Hi again, death fans!
Perhaps some of you may have wondered if I'd get around to the topic of swine flu a.k.a. Influenza strain H1N1.  Well, wonder no longer.

I have generally touched on topics that either affect or could affect me personally, even though I am well aware there are plenty of health issues that are darn interesting to explore and could be of great use to others.  I highly recommend Googling these subjects and the name "mirkin" together to see if Dr Gabe Mirkin has written anything on the subject.  He uses medical research from peer reviewed journals to produce approachable summaries of all types of medical conditions.  When I get a new health problem, that's my first move.  I branch out from there into some of teh medical literature itself to get details that Mirkin is concerned will lose his layman audience.  Then I break the details down to try to make approachable essays for you, my army of Soulcast readers. 

Oddly, Mirkin doesn't appear to have much of anything on Swine Flu.  This is a darn shame because the other documentation I've found about it is almost perfectly contradictory.

He does mention plain old flu in 2007 when he says:



The two schools of thought concerning swine flu specifically, are:
1)  Swine flu is very similar to other flus.  It most profoundly affects the very young and the very old.  Everyone else should be ducky.
2)  An impaired immune system is advantageous as healthy 20-40 year olds with active immune systems overreact to swine flu and the immune response is what's killing people.

I kept waiting for the dust to settle before reporting on this extensively hyped epidemic, but things remain sketchy.
In the absence of compelling consensus, I'm presenting my uncertainty in all its unsatisfying glory.

I've never taken a flu vaccine.  I've had the flu perhaps twice in 20 years.  The vaccines would have run me between $400-$600.  I was paid very well to suffer through it.  This assume the vaccine would have prevented any sick leave from being used and this is by no means certain.  It is widely admitted that not all flu vaccines are effective in a given year.  I have not been given any assurance that the H1N1 vaccine is blessed in any particular way that it would break the longstanding tradition of imperfect outcomes. 

H1N1 killed people here in the US and if I have my sources straight (always a caveat when not leaning on Mirkin), those killed were either in direct contact with swine, in the presence of swine, or having extensive contact with those who DID have contact with swine.  Heavy exposure in the animal-human transfer was essential for the potent virulence of swine flu.  Human-human transmission was considerably weaker and killed no one that I heard of (though being terribly sick was no fun, to be sure.)

WHY wine flu is more lethal this way, I can't say, but it does give me some hope that swine flu won't have my number.

The disturbing potential of swine flu to use my own strength against me as a judo master does was unsettling.  I have recounted previously my prowess art shrugging of disease that knock my wife down for twice as long.  If my immune system is twice as powerful as my wife's, my overreaction to swine flu may be twice as dangerous. 

I cannot say this is the case though.  The immune system has many components.  There are five ways the body fights of disease.  Some responses destroy foreign bodies such as organ graft rejection of destruction of parasites like insects and worms that may invade or body tissues.  Another system takes down microscopic organisms like bacteria, prions, viruses, and fungi.  These are macrophage white cells.  Other white cells detect germs and produce antibodies which attach to microbes and make it difficult for them to go about their business making us sick efficiently.  (Kind of like you or me trying to do our everyday work while wearing handcuffs or a ball and chain).  Still other white cells produce runny noses, mucus production commonly experienced as allergies.  Finally, white blood cells can be made into "case files" that remember germs we've fought before and keep records as to what antibodies to make if they dare show themselves again. 

WHICH of these responses does swine flu overstimulate, which ones are the kind that lead to self-destruction of the patient, and which of these systems are unusually strong in me?  I'm not clear on any of these matters, so the danger I am in is uncertain and my sense of alarm is tempered by this lack of information.  (I'm lucky this way.  Others would be MORE fearful from this lack of data and would cause themselves worry.  Stress weakens the immune system, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

As the swine flu makes its rounds perhaps Dyingwife will leave word that it has claimed me as a victim, but the information I've been able to gather suggests to me that the threat is overblown because the news media sees ratings in exaggerating the actual risk.  Perhaps they shall have the last laugh if the select few of us with special mutant immune systems are crushed by our own biological weaponry.