H1N1 study on 2009 effectiveness couldn't be more wrong

[LuvOrlando]

I just read this and it made my head spin. All 4 members of my household received the vaccine 10/28/09, i still have the receipt. My DD was diagnosed with H1N1 on 11/13/09 and sent home with Tamiflu (also provided to the rest of us). She was hospitalized with pleural effusion/pneumonia and blood infection early in the am on 11/16/09. I spent 10 days with her in the hospital sleeping on a cabinet while her poor little body struggled.

Over New Years DH was the first infected and it spread. January 2, 2010 my husband was the first one sick, I got test confirmed/State lab confirmed H1N1 on the 3rd or 4th, my son was test confirmed H1N1 the 5th or 6th.

I don't know who these researchers were looking at but my household was a 100% fail rate.

The numbers were low because of mismanagement, not because people weren't sick. During the whole episode Dr's and the Gov't handled the situation terribly. They refused to count anyone who wasn't lab or test confirmed a positive even though the test wasn't anywhere near 100% accurate and made the lab tests virtually unattainable. The only reason my Dr got me through was a multi-hour conversation with the State with my vaccine receipt in hand because he, believing the statistics on the vaccine as good, thought I must have a mutation.

The whole mess was an epic failure and I hope they use the situation as a teaching moment because next time the disease can be incalculably worse. This is definitely not an atta' boy moment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/2011020...jA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNoMW4xZmx1dmFjY2k-

 

[golfgal]

I just read this and it made my head spin. All 4 members of my household received the vaccine 10/28/09, i still have the receipt. My DD was diagnosed with H1N1 on 11/13/09 and sent home with Tamiflu (also provided to the rest of us). She was hospitalized with plural effusion/pneumonia and blood infection early in the am on 11/16/09. I spent 10 days with her in the hospital sleeping on a cabinet while her poor little body struggled.

Over New Years DH was the first infected and it spread. January 2, 2010 my husband was the first one sick, I got test confirmed/State lab confirmed H1N1 on the 3rd or 4th, my son was test confirmed H1N1 the 5th or 6th.

I don't know who these researchers were looking at but my household was a 100% fail rate.

The numbers were low because of mismanagement, not because people weren't sick. During the whole episode Dr's and the Gov't handled the situation terribly. They refused to count anyone who wasn't lab or test confirmed a positive even though the test wasn't anywhere near 100% accurate and made the lab tests virtually unattainable. The only reason my Dr got me through was a multi-hour conversation with the State with my vaccine receipt in hand because he, believing the statistics on the vaccine as good, thought I must have a mutation.

The whole mess was an epic failure and I hope they use the situation as a teaching moment because next time the disease can be incalculably worse. This is definitely not an atta' boy moment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/2011020...jA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNoMW4xZmx1dmFjY2k-

I think the 100% fail rate in your house had more to do with timing then the vaccine. Two weeks is not enough time for the vaccine to reach full effectiveness in your DD's case and the rest of your family was sick in 6 weeks, again, timing issues.

 

[luvmy3]

It was 100% effective in our house. My dd was the only one who came down with it and that was before the vaccines were available. Sorry for what your dd went through and that it wasn't as effective for your household.
Not all vaccines are 100% effective, so unless they were claiming it was I'm not sure how its an epic fail

 

[LuvOrlando]

It's more than just my house, although statistically what happened here shouldn't have happened. Also, note the dates, my DD was the only one sick so close to the vaccine date.

The bigger issue behind me calling it an epic failure is the poor management of information. Vaccines were laying in warehouses while municipalities did not have the infrastructure to pass them out. There was no reasonable way to actually get a reasonable count on who was & wasn't actually sick. Remember how they just stopped counting, I do. It was a mess, a great big mess.

 

[Rumpus]

I think the 100% fail rate in your house had more to do with timing then the vaccine. Two weeks is not enough time for the vaccine to reach full effectiveness in your DD's case and the rest of your family was sick in 6 weeks, again, timing issues.

You are correct. At two weeks, immunity is just beginning to build. It doesn't peak until 6 weeks. Timing is everything.

 

[LuvOrlando]

3members of the household got it at about the 10 week point.

This isn't just about us though, although I use myself as an example because it is, well, me.

So much went wrong. They didn't let the Dr's offices distribute it, although only heaven knows why. The infrastructure already existed for vaccine distribution but for some reason that was sidelined which lead to huge piles vaccines going bad all over the country and not being distributed in a timely manner. Not to mention the fact that the facilities for vaccine production were quickly overwhelmed so there wasn't enough, so it got diluted (which probably caused the trouble in my house, I don't know but i suspect). Not good

My biggest beef is with the counting though. At some point it looked as if the powers that be were more interested in appearances than in management so they stopped counting people. The spin was blatant and counter-productive.

Thank goodness the Flu ran its course quickly. I just think the fall out should be looked at for ideas how to improve things the next time something contagious makes a showing. Once people start slapping themselves on the back they stop looking to make things better and the H1N1 thing could have gone much much better. Articles like this one do more harm than good.

 

[Magic Mom]

It's more than just my house, although statistically what happened here shouldn't have happened. Also, note the dates, my DD was the only one sick so close to the vaccine date.

The bigger issue behind me calling it an epic failure is the poor management of information. Vaccines were laying in warehouses while municipalities did not have the infrastructure to pass them out. There was no reasonable way to actually get a reasonable count on who was & wasn't actually sick. Remember how they just stopped counting, I do. It was a mess, a great big mess.

You condem the effectieness study because of what you claim to be faulty measuring, but have no problem declaring it an epic failure based on what?....your observations and news reports?

 

[tiggersbombed2]

I got this December Luv. First, sick but still a mom, I take my dd12 to the doctors, she has strep I'm told. I tell them I'm going to the doctor's and I'm pretty sure I have the flu. I'm told I don't "sound" like I have the flu because I'm full of snot, and that there isn't any "activity" in the area at the moment. Okay.

I go to my doctor and tell him, chills, sweat, high fever, dry cough, achy...oh...no, we don't have flu around here yet. No cases reported. He does a swab test because I bug him too. It's flu, type A, probably Swine Flu he nonchalantly says. Then puts me on Tamiflu, I call the DD's doctor and her doctor prescribes Tamilflu too. Great. I mean, really? Flu starts somehwhere right? and we had just been in NYC which DID already have flu activity.

I felt like a truck hit me. It was awful. But at least we didn't get sicker. Your poor little girl, it's so hard when you can't do anything for them.

 

[Ember]

3members of the household got it at about the 10 week point.

This isn't just about us though, although I use myself as an example because it is, well, me.

Using yourself as an example, or any individual, is not an accurate reporting of anything. Statisticians look trends in the data, not individual cases. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of "But this is what happened to me" as a way to try and show that the science is wrong. Any time a study is released, people immediately start relating their personal experiences. (In some cases, it's just harmless speculation; in other cases it can be a serious problem that people do this.)

If the H1N1 vaccine wasn't 93% effective in your household, it could be for a number of factors. Or your family could just be an outlier statistically. None of this, however, disproves the study or disproved the conclusion that the vaccine was 93% effective.

Your criticisms of the distribution may be valid, I don't know. In Canada, I also thought our government did a bit of a hack job. But then they were facing a challenge they hadn't dealt with before and hopefully they learned a thing or two and will have better procedures should another pandemic make its way here.

 

[Geoff_M]

Ember, you are correct. Contradictory personal anecdotes tell us zero about population studies (unless the study indicates a uniform result). If a study finds that 87% of respondents liked Disney World, but I can find a family of four that didn't like their visit and had no plans on going back... does that prove that the study is flawed? Of course not.

LuvOrlando, there's also a lot more to that study then just the small news blurb you posted. Here's the entire study, if you want to know the details. One interesting point is that the study wasn't a large scale study and as such the results have some wiggle room. With a 95% confidence interval and, the actual rate given what the study found is somewhere between 69% and 98% with that sample size.

 

[Ember]

LuvOrlando, there's also a lot more to that study then just the small news blurb you posted. Here's the entire study, if you want to know the details. One interesting point is that the study wasn't a large scale study and as such the results have some wiggle room. With a 95% confidence interval and, the actual rate given what the study found is somewhere between 69% and 98% with that sample size.

The mainstream media took science and didn't tell us the whole story?!

There's a really funny parody of this phenomenon here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1

 

[LuvOrlando]

So you guys all observed what you would call the best we could have done in managing the H1N1 situation? No need to improve things? No errors made, nothing to learn from? If this were a more lethal issue we would have been okey dokey?

methinks not so much

 

[tiggersbombed2]

double post sorry

 

[tiggersbombed2]

I'm with Luv. I think the whole thing was a giant clustermuffin. Starting with freeking everyone out because it was killing a lot of people in Mexico, without taking into effect the fact that NO ONE in Mexico wants to go to their hospitals because they are pretty much a death sentence. So. You had people with no health care, living in poverty conditions, dying at a good rate because they wouldn't go to the hospitals, which if they DID go, killed them anyway.

Great way to start.

Let's look at what happened to me and my "oh, it can't be flu, we don't have flue here yet" of December. I checked the web and got some numbers. 5 People in NJ were reported with "Swine Flu" listed the day after I was tested (Friday), by Monday the whole state was in the "yellow" (if I'm remembering my colors correctly" meaning area wide. So, if three days makes that much difference and the doctors are so lax that they are completely unworried ? Scary to me.

 

[Geoff_M]

So you guys all observed what you would call the best we could have done in managing the H1N1 situation? No need to improve things? No errors made, nothing to learn from? If this were a more lethal issue we would have been okey dokey?

methinks not so much

No, I'm not claiming things were handled perfectly... they weren't. The first problem was that the H1N1 problem wasn't picked up fast enough to be included in the annual trivalent seasonal flu vaccine. Instead we had to make a special separate vaccine using the slow antiquated production process that we are hostage to in order to try and minimize safety fears (using chicken eggs instead of bioreactors to grow the antigens.)

 

[DebbieB]

So you guys all observed what you would call the best we could have done in managing the H1N1 situation? No need to improve things? No errors made, nothing to learn from? If this were a more lethal issue we would have been okey dokey?

methinks not so much

There's a big difference between "need to improve things" or "lessons to learn" and "epic failure".

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I think people were trying to deal with what they saw as a crisis situation the best they knew how at the time using a system far from perfect.

Not surprising given that virus issues aren't completely predictable in terms of either transmission or illness. In fairness, we may have seen a different outcome with time. But what we did see was the result of rushing, reacting, and guessing at things to begin with. Last year things kind of fizzled out when there weren't the problems they'd anticipated the year before, so they kind of half-heartedly threw the vaccine into the flu vaccine this year and called it a day.

This was one of the arguments that some people had at the time (and AIR hotly debated here on the Dis) - they didn't want to be subjected to something that was rushed/pushed through so fast in an attempt to "fix" the problem which was really a somewhat calculated shot in the dark and it may not have been as big an issue as was predicted, etc. (And of course others wanted to be part of the proposed solution and hoped for the best.)

Evaluation of what occurred is necessry - good or bad - and hopefully lessons will have been learned which can be applied to the next time. Researchers/scientists have a far more global view of results than any of us are privy to. We can only hope what we hear is accurate from a medical standpoint and not overly-influenced by political factors, etc.

 

[PrincessKsMom]

I can only go by my house as well. 2 of 3 got the swine flu vaccine and no one contracted it. I work in NYC so I'm sure I must have been exposed to it at some point. Doesn't mean it had a 100% effective rate since the two who were vaccinated didn't contract it. I think it's just poor timing and dumb luck OP.

Just like 9/11, I believe our government did the best they could given the fact that this outbreak is not something we normally deal with. The pharmaceutical companies could only create it so quickly. If they didn't create a vaccine people would be screaming our government was letting us die. If they created one too quickly and distributed it too quickly and people got sick from it, people would be screaming our government was trying to kill us. It's really a no win situation. I'm sure they learned alot from that and will continue to do a better job in the future.

Whether the vaccine did it's job and irradicated it or it just ran it's course, I haven't heard anything recently about the swine flu. I do know I was told it was included in this year's flu vaccine, which DD and I both received.

I'm sorry you had to deal with this illness and that your daughter suffered so much. I too would have been extremely upset at feeling like no one was listening to my concerns.

 

[Hannathy]

You are actually complaining about 2 different things.

1. The effectiveness of the vaccine, which in you house because you and DH caught the flu after being vaccinated, you can't count your DD because the vaccine didn't have time to take effect with her.
In your house it wasn't but you can't claim it didn't work if in most cases it was effective you are the point something in the statistics that it didn't work for some reason you can't say it didn't work for anyone. In our house it worked.

2. the handling of the distribution. Yes it wasn't handled well but it is very hard to rush production of an item that takes so many weeks to grow-you can't just add extra production lines-it has to grow! Also because of all the liability and lawsuits in vaccine production very very few places will make them so there just isn't extra facilities to up production, there just isn't anyway to make more if the limited places are already running at peak.

I'm sorry it hit your family so hard but I am wondering if you and DH didn't catch a variation of the Swine flu since you didn't catch it when your DD had it so you had protection from the first virus that went around but by January it had mutated and the vaccine you had didn't protect. That is the problem with flu vaccines it is a crap shoot as to which strain will be prevalent and if it mutates. Sometimes they get it correct and sometimes the virus has a mind of it's own and doesn't do what they predicted.

 

[Tinijocaro]

Whether the vaccine did it's job and irradicated it or it just ran it's course, I haven't heard anything recently about the swine flu. I do know I was told it was included in this year's flu vaccine, which DD and I both received.

I'm sorry you had to deal with this illness and that your daughter suffered so much. I too would have been extremely upset at feeling like no one was listening to my concerns.

The swine flu far from irradicated-the UK recently had a horrible time with it. I've been reading of the deaths that have occurred this year from swine flu, many of those people had received the vaccine.

The US's flu season typically peaks in February. Swine flu is just recently making it's way to the states. Let's hope we don't get what the UK had.