flu (Page 5)

Depends on WHERE you live – The flu season is about over, and the Swine Flu pandemic that scientists predicted turned out to be less onerous than predicted. However, if you DID get the flu, you probably got it earlier than if you reside in the Northeast than if you live along the West Coast.

That’s because researchers have learned that, especially for adults aged 65 and over, seasonal flu tends to move in traveling waves, peaking earliest in western states such as Nevada, Utah, and California and working its way east. New England states such as Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire tend to have the latest peak in seasonal flu. So if your friends in California say the flu season is over, that doesn’t mean it’s over for YOU!
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Physicians can’t figure out why the Swine Flu pandemic never happened and why there is so little ordinary flu around. It could be that the stress of the economic recession is strengthening our immune systems (and many of us have other types of stress as well!)

A new study using mice suggests that a repeated stressful situation that triggers the animals’ natural “fight-or-flight” response may actually enhance their ability to fight disease when they are re-exposed to the same pathogen. The study showed that the stressed mice had a 10-fold increase in their resistance to an influenza infection, and that this protection lasted at least up to 3 months after the stressful episodes.
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Something strange is going on: Normally, this is the peak period for the flu in the United States. But that just doesn’t seem to be the case this year. Since both bird flu and swine flu turned out to be scares that went nowhere, many people are turning their backs on new flu scares, considering them to be just more hype. But should they? When scientists combined the two viruses in a lab, the newly-created virus proved extremely lethal to mice. If it happens in nature, what will it do to us?
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What happened to the Swine Flu epidemic that frightened us all so much (not to mention the Bird Flu epidemic)? Swine Flu did kill some people here in the US, but Bird Flu seems never to have made it to these shores (and may only have been transmitted directly from poultry, not between people). Could these warnings be some sort of disinformation campaign from big pharmaceutical companies that stand to make millions from medicines (such as Tamiflu) and vaccines? Once initiated, well meaning people could then take up the warning and spread it far and wide.
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