Did everyone see this on the front page of today?

[Guest guest]

Be sure to check out the comments people have posted on . Most are making

fun of the CDC saying they are trying to sell their flu shot. Are people finally

starting to wake up?

Cheers,

Kelley

H1N1 Swine Flu May Have Killed 15 Times More Than First Said

http://gma./h1n1-swine-flu-may-killed-15-times-more-202801465--abc-news\

-wellness.html

The swine flu virus, H1N1, may have killed 15 times the number of people counted

by the World Health Organization, according to a new study. And unlike the

seasonal flu, the H1N1 pandemic struck down mostly young people, many living in

Africa and Southeast Asia.

Beginning in 2009, the virus swept the globe, and the WHO counted 18,500 swine

flu deaths that had been confirmed by laboratory tests. But according to new

estimates from researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, the virus probably killed between 105,700 and 400,000 people around

the world in its first year alone, and an additional 46,000 to 179,000 people

likely died of cardiovascular complications from the virus.

That's a pretty wide gap in death rates, but it's not unusual. The numbers of

flu deaths confirmed by lab tests usually understate how many people actually

died from the virus, simply because most doctors around the world don't have the

time or the resources to test their patients for the virus and report cases to

health authorities.

" This is a problem year in and year out, from London to Nairobi, " said Dr.

Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical

Center. " It's so difficult to test everyone with influenza. "

The problem is greater in countries with few medical resources.

" In some countries, data on influenza are quite sparse or nonexistent, " said Dr.

Fatimah Dawood, the study's lead author. And she said even if a patient is

tested, sometimes the virus might not even be detectable.

The study, published today in the medical journal The Lancet, is the first

attempt to provide a global estimate of how many deaths actually occurred during

the first year of the swine flu pandemic.

Researchers were more surprised by who the virus targeted. According to the CDC

analysis, 80 percent of deaths from the swine flu pandemic were of people under

age 65, not the older, frail adults who are typically the victims of seasonal

flu. Geographically, 59 percent of the deaths were in Africa and Southeast Asia.

" The number of potential years of life that were lost was far higher than what

we would anticipate during a seasonal flu epidemic, " Dawood said.

Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have

been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have

died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to

500,000 people each year. Both pale in comparison to the flu pandemic of 1918,

which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

" It just drives home how serious the disease can be -- that even the mildest

pandemic we have an historic record of may have killed more than half a million

people, " said Barry, author of " The Great Influenza. "

Taking the flu seriously also involves taking annual vaccinations seriously. The

CDC recommends that everyone over age 6 months get a flu shot each year.

" This should remind us in the fall that this is the time to get vaccinated, "

Schaffner said. " It's the best preventive measure we have available. "