H1N1 Flu Seems To Strike Kids 5 Yrs & Older Hardest...Wash Your Hands!

MSNBC----

CDC: Swine flu deaths higher in older kids

80 percent of children who died were age 5 or older, government says.


(Starting a new school year is stressful enough, but now there’s the added worry that your kids could be walking into ground zero for swine flu. What can parents and schools do to ease these concerns.)

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ATLANTA - About one in 13 U.S. swine flu deaths have been children and most of the kids have been of school age, the federal government said Thursday in its first study of the new flu's youngest victims.

More than 40 U.S. children have died from the virus since it was first identified in this country in April. The report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes a comprehensive look at the first 36 deaths, and found some important differences in the pediatric death toll from swine flu as compared to seasonal flu:

* Normally, half or more of the children who die from flu are age 4 and younger. But more than 80 percent of the kids who died with swine flu were 5 or older.

* Almost two-thirds of the children who died with swine flu had epilepsy, cerebral palsy or other neurodevelopmental conditions. In a previous flu season, only a third of pediatric deaths had those conditions.

* Bacterial co-infections were a big danger, and were blamed in most of the deaths of otherwise healthy children. Co-infections usually occur when a patient, weakened by a virus, then gets hit by a bacterial bug.

The CDC released the report through one of its publications, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

More than 1 million in U.S. infected

Swine flu has caused more than 1 million illnesses in the United States, the CDC estimates. More than 550 deaths and 8,800 hospitalizations have been reported to date.

It's hard to say whether children have accounted for a higher proportion of deaths from swine flu than they normally do from seasonal flu, though CDC officials say that seems to be true. The CDC doesn't monitor seasonal flu deaths as closely as it does swine flu, and it has no comprehensive count of annual seasonal flu deaths to enable such a comparison.

The new report focuses on lab-confirmed swine flu deaths reported through Aug. 8. The CDC hasn't been able to do as complete an analysis of cases that have come in since then, said Dr. Cynthia Moore, a CDC medical officer who was one of the study's co-authors.

Through Aug. 8, there were 477 total swine flu deaths, including 36 in children.

Only about 20 percent of those children were age 4 or younger. That's unusual: Often 50 percent or more of seasonal flu deaths are in infants and toddlers, who have less mature immune systems and smaller air passages and are generally in more danger from respiratory infections.

"There's a lot of school-aged children" in the death count, said Dr. Beth Bell, a CDC epidemiologist who is a leader in the agency's swine flu response efforts.

Older kids may be more likely to be exposed to virus

It's not clear why such a large percentage of the swine flu pediatric deaths are in kids aged 5 and older. It simply may be because older children were more likely to encounter the virus — at schools, summer camps — than very young children who spend more time at home, Bell said.

The initial numbers in the report are small and the CDC will need to look at more reports to see if the trends hold up, CDC officials said.

Two-thirds of the children who died had high-risk medical conditions. Nearly all of them had an illness related to the nervous system, including mental retardation, cerebral palsy and epilepsy and other seizure disorders.

Years ago experts recognized that children with Neuro-developmental conditions are at higher risk of serious complications from the flu. But the proportion of swine flu victims with that kind of underlying condition was swine flu percentages are high compared to a previous flu season, CDC officials said.

It's not clear how significant that finding is, because many of the children had other medical problems that had weakened their bodies, CDC officials said.

Of the children who were healthy before they got swine flu, many were probably killed by a one-two punch of swine flu working with a bacterial co-infection, CDC officials said.

Bacterial co-infections have been an increasingly noticed danger since the government started tracking pediatric flu deaths in 2004. So their occurrence with swine flu was not a surprise, but emphasized the needs for parents and doctors to be alert to the danger and give the child antibiotics when appropriate, CDC officials said.


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Sources: MSNBC, Day Life, Google Maps

New Health Care Reform Outline

Washington Post----

The outline I was given today isn't the Finance Committee's final bill. It's not even necessarily the Chairman's Mark (the bill that will go to the rest of the committee for debate, changes, and modifications). But it's the clearest look at what Finance -- the key committee for health-care reform -- is currently considering.

You could write this story a couple of different ways. The first is to note is the Finance Committee has substantially retreated in the face of the $1.6 trillion price tag the Congressional Budget Office affixed to its original submission. This version of the plan is, comparatively, quite diminished.

The numbers tell the story. In that plan, subsidies reached 400 percent of poverty. In this plan, they've been cut to 300 percent. In that plan, Medicaid eligibility was as high as 150 percent of the poverty line. In this plan, it's 133 percent for pregnant women and children, and 100 percent for childless adults. In that plan, the "gold" coverage was 93 percent of a person's estimated expenses, and "bronze" coverage was 68 percent. In this plan, those numbers are 90 percent and 65 percent, respectively. That means people with a low-cost plan might be covered for only 65 percent of what they're likely to need.

Another way of looking at the plan is that it remains a significant step forward. Subsidies to 400 percent of poverty would be nice, but subsidies to 300 percent of poverty are far beyond anything we offer now. Coverage that protects against 65 percent of anticipated costs is better than no coverage at all. The co-op idea isn't a public plan, but with federal seed money to start new co-ops, it's a good idea on its own merits. There's an individual mandate, state-based health insurance exchanges, and a substantial health and wellness initiative. Insurers are barred from discriminating based on health history and Medicaid is sharply expanded.

People frequently refer to the goal of health-care reform as "comprehensive reform." But this is what I'd term "comprehensive incrementalism." It makes everything a bit better. It is not radical. It is not root-and-branch reform. For all the concerns about cost, there is no strong public plan able to negotiate low rates and implement aggressive reforms. The health insurance exchanges are a step forward, but they're state-based, and there's even room for multiple competing exchanges in a single state. They could be made substantially stronger. Revenue sources are not discussed in this draft, but it's clear that the employer tax exclusion -- which is to say, the employer-based system -- is preserved, and there's even an attempt to "grandfather" existing insurance arrangements from the individual market.

It is one of the paradoxes of the legislative process that something that is substantively quite timid can also be quite bold. This version of health reform is far from what the country needs. It is far from what any health-care experts would develop left to their own devices. But it is still a monumental initiative and, if passed, it would be the most significant step forward since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

It is also worth remembering, however, that this bill has not been merged with the more liberal legislation being considered by Sen. Ted Kennedy's HELP Committee. Nor has it been reconciled with the legislation being driven through the House of Representatives, which Speaker Pelosi promises will feature a strong public plan. And most importantly, the White House has not forcefully stepped in with its priorities and preferences. Health care reform still has a long road to travel. This is just one snapshot that helps to illustrate how the landscape is changing along the way.

Sources: Washington Post, Whitehouse.gov

Swine Flu Awareness Widgets

If you have a site or a blog and you really want to help educate your readers about this new strain of the Swine Flu virus, no worries the United States Dept of Health & Human Services and Center for Disease & Control has designed a widget for such use.

The widget (shown above) is colorful, provides a graphic with links to Swine Flu information and can be easily removed at a later date.

You can embed it by copying the code from this HHS.gov link.

I'm sure your readers will thank you later.

Sources: HHS.gov, CDC