Severe flu... rising death toll in California

[Forbin]

Severe flu brings medicine shortages, packed ERs and a rising death toll in California
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-flu-surge-20180106-htmlstory.html

This flu seems more widespread than usual, and more virulent (in California at least).

In an ideal world, there would be some kind of surveillance to see how many of the affected go on to develop ME/CFS. This seems like just the kind of event that would produce a lot of new cases.

You could then see how the number of new ME.CFS cases compares to the number of cases that usually occur - assuming someone (like the CDC) monitors that).

 

[MErmaid]

CDC’s Flu View



https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/main.html
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

California Department of Public Health

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Immunization/Influenza.aspx

 

[AliceLily]

In an ideal world, there would be some kind of surveillance to see how many of the affected go on to develop ME/CFS. This seems like just the kind of event that would produce a lot of new cases.

I thought this same thing last year when a lot of people got sick from contaminated water supply in one part of the country. How many would not recover properly and go on to get ME in the future.

 

[Little Bluestem]

Well, I guess one 'advantage' of ME is that it keeps you away from people and less likely to be exposed to disease.

 

[Forbin]

Well, I guess one 'advantage' of ME is that it keeps you away from people and less likely to be exposed to disease.

True - and it may, in fact, be that ME/CFS makes some patients more resistant to the flu (while making others more vulnerable).

I was just reading a 1978 paper by Dr. Gordon Parish that summarized some of the earlier (pre-Royal Free, 1955) ME outbreaks. One of the early conjectures about ME was that it somehow provided protection from acquiring polio during outbreaks of that disease. I think this may have been hypothesized because ME seemed to appear in tandem with some earlier polio outbreaks that failed to "catch fire" and become major epidemics (Los Angeles / Iceland).

Early outbreaks of 'epidemic neuromyasthenia'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2425322/pdf/postmedj00263-0008.pdf