A golfing visit from my big Brother Hugh, and weighing the options with H1N1 virus
My brother, Hugh, is visiting from Maryland. He’s on the right. That’s John Silveira on the left. Lenie and I are in the background. Hugh and I play golf every day when he visits. Since he’s as bad as I am, I at last have a chance to beat someone.
Been thinking a lot about the H1N1 virus lately, doing research on whether or not my kids should get the vaccine when it becomes available in two weeks. Annie just announced she’s pregnant, which puts her in the highest risk category for swine flu so I’m particularly interested in whether or not she should get it. The CDC says of the 700 pregnant women who have confirmed H1N1, 27 have died. That’s a very frightening statistic.
Coincidentally I’m rereading Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. He says European diseases killed 95% of native peoples in the Americas within about a hundred years of Columbus’s arrival. The Indians had no resistance to Eurasian diseases like smallpox, flu, cholera, measles, and a host of others, so they died in droves. H1N1 is fairly mild now but it has the potential to mutate and become more deadly, and modern humans, just like the Indians back in 1492, have no defense.
I’ve asked Silveira to help me with the research. I’ll let you know what I decide.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:48 am
Congrats to you and your family on the upcoming addition!
I look forward to reading the decision-making process about the vaccine from you and John.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm
please keep us informed, of my 3 children i’m only considering the virus shot for one because of the child’s reoccurring croup
i called our physicians office and the nurse referred me to a television program that will air this coming week with information from the local health department and government…………….i guess i’ll have to rely on my own opinion and research for this problem. the doctors office will not be offering the shot, apparently it will be offered only by the health department at special sites.
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Congratulations!!!
October 4th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I’d be skeptical of those CDC numbers. The report I read was that this was for pregnant women who had been admitted to the hospital. I expect that there is a much higher number of pregnant women with H1N1 that have had no problems.