In early September, 2009 headlines read that 90,000 people could die in the US this flu season.  Get your flu shot!!!  Like this CNN reports that sites this number as well as the worn out typical of 40,000 deaths per year from the seasonal flu.

The swine has truly flown.  We had a very unusual flu season this year.  The peak for the seasonal flu usually occurs sometime between the last of January through the middle of March.  However, this year with the 2009 H1N1 we had a peak that occurred in October and then by the first of January the incidence of all influenza like illness dropped to below the baseline.  You can check out the graph of the hospitalizations for the US here.  http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/us/#iligraph There is more detailed information and graphs on this page: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ for week 11/2010.

The question arises what happened to the normal spike for the regular flu.  I can see the spike occurring for the H1N1 for people who were susceptible to the virus and it occurring early in the winter.  However, how did that affect the seasonal flu that should have peaked in late February?  Every year up until now the spike has typically occurred in late winter.  What is different?

Perhaps what happened was the fear of people dying from the H1N1 motivated more people to get the regular flu vaccination.  Also if you think about it the H1N1 vaccine was not readily available until November.  People got vaccinated and the flu stopped?  I wonder when President Obama will make a speech taking credit for getting more people taking the flu vaccine and this is what caused the significant reduction and how as you read the following.

More confusion!?  The really interesting thing is that the table for total influenza like illness for hospitalizations shows 41, 551 with 2, 077 deaths. (table below the graph: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/updates/us/#iligraph).  How do you rationalize these numbers with the totals of what the CDC claims as typical at over 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths.  The insurance companies should really be happy this year as they had to pay significantly less to providers because of the low incidence of illness or have we just been lied to by the CDC.  It is truly confusing.  Do hospitals not report death?  I do not believe the federal guidelines would allow this.  Here is what the CDC has been telling you: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/keyfacts.htm

Since the drug companies or Obama have not taken credit, I think that I will just jump right in.  It is my hope that what really happened was that there was enough in the press about the antiviral affects of vitamin D that people in general took more.  It would not take a lot to make a huge impact in the population.  The one thing that did change this year is that for the first time, CVS, Walgreens, and the local Kerr Drug all carried vitamin D3 in 5,000 IU capsules.  Thank you Dr. Cannell!

I tried to find the percent of the population that took the vaccination for the H1N1 and for the seasonal flu without success.  This seems to be a closely held number.  I know that there are some reports that more than half of the H1N1 vaccines that the US ordered were not used but I cannot confirm.

Taking my D3 and getting a tan in the winter and the blues and flu just fly away.  I just love flying pigs  – Pandemic Survivor