November 3 2019: Influenza activity has begun to increase over the past 2 weeks. Louisiana currently is reporting Regional activity. Most of the remainder of the country has very low levels of influenza.
Seek medical care immediately if you have significant underlying medical problems and you develop a flu-like illness (i.e., fever PLUS cough or sore throat) at a time when flu is actively circulating in your community. All people with flu symptoms should seek medical care if they develop breathing difficulty, inability to drink fluids, or if their fever extends more than five days.
Flu kills an estimated 23,000 people every year in the United States, almost all during the three or four month "flu season" from December to March. Ninety to 95% of those who die from flu are over age 65. The risk for death rises substantially for every decade in age beyond 65. The mortality rate from the H1N1 Swine flu that caused our recent pandemic was quite different. Very few people over age 65 were infected by Swine flu, and fewer still died from it.
Fever itself is generally not dangerous. It is the cause of the fever that may be dangerous. A fever of 105 due to Influenza is mostly a nuisance. A fever of 101 in a patient with meningitis is quite dangerous and can lead to brain damage. But even in the case of meningitis, the fever is merely a marker for the infection. The meningitis causes damage to the brain, not the fever.
Click here for a discussion of misconceptions about the flu vaccine.
This is a CDC web page that discusses flu vaccine in depth.
The most common adverse outcome for influenza in the pediatric age group is hospitalization. However, this risk is largely confined to the very young, especially children under 6 months of age, in whom the hospitalization rate is approximately 1 in 1,000. By two years of age the hospitalization rate for influenza is no higher than for older children or adults under age 50, the age groups with the lowest risk.
The outbreak is now largely behind us, although the virus does continue to circulate at low levels with seasonal influenza viruses in 2010-2011. The scare is also over in the sense that we now know that this was may go down as the mildest flu pandemic on record. But that doesn't mean it was a false alarm, as some have claimed. The CDC has estimated that at least 60 million Americans were infected by 2009 H1N1 influenza, and that over 12,000 died, including 1,200 children. Consider also that those 12,000 people might well be alive today if not for this virus. In that sense, this was still a serious outbreak.
Many parents are concerned about their child's health and safety during the curent H1N1 pandemic. Not surprisingly, some have taken their child to a clinic or emergency department for evaluation of fever, fearing that it could be due to Swine Flu. Here are a few points to help parents understand why some children are treated for Swine flu but most are not.
