Are you immune to Swine Flu if you are infected and survive?

[Renew Deal]

Anybody know?

[laundry_queen]

1. You would be to that particular virus you caught.

The problem with flu viruses is they mutate so quickly, that it's possible you could catch a recently mutated form of the same virus a few months or years later. So if you caught the virus circulating right now, you'd be immune to it. But in a few months, chances are there will be a variant or 2 and you could be susceptible to that one, although you'd have partial immunity. Clear as mud? lol

[Caliman73]

2. I don't think so

I am not a health professional at all but I think that the flu is strain specific. Perhaps you would be immune to this specific strain of H1 flu, but if another mutation came out next year chances are you could get sick again.

[dflprincess]

5. I think you could get sick again but how sick may depend on how much the virus has changed

A report in the London Times speculated that, while no one has complete immunity to the current strain, people who have had a type-A influenza might have enough immunity so they'd have a milder case of the current flu.

[Caliman73]

14. I agree

Which is the concept behind the flu shot as far as I know. The CDC looks at the prevailing strains of flu and develops the yearly vaccine based on their information. The vaccines protect vulnerable populations from getting the full force of the virus. What other posters said about mutations is what I was getting at regarding natural immunity.

[Avalux]

3. To the virus circulating now, yes.

Influenza viruses are constantly changing, so if you become infected and make antibodies against one strain, they will be less effective against evolved strains (changes within a virus type) or not effective at all against new virus types.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. What he said

:-)

Why the vaccine you get every year (if they do this correctly and hit it, why the guessing game every year) makes you immune to the strain circulating

By the way if you want to watch nerdness at its max, the guessing name for what flu vax to produce every year, is ahem fascinating

One more thing, this year's vaccine, you can bet your sweet potatoes that it will have this, as soon as they can determine it, why the earliest they will have them is September per WHO.

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. Have been wondering the same thing, and found this...

Doesn't answer the question, but makes interesting point.

8<snip

What's important about this virus is its genetic novelty. As far as we know, the human population doesn't have any natural immunity to it. But what people perceive about the virus is its lack of novelty. Clinically it seems a lot like what they are used to with seasonal influenza. It's not (so far) the monster of 1918 and doesn't have the virulence of H5N1. What they are forgetting is what the genetic novelty might mean.

Because there is no natural immunity to this virus, even though clinically it appears to be like garden variety flu to the individual, with respect to the population it has the potential to spread faster and many more people sick than seasonal flu. And remember, seasonal flu is not a walk in the park. It kills an estimated 30,000 people a year.

A bad flu season can fill hospital emergency rooms and in patient beds to the bursting point. We currently have fewer staffed hospital beds per capita than we did in the last pandemic, 1968 (the "Hong Kong flu"). There is no reserve capacity. We can't just add physical beds. Beds don't take care of patients. Nurses and doctors do.

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/04/swine_flu_i_beat_a_dead_horse.php

[elleng]

7. Mebbe, I dunno,

but I don't think survival is really unusual; TREAT THE SYMPTOMS.

[Maru Kitteh]

8. Not automatically, but it WOULD make you much safer and if you did happen to get it again, likely

the recurrence could be so mild you would barely notice it. This is assuming you are not extremely immuno compromised.

ETA: The reason why you get "the common cold" over and over is those illnesses are actually from a huge variety of constantly mutating viruses. So, the cold you got last month doesn't spur your body to form any protection to the whole different one you picked up this month. In the case of the piggy flu, the first contact WOULD spur your immune system and protect you from subsequent contacts. Studies of living persons who survived the 1918 flu show they STILL had antibodies to that particular flu circulating in their bodies. Pretty amazing, I think.

[mrs_p]

9. natural immunity to the viral strain

best protection around (if you survive)

[Buzz Clik]

10. No, but you'd get to go back to school.

[SheilaT]

11. Yes. At least to this particular swine flu.

Back in 1917-18, when the Spanish flu went around the world, the reason elderly people (at least in this country) generally did not get the flu then was because there had been an epidemic of a similar Type A influenza about fifty years earlier. Many of the older adults had gotten in then, recovered, and now were pretty much immune to the Spanish flu.

The immunity you get from having a (viral) disease is far better than the immunity you get from a vaccine. If you get smallpox and recover, you won't get smallpox again. The smallpox vaccine eventually wears off, although I once read that during the last natural smallpox outbreak in this country (which I think was in 1948) there was evidence that a smallpox vaccination even fifty years earlier still granted at least some immunity.

Same with flu. If you get the flu and recover -- which the majority of people do even in a bad flu outbreak -- you won't get flu again for some years.

Flu comes in several major types -- I think it's three. Type A is generally the most virulent and seems to be the culprit in the major flu epidemics of the last century or so. There are many sub-types. Every year the flu vaccine is a guess, made at least six months before flu season, as to how the virus will mutate.

The hype connected to this outbreak is so far beyond what is called for that it's quite unfortunate. The numbers involved are so relatively low, especially when you compare to the numbers who die every day from all sorts of other causes, that you really have to wonder about the sense of proportionality on the part of everyone involved in this hype.

[stray cat]

12. for a pretty identical version of it- at the rate that flu changes not for long

but probably for the summer since most other flu has died out in the US

[demokatgurrl]

13. It's like ANY flu

yes, you get immunity but only to that particular virus strain. Unfortunately the viruses mutate so next year it could be slightly different.