Swine Flu/H1N1 Vaccination - Yes or No?

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Seasonal flu kills an estimated 500, 000 worldwide every year but rarely are the cases reported on. Every single H1N1 death is headline news lately yet for example in BC the death toll is still in the teens, I believe 12 deaths with less than 200 severe cases since this all began. Worldwide I believe its around 5, 000 now.

I'm not taking it lightly and it does concern me, I do think it could get worse, ect. but what does concern me is how fast the WHO declared a pandemic and started to push these vaccines. Less than 200 severe cases in BC (just using BC as an example because I keep hearing about how its worst hit in Canada) in 7 months, among 4.4 million people, is hardly a pandemic. Reason for concern of course but not a pandemic.

[intarsiabox]

The WHO has different levels of pandemic and this one is a low level. Actually the word pandemic gets thrown out to the public suprisingly very easy from what I've read. It doesn't take much for a virus to be declared a pandemic so I would heed the word with a grain of salt, although one of the criteria is a viruses ability to become worse (which is a real potential). If the H1N1 virus does mutate to a more evil form there is no guarentee that the current vaccine will protect you but this hasn't happened yet and may never happen.

[midgetwaiter]

Originally Posted by GreenSpottedPuffer

I'm not taking it lightly and it does concern me, I do think it could get worse, ect. but what does concern me is how fast the WHO declared a pandemic and started to push these vaccines. Less than 200 severe cases in BC (just using BC as an example because I keep hearing about how its worst hit in Canada) in 7 months, among 4.4 million people, is hardly a pandemic. Reason for concern of course but not a pandemic.

Pandemic is taken from the Greek pandemos, meaning "all the people". The word is used to indicate the spread of a disease and implies absolutely nothing about how serious a disease it may be. An influenza virus that has spread world wide in less than 6 months certainly qualifies as pandemic.