White House report predicts 30,000 to 90,000 H1N1 deaths.

Remember these two important datums:

1. An ounce (inexpensive/quick) of prevention is worth a pound (expensive/long duration) of cure.

2. You are either at cause over a situation or you are the effect of that situation. Which do you choose?

Dr E.

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White House report predicts 30,000 to 90,000 H1N1 deaths.

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY 8-24-2009

The global flu pandemic expected to return to the USA this fall may infect as much as half the U.S. population, flooding hospitals with nearly 2 million patients and causing 30,000 to 90,000 deaths, according to the first official forecast of the scope of the flu season now getting underway.

The report, released Monday by the White House, was prepared by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. It offers the forecast as the most plausible of a range of scenarios that reflect the potential impact of a new form of H1N1 flu, known as swine flu, which the report calls "a serious health threat to the United States."

"While this is not the 1918 flu pandemic, it infects younger people more, and serious complications do occur," says panel co-chairman Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, warning that infants and children, pregnant women, and people with chronic illnesses are at special risk of serious complications.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 2 million people nationwide have been infected with the virus and 522 have already died. But flu experts worry that cases will mount as youngsters return to school and as cold weather drives people indoors. "We think it's very likely cases will increase," says David Marens of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

One of the council's goals was to use scenarios drawn from experience to identify critical health concerns and guide the government's response. The report concludes that the coming flu season will more likely resemble 1957, which killed 70,000 people, or 1968, when 34,000 died.

"There's great uncertainty about what we're going to be seeing as this develops," says White House Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan.  "We're trying to find a way to deal with various scenarios." The report calls for the government to intensify efforts to track infections and hospitalizations and to advocate common-sense prevention measures (This does not include any natural health methods or dietary modifications Dr. E).  Among them: making sure that sick people can get refunds to sporting events and that sick children who rely on school lunches can get them without infecting classmates.

The science advisers also urge the government to press vaccine makers to speed production by one month, by beginning to fill and distribute vials before clinical trials are completed.  Without accelerating vaccine production, they say, the first doses may not become available until after the swine flu season peaks (the first vaccine shots will be available in late October but a person's immunity to the virus will not take effect for an additional 5-8 weeks Dr. E).  In response, the government has asked manufacturers to put vaccine in vials "as soon as they are ready," the administration says.

The report asserts that an influx of flu patients may clog hospital emergency rooms and intensive-care units (ICUs).  "It's possible that at a time of peak demand from 50% to 100% of ICU beds in an area might be used for influenza cases.  They're often close to capacity without influenza," Lander says.