw - dh is asthmatic so particularly worrying. Must go and find where his life insurance policy is... )

I wake up worrying about this every day Think all are worried - not just those with 'underlying health issues',My family will prob have to wait till early next year for the jab - I just want to lock us all away till then.
So much for MP's assurances of BEING PREPARED - (think they will all have their jabs on order for the minute they are ready)- as if anyones life is more important than the next - every life is precious

The Gp that died, died at my local hospital and his surgery was in my town, although not my surgery.

My concern is growing, as both my Dc's have it and my Gp told me the cases of swine flu here are only mild.

This is such sad news - any death from this is tragic but to hear about this little ones with their lives ahead of them fills me with dread. Before I was worrying more about dd who is 5 months but now it seems I need to worry about my strong, healthy 6 year old. Tempted too to keep him off school as they finish on thurs anyway - we going on holiday on wednesday week so no doubt will catch it on the flight :-(. does anyone know the % of people who die from normal flu? I want to try and get this in perspective.

People do die from normal flu every year but they are overwhelmingly elderly (or at high risk e.g. asthmatic - although is still rare for stable asthmatics to die of flu).

I too have tried to keep this in perspective but - this seems to be spreading more freely than 'normal flu'

hells - I don't know the % from normal flu - but currently )based on the actual cases of around 10,000 in the UK - although estimated to be much higher in real terms) the % currently stands at less than 0.2%

I just don't feel that we are being told the whole story. I could believe what blu says re under-reporting - after all, if they don't have enough vaccine before end Aug there could be mass hysteria if true numbers were reported. I'm getting scared.

Well we have had a letter today of first confirmed case at ds's pre-school.

Am trying very very hard not to worry and overreact. But I am 32 weeks pregnant and cannot for the life of me work out whether would be preferable to have it now, when pregnant, which would get it out of the way before the baby arrives in September. What if we get it in September/October when I'll be immediately post-natal and the baby will be tiny?

DD (and ds to a lesser extent) had full blown flu before christmas and it was horrible. WOuldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

FAQ - from being in schools a lot last week I know of two S London children who have died from swine flu. One was reported in the press, the other wasn't.

Both had 'underlying conditions' - which basically means they were happy healthy disabled children whose particular disabilitiy / s made them vulnerable to this illness.

Horrible, Blu. When I heard about that poor little girl who was in the news last week, with 'serious underlying health issues', I couldn't help thinking about some of the kids with sever disabilities or life-limiting conditions my sister used to work with, and how hard their parents prayed for each extra day with their children...

Message withdrawn

Percentages of those who get seasonal flu and die: The American cdc seem to use 0.06% - 0.24% Perfectprefect on another thread says between 0.1% and 0.2%.

You know, whilst it is important to keep it in perspective, that an individuals chance of developing serious complications is generally very low, it is also important not be blase about it. Because when people are blase, they go out to a bit of shopping when they are still contagious, they don't seek help when needed because they believe that it can't be serious.

For those who want a balanced view of how swine flu is going atm WHO pdf presentation is a good place to start. Couple of translations from it: Ro is the transmissibility (average number of people a single case infects) and CFR is the case fatality rate.

To answer the question - if you get flu you have about a 2% chance of dying from it - that's generic flu. Which seems high but that's because of who generally gets flu bad enough to seek medical help - most healthy adults simply go to bed for a week, it's the naturally vulnerable who contact their GPs and get counted.

I think swine flu will be entirely different because the majority of people will (try at least to) seek medical help. So the percentages will no doubt be much lower.

wmmc - that seems a lot higher than the figures I've seen? Where is that one from?

UK pandemic response plans. Think it refers to the 2007/2008 figures for flu notification. Can find a link once monster falls asleep (may take a while!)

cool - thanks

can't find yet but see p5 here

Ah, I see in the National Framework for responding to an influenza pandemic gives 'The UK case fatality rate in previous pandemics was between 0.2% and 2%.'
Those are pandemic fatality rates and I believe (could be wrong) that the 2% is for the 1918 virus.

Further up the document it says that an average of 12,000 die from flu each year in the uk and wales. It says that between 5 and 15% get seasonal flu each year. Population of Enlgand and Wales is 54 million. So I think that gives a CFR of between 0.15 and 0.44 for seasonal flu. Which is higher than the cdc figure. Interesting. Shows it is probably quite difficult to get true figures.

(might need to check my maths )