"...The Boston disease specialists found that of the 71 city residents hospitalized with swine flu, 49 percent were African-American, and 28 percent were Hispanic. In both cases, the hospitalization rates were double each group’s overall presence in Boston’s population."
Death isn't funny and the loss of your loved one isn't a joking manner. The District of Columbia has lost two individuals to the flu. While none of our jurisdictions are releasing their infection rates only the deaths (the District hasn't officially released the number to the public) the CDC is still releasing the data weekly only showing the Pediatric Deaths in their August 8th report. The CDC's own records show more current information but information this isn't readily available to the public.
Our region (III) is the sixth (6th) most infected region in the nation. Region III is comprised of DE, DC, MD, PA, VA, and WV which also claims no deaths and separates residents from non-residents and only presents "lab confirmed results." There are only two (2) jurisdictions in our region reporting regional or widespread activity. The least infected region is I with only one (1) jursidiction reporting regional or widespread activity and the most infected region is VI with zero (0) jurisdictions reporting regional or widespread activity. We don't understand it either. But that's what the CDC reports and so we report it to you. Region 1 is CT, ME, MA, NH, RI and VT. Region 6 is AR, LA, NM, OK and TX. Again this information is for Last Week.
We don't want you to be afraid but the more we don't learn and the slower we are to learn the facts the more dangerous will be our response to what will be an unbelievably horrible situation. Hence we refer you to the Monty Python scene from The Holy Grail: "Bring Out Your Dead!"
In an emergency finding an available bed coulod save your life and or the life of your loved one. Boston has already discovered that this pandemic will affect the poor, Black and Hispanic more severly than the general population. In the district the poor, Black and Hispanic IS the general population. Their use of our limited resources creates a situation that drains the resources of our currently stretched and already strained resources. If you can or plan to have a medical procedure now rather than later might be a better consideration.
The biggest problem with new infections - their is no vaccine read real protection against the flu and its over two months prior to the start of the normal flu season (November).
VDH H1N1 Inquiry Center responded:
ReplyDeleteThe case counts of novel H1N1 flu that were reported and updated weekly on the CDC website were based on reports of laboratory confirmed cases of influenza submitted by states. However, the number of cases of novel H1N1 flu infection continues to increase and most cases, particularly those that do not require hospitalization or those who do not seek medical care, are not tested. Therefore, the number of reported cases that are lab confirmed is an underestimation of the total number of illnesses. In addition, counting individual cases requires important resources that are needed to help with other aspects of H1N1 prevention and preparedness.
On July 24, 2009, CDC transitioned from reporting probable and confirmed case counts to monitoring regional disease activity levels using its seasonal surveillance systems to track the progress of the novel H1N1 flu outbreak. This form of reporting disease activity levels is the method CDC uses to report on routine seasonal flu activity, which does not count individual cases, but instead monitors activity levels and virus characteristics through nine nationwide surveillance systems. Results from these systems are updated weekly and are posted on the CDC website on Fridays at www.cdc.gov/flu.