What’s going around? A lot of myths about H1N1!

We’ve all been inundated with a lot of information regarding the H1N1 flu (also called swine flu), and it can be hard to know what to believe. I must admit, even I’ve found it confusing to sift through all the headlines and hype… And, of course, there’s all those emails floating around warning of government conspiracies, pharmaceutical greediness and toxic ingredients!

The Doctors devoted an entire show to discussing these misconceptions on Monday, Oct 26th. Here are a few thoughts that I hope will dispel some of the myths out there. Also, you can get a lot of great info at these websites: USA: www.Flu.gov Canada: www.FightFlu.ca

Mandatory vaccination? I’ve had several patients come to me, worried that their children will be forced to take the H1N1 vaccine. Well, don’t worry! I have spoken directly to the director of the CDC and he assured me that this simply would not happen, the government will NOT force anyone to be vaccinated. I think this rumor got started because there have been some PRIVATE hospitals requiring their critical care staff to be vaccinated.

Should we really worry about H1N1? I’ll admit, in the past, I haven’t really worried a whole lot about the seasonal flu. It was mainly a problem for the elderly. I really didn’t see many of my patients getting serious cases, and it was easy to predict which of my patients were at risk for flu complications and we simply vaccinated those kids. This new H1N1 flu virus is different! It’s hitting kids a lot harder than any flu I’ve seen before…. Half of the children who died from H1N1 had no underlying health conditions. In other words, we have no way to predict which kids are going to have a serious problem from the H1N1 flu. Sure, most people will have mild flu illness for a few days and then get better, but you can’t ignore that close to 90,000 people could die from H1N1 this year! This flu it hitting harder and earlier than most flu in the past and I’m worried that it could possibly get much worse during the rest of the winter. Hopefully all the hand washing and vaccinating advice will help prevent this from happening.

How do we know a new vaccine is safe? When I first heard they were working at creating a vaccine for H1N1, I was one of the skeptics that doubted this new vaccine could be safely tested so quickly. As it turns out, this isn’t really a completely new vaccine. It is actually just like the updated flu shots that they produce every year. Each year, the CDC decides which strains of the flu to include in that year’s flu shot. This changes every year, because the strains of the flu that are going around are always changing. But this is a relatively minor change – all the main ingredients of the vaccine remain the same. The possible side effects and the safety profile also remain the same. So, the H1N1 vaccine is really just another flu shot. In fact, if H1N1 had hit just a few months earlier, we could have simply included that strain in this years’ normal flu shot and there wouldn’t be all this controversy. Over the past decade, we have given 100s of millions of flu shots, so we have a ton of safety data that we can apply to each year’s flu shot, including the H1N1 flu shot.

Does this vaccine contain mercury? This is used as a preservative in the multi-dose vials of all the flu shots, including the H1N1 vaccine. It is NOT in the single use vials of the shots or the nasal spray vaccine. This ingredient has caused a lot of concern in parents over the last decade. The main concern used to be that a baby would get a small dose in EACH of the numerous vaccines they received and that would add up to a dose that was higher than what is considered safe. Luckily, the mercury has been removed from all the other shots that kids get, so the small dose they might get in the flu shot is much less worrisome. Parents that wish to avoid any mercury can simply be sure they get the vaccine from a single-use vial or use the nasal spray.

Does this vaccine contain adjuvants? It really annoys me that some of the emails going around warn that these vaccines contain dangerous adjuvants like squalene and aluminum. These ingredients are NOT in any of the seasonal flu shots or H1N1 flu shots available in the United States! An adjuvant is an ingredient that is added to a vaccine to help generate a stronger immune response to the vaccine, which helps prevent disease. The use of adjuvants in vaccines has been carefully studied in Europe, Canada and WHO (World Health Organization) with no safety concerns found. I personally feel that European authorities are even MORE safety conscious than those here in the USA, so I feel good about the safety of the vaccines in those countries as well. One extra point here: According to the Public Health Agency of Canada’s website, since there is no safety data on the use of adjuvanted vaccines in pregnant women, Canada is ordering several million doses of NON-adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine. And, by the way, squaline is also found in olive oil, so maybe it isn’t as scary as some people think.

The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused a lot of health problems, do I need to worry about this one? Yes, this vaccine caused an unfortunate number of health problems, including a neurological disease called Guillan Barre Syndrome (A friend of mine developed this and it’s not pretty! – not from the vaccine, though). This was a very different vaccine back then, both in the strain of the virus used and in the manufacturing process. The vaccine we use today does not cause these same problems.

Dr Jim