37 children have died this flu season and #Trump is gutting the national response @CDC

[riversedge]

Please call your congresspeople---of all stripes about this.


https://shareblue.com/37-children-have-died-this-flu-season-and-trump-is-gutting-the-national-response/#.Wmxc60wfoiY.twitter



37 children have died this flu season and Trump is gutting the national response
By Oliver Willis | January 26, 2018

Flu is ravaging America at its worst rate in a decade, and the agencies tasked with saving lives are under assault from Donald Trump.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

America is facing a historically dangerous flu season, but the Trump administration has undertaken a series of catastrophic positions and initiatives that considerably increase the risk of deaths for thousands of Americans.

Already, 37 children have died during this flu season, and the problem is getting worse.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said it expects to have a flu season that is “something around” the severity of the 2014-15 flu season. In that time period, 34 million people got the flu: 710,000 were hospitalized, and 56,000 people died.

The severity is as intense as it was during the 2009 swine flu pandemic and intensifying, according to officials...............................................


Similarly, the Trump administration left hundreds of positions at the CDC vacant, including those that were key to federal emergency preparedness for pandemics. .................

Link to tweet

[Tanuki]

1. The program that stopped Ebola is also at risk

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/this-program-stopped-ebola-trump-may-let-it-expire/

"All over the world, public health experts are trying to prevent the next pandemic—but their work is now in jeopardy, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned health officials worldwide that without an influx of new funds, its Global Health Security Agenda may have to cut back operations from 49 countries to just 10 in 2019. “Faced with this anticipated fiscal reality, we have had to make some very difficult decisions,” Rebecca Martin, director of the CDC’s Center for Global Health, wrote in an email.

“As we saw with Ebola, diseases can now move very quickly around the world with air travel,” warns one public health expert. 

The “fiscal reality” she mentions is the coming expiration, in October 2019, of a five-year, $582 million federal grant awarded in 2015, largely to support the American government’s work on the Ebola crisis. The public health experts I talked to said the money helped aid workers in rural areas establish programs to detect and respond to new outbreaks of Ebola and other diseases. When the funds stop flowing, these programs may well be toast—a dangerous setback not just for their 

home countries, but for the rest of the world, too. “As we saw with Ebola, diseases can now move very quickly around the world with air travel,” says Linda Venczel, director of the Global Health Security Partnership at the public health nonprofit PATH. “The key to stopping pandemics is preventing them before they begin.”

Over the last few years, Venczel has worked on a team that partnered with the CDC to set up a new outbreak monitoring hub in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country considered highly vulnerable to outbreaks. In undeveloped, largely rural countries like the DRC, she told me, it takes a long time for public health officials in the cities to hear about outbreaks in remote villages. When they do find out, it can then take a long time to figure out how to reach those places with medical supplies." ....(more)

[mr_lebowski]

2. Wait, what ... 56K people died OF the Flu in one flu season? All in the USA? That can't be right

I could see maybe if it's worldwide and includes a wide variety of flu 'complications' but that sounds ridiculously high otherwise ...

[Mariana]

4. It says they got the flu and died, not that they died of flu.

Even if people die of complications from the flu (usually it's pneumonia), they wouldn't have had the complications if they never had the flu in the first place. They should count as people killed by flu. Flu kills thousands to tens of thousands of people in the US every year.

[uppityperson]

5. Influenza-associated deaths.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm#how-many-die

How many people die from seasonal flu each year in the United States?
The number of seasonal influenza-associated (i.e., seasonal flu-related) deaths varies from year to year because flu seasons often fluctuate in length and severity. Therefore, a single estimate cannot be used to summarize influenza-associated deaths. Instead, a range of estimated deaths is a better way to represent the variability and unpredictability of flu.

An August 27, 2010 MMWR report entitled “Thompson MG et al. Updated Estimates of Mortality Associated with Seasonal Influenza through the 2006-2007 Influenza Season. MMWR 2010; 59(33): 1057-1062.,” provided estimates of the range of flu-associated deaths that occurred in the United States during the three decades prior to 2007. CDC estimated that from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people.

On December 9, 2016, CDC posted estimates of seasonal flu deaths from more recent seasons in the United States. CDC estimates that from 2010-2011 to 2013-2014, influenza-associated deaths in the United States ranged from a low of 12,000 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 56,000 (during 2012-2013). Death certificate data and weekly influenza virus surveillance information was used to estimate how many flu-related deaths occurred among people whose underlying cause of death on their death certificate included respiratory or circulatory causes.

Why doesn’t CDC base its seasonal flu mortality estimates only on death certificates that specifically list influenza?
Seasonal influenza may lead to death from other causes, such as pneumonia, congestive heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It has been recognized for many years that influenza is underreported on death certificates and patients aren’t always tested for seasonal influenza infection, particularly the elderly who are at greatest risk of seasonal influenza complications and death. Some deaths – particularly among the elderly – are associated with secondary complications of seasonal influenza (including bacterial pneumonias). Influenza virus infection may not be identified in many instances because influenza virus is only detectable for a short period of time and/or many people don’t seek medical care until after the first few days of acute illness. For these and other reasons, statistical modeling strategies have been used to estimate seasonal flu-related deaths for many decades. Only counting deaths where influenza was included on a death certificate would be a gross underestimation of seasonal influenza’s true impact.

[LiberalArkie]

6. Someone comes down with the flu and dies at home from pneumonia.

Death certificate says respiratory failure many pneumonia. So the deaths from the flu are people who when to the hospital, had a blood test done and then died.

Here is last weeks report from the Arkansas Health Dept..


http://www.healthy.arkansas.gov/images/uploads/pdf/Weekly_Influenza_Report_Week_Ending_Saturday_January_20,_2018.pdf

[smirkymonkey]

3. We have also had a number of adults in the prime of life die in my state.

No federal response at all. They are completely useless.

[Maggiemayhem]

7. You an still get your shot, even if you get the flu it can lessen the severity

It takes two weeks to become effective. Please learn the difference between the flu and colds and sore throats and stomach aches. Flu vaccines do not give you the flu. That is unscientific anecdotal old wives tales.

[MissB]

8. I repeated this three times in the space of 5 minutes yesterday

to my mother during the course of our phone conversation. She’s 80 and does not believe in getting the flu shot (or the pneumonia shot.)

[demigoddess]

9. I think the republicans want to get rid of healthcare etc

in order to "reduce the surplus population"