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Most people who get H1N1 influenza will recover uneventfully after about a week of bad "flu" symptoms. About one in every several thousand people will get severely ill to the point of needing hospitalization or even ICU care and out of these hospitalized patients some will die.

Unlike the normal seasonal flu virus, the H1N1 has sporadically struck down healthy young people in their teens twenties and thirties. Perfectly normal healthy people have died within a few days of catching the H1N1 virus.

In the 1970's there was an elevated rate of Guillain-Barre syndrome (a type of paralysis which occurs sporadically and can also be caused by the flu virus itself) among recipients of the swine flu vaccine. For reasons related to statistical analysis which I won't go into, it cannot be determined whether the increased rate of Guillain-Barre syndrome was caused by the vaccine or not. If it was caused by the vaccine, the increased rate of paralysis was approximately one in one million.

The link between childhood vaccines and autism has been conclusively disproved. Despite this there are those who prefer to get their medical information from Oprah and Jenny MacCarthy rather than from infectious disease experts and epidemiologists at the CDC. I suppose if you think a big-breasted blonde is more of an expert on vaccine safety than hundreds of trained physicians and scientists you are welcome to your opinion.

The bottom line is I would rather accept a theoretical one-in-a-million risk from the flu vaccine, rather than a known one-in-several-thousand risk from the H1N1 virus. For me it is clear, I would not risk bringing the virus home to my kids.

There are those who believe that physicians are brainwashed by the greedy pharmaceutical companies. I know many physicians. Most if not all are sceptical of the information that pharmaceutical companies try to push. The flu vaccine is not a money maker for pharmaceutical companies, in fact they would make a lot more money if everyone caught H1N1 and required a Tamiflu (antiviral) prescription. Most docs are smart enough to decide for themselves regarding prescriptions, vaccines etc and the idea that docs are brainwashed by the pharmaceutical companies is laughable.

In summary we don't need to be panicked by H1N1. We also don't need to be panicked by the anti-vaccine wingnuts. Get your H1N1 vaccine if you would like to diminish the small but very real chance that you or a loved one could die from the H1N1 virus. For conspiracy theorists and amateur medical experts please stop spreading misinformation which could endanger others' health.