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Asking listeners to put aside his political orientation for a moment, talk-radio host Michael Savage questioned the federal government’s recommendation that citizens get a flu shot. “Did Harry Reid take a flu shot? Did Barack Obama take a flu shot? Did Barack Obama’s lovely family take a flu shot? Did Joe Biden take a flu shot?” Savage asked. “Which of the mandarins took the flu shot?” He explained that he was talking specifically about vaccines and was not advocating the avoidance of all pharmaceuticals. Known for his many books on herbal medicines, Savage acknowledged he has benefited from “an awful...

The U.S. has been hit with a particularly aggressive early flu season this year with widespread reports of the illness across the country, hospitalizing 2,257 people and leaving 18 children dead before the end of 2012. And health officials say the numbers haven't even peaked yet. 'I think we're still accelerating,' Tom Skinner, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman, told reporters.

Hospitals across the country are being stretched for service as this year’s flu season looks to be the most intense in nearly a decade, with facilities beginning to turn patients away because of the danger that it could spread through their staffs. Thirty-nine states and New York City have reported significant levels of influenza-like-illnesses as medical professionals are reminded of the 2003-2004 season when more than 40,000 people died because the predominant strain was so dissimilar from the vaccine that year, reported Fox News. Hospital officials have described the season so far as “chaotic.” Doctors are telling patients to begin...

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is reporting that 18 Bay Staters have died from the flu so far this season. At least four of these people were from Boston, the Boston Public Health Commission’s Nick Martin told the Herald. “We’re seeing a significant increase in sickness and severity,” Martin said.

<p>Seven Chicago-area hospitals have had to send ambulances elsewhere this morning as they deal with an influx of patients with flu-like symptoms.</p> <p>As of 9:45 a.m., the hospitals remained on bypass status, which means their emergency rooms are at capacity and non-critical patients are being re-routed to other hospitals, said Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health...</p>

Flu infections sweep America hospitalizing thousands leaving 18 children dead ....

We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu." You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "High", that said: "Electrocution". Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth because [a] your teeth hurt and [b] you lack the strength. Midway through the brushingprocess, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam...

All Signs Indicate That This Flu Season Is Going To Be Brutal Jennifer WelshDec. 4, 2012, 6:53 PMThe flu season could be especially bad this year, and is one of the earliest-starting flu seasons in a decade, said Thomas Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control. "This is the earliest regular flu season we've had in nearly a decade, since the 2003-2004 flu season. That was an early and severe flu year," CDC director Thomas Frieden said in a teleconference yesterday Dec. 3. That season was very severe, especially for children, they said. This is much different than we...

Enlarge Image Risky science. The U.S. government is proposing special reviews for experiments that might increase the risk posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus (brown). Credit: Wikimedia Researchers are giving mixed reviews to a draft U.S. government plan to subject some grant requests for studies involving the H5N1 avian influenza virus to special reviews—and perhaps even require the work to be kept secret. Elements of the plan have been "very controversial within [the] U.S. government" committee that developed it, Amy Patterson, associate director for science policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, told a...

For years historians, epidemiologists, and virologists have been attempting to peel back the cobwebs of time in order to analyze the deadliest pandemic in human history; the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. John Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History, has probably done more to reawaken memories of that awful time than any other source, but many gaps in our knowledge remain. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger and David Morens - both researchers at NIAID – have added considerably to our understanding of the H1N1 virus and the events surrounding its emergence. Taubenberger was the first to...

Severe influenza doubles the odds that a person will develop Parkinson's disease later in life, according to University of British Columbia researchers. However, the opposite is true for people who contracted a typical case of red measles as children – they are 35 per cent less likely to develop Parkinson's. Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-severe-flu-parkinson.html#jCp

My 95 year old mother and I are into the 19th day of dealing with a difficult case of the flu. Although we had flu shots as we do every year, the variety of flu we contracted must have not been protected by the vaccination. The fevers have been gone for over a week, but the cough just is not lifting. It's much less but the coughing just won't come to an end. My mother progressed to the beginning of pneumonia but that seems to be gone after treatment with antibiotics. My mother has been to the doctor 3 times,...

The AH1N1 flu virus has left a total of 135 people dead in Mexico so far this year, with the number of fatalities up 67 percent in just one week, according to figures released by the authorities. The total number of deaths from AH1N1 flu reported by Mexico’s Health Secretariat up to Feb. 9 was 81, with another 54 the following week. The secretariat said Friday that deaths from the AH1N1 strain of flu from Jan. 1 to Feb. 16 represents 91 percent of the 149 fatalities from the different types of flu now active in the country. At the...

(Reuters) - When 22 bird flu experts meet at the World Health Organization this week, they will be tasked with deciding just how far scientists should go in creating lethal mutant viruses in the name of research. The hurriedly assembled meeting is designed to try to settle an unprecedented row over a call to ban publication of two scientific studies which detail how to mutate H5N1 bird flu viruses into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic. But experts say whatever the outcome, no amount of censorship, global regulation or shutting down of research projects could stop rogue...

The days of medical masks at airports and widespread panic may be coming back—that's because at least 12 humans are believed to have been infected with a new strain of swine flu that's not covered by this season's vaccine. The new swine flu strain, H3N2v, has shown at least some potential for human-to-human transmission in those 12 individuals, which makes it especially dangerous. Between 2009 and mid-2010, more than 17,000 people died worldwide from the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain, leading the World Health Organization to call the strain a pandemic. The 12 people with the new swine flu...

— The number of reported cases of a novel swine influenza virus has risen to 12 since July, encompassing 5 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The virus includes a gene from the human pandemic strain and affects mostly children. The infections in question involve a variant of the A(H3N2) virus that circulates among pigs. It contains a gene from the pandemic 2009 influenza A(H1N1) virus that codes for matrix proteins found in the viral shell. In 3 of the 5 states where the A(H3N2)v virus has surfaced — Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Maine —...

Statins, traditionally known as cholesterol-lowering drugs, may reduce mortality among patients hospitalized with influenza, according to a new study released online by the Journal of Infectious Diseases. It is the first published observational study to evaluate the relationship between statin use and mortality in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection, according to Vanderbilt's William Schaffner, M.D., professor and chair of Preventive Medicine. "We may be able to combine statins with antiviral drugs to provide better treatment for patients seriously ill with influenza," said Schaffner, who co-authored the study led by Meredith Vandermeer, MPH, of the Oregon Public Health Division.

A natural lipid in the fluid lining the lungs inhibits influenza infections in both cell cultures and mouse models, according to researchers at National Jewish Health. These findings, combined with previous studies demonstrating effectiveness against respiratory syncytial virus, suggest that the molecule, known as POPG, may have broad antiviral activity. “Supplemental POPG could be an important, inexpensive and novel approach for the prevention and treatment of influenza and other respiratory virus infections,” said Dennis Voelker, PhD, Professor of Medicine, and senior author in the report, published online in the American journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.

Bird flu and human flu could merge into 'one of biggest biological threats of our time', warn scientists A new deadly strain of super-flu could spread to Britain within 24 hours, experts have warned. The potential for bird flu and human flu to combine and form a new virus has been described as 'one of the biggest biological threats of our time'. The alert comes as people have started to fall victim to seasonal flu and the more virulent swine flu at the same time, according to the Daily Express.

Annual flu shots protect only about 59 percent of the population -- far less than previously thought -- according to a new study led by University of Minnesota researchers. The study found "major holes and gaps'' in the vaccine given to tens of millions of Americans every year to prevent influenza and its complications, said Michael Osterholm, the lead scientist and head of the university's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. But until a better vaccine comes along, Osterholm said, 59 percent "is a lot better than zero." --SNIP-- "This is the most comprehensive review of influenza vaccine that...