Cheers for a good fight against flu (March 4)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The H1N1 flu epidemic seems (knock on wood) to have passed us by, and this is leading some to say that maybe health officials overreacted. Maybe H1N1 really wasn’t a problem, they say.
Nothing could be further from the truth. First, ask someone whose friend or relative died from that flu whether trying to vaccinate most of the country against H1N1 was overreacting. Second, ask people who did not get the flu if they think they would have been better off not having been vaccinated.
In both cases, you would hear preponderant gratitude that health officials raised the alarm and put forth the effort to protect the United States against what could have been a serious epidemic.
In Madera County, county health director Carol Barney acted immediately and correctly on information that the swine flu, as it also was known, would be a serious health risk for vulnerable populations. She and her staff went out of their way to make sure anyone who might have been at risk and wanted protection was vaccinated. The fact that large numbers of people in this county have not contracted the disease is a testament to the health department’s vigilance and to its taking the right actions when they were needed.
This normally would be the height of the flu season, but the incidence of flu of all kinds is down. In fact, the season appears to have peaked in October, when the first surge in H1N1 and other flu vaccinations began.
While scientists still aren’t quite ready to credit the efforts to get folks vaccinated against the H1N1 flu strain as being responsible for the general decline of flu cases, there seems no doubt that the efforts of health-care professionals, and especially public health departments, have to some extent kept us well. That’s definitely worth a tip of the hat.
