I'm not trying to berate the guy, but if he knew the flu was a possibility (NY schools have had outbreaks)...why not get to a doctor within the first 24-48 hours of symptoms and get on an antiviral like Tamiflu? It has proven effective in other cases.
56,000 people died of flu in 2006, and not all had pre-existing conditions. You can die from the flu (any flu) without having a pre-existing condition.
For one, most physicians are not prescribing Tamiflu unless the patient is serologically proven to have mutant H1N1 flu. There are only about 100 million courses of Tamiflu in the US, half on pharmacy shelves and half in stockpile at the CDC. If everyone with the sniffles gets Tamiflu, there won’t be enough to treat the really sick people.
It’s hard to get tamiflu. We thought my daughters were exposed to swine flu earlier this week, and I have 2 high risk daughters. I could only get tamiflu for the one with asthma, but not for the one with epilepsy. I also could not get it for me, and I have asthma. They said they’ll prescribe for me if my daughter gets sick.
The flu that the girls were exposed to isn’t swine flu, but it’s strange that there is so much flu going around at the end of May. Flu season is over, but 10% of their class had flu on Monday.