Health Care Friday

Published on: 16th October, 2009

The health reform bill(s) continue to move through the Senate sausage factory:

Mr. Reid sat at the head, flanked by the finance chairman, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who was the acting chairman of the health committee in Mr. Kennedy’s absence.

Mr. Reid, whose political future could hinge on his skill in merging the two bills — he is up for re-election next year — said at a news conference that President Obama would also have a hand in shaping the final measure.

FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

Thursday’s study, by the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., said there’s evidence that breathing secondhand smoke — even for a short time — can increase nonsmokers’ risk of heart problems. An institute committee reviewed data and testimony about secondhand smoke and heart problems, including 11 studies that evaluated the effect of smoking bans on heart attack rates. Those studies showed that heart attacks dropped by 6 to 47 percent with the bans.

“It’s clear that smoking bans work,” said Lynn Goldman, professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of the committee that wrote the report. “Bans reduce the risk of heart attack in nonsmokers as well as smokers. … There is no question that smoking bans have a positive health effect.”

But that won’t make them popular.

CDC updates:

Do those that have been previously vaccinated against the 1976 swine influenza need to get vaccinated against the 2009 H1N1 influenza?
The 1976 swine flu virus and the 2009 H1N1 virus are different enough that its unlikely a person vaccinated in 1976 will have full protection from the 2009 H1N1. People vaccinated in 1976 should still be given the 2009 H1N1 vaccine…

Will the seasonal flu vaccine also protect against the 2009 H1N1 flu?
The seasonal flu vaccine is not expected to protect against the 2009 H1N1 flu.

Will this vaccine be made differently than the seasonal influenza vaccine?
No. This vaccine will be made using the same processes and facilities that are used to make the currently licensed seasonal influenza vaccines.

Can the seasonal vaccine and the 2009 H1N1 vaccine be given at the same time?
Inactivated 2009 H1N1 vaccine can be administered at the same visit as any other vaccine, including pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. Live 2009 H1N1 vaccine can be administered at the same visit as any other live or inactivated vaccine EXCEPT seasonal live attenuated influenza vaccine

Find a flu shot at flu.gov:

Good article by Maggie Fox about what we know and what we don’t know about 2009 H1N1.

How many people have been infected with the new swine flu? How many will it kill? How do you catch it?

Health authorities around the world are trying to persuade people to line up to be vaccinated against the pandemic H1N1 virus even as they struggle to answer these basic questions.

H1N1 swine flu was declared a pandemic in June and the World Health Organization says more than 375,000 people globally have been infected and 4,500 have died.

But these are just laboratory-confirmed cases and the WHO says they are the tip of the iceberg. Only a small fraction of people who get swine flu ever have it confirmed by a doctor.

Maggie is one of the best science/med reporters in the business.

NYT tells us something we already know.

Anti-vaccinators, as they are often referred to by scientists and doctors, have toiled for years on the margins of medicine. But an assemblage of factors around the swine flu vaccine — including confusion over how it was made, widespread speculation about whether it might be more dangerous than the virus itself, and complaints among some health care workers in New York about a requirement that they be vaccinated — is giving the anti-vaccine movement a fresh airing, according to health experts.

The problem with that?

“I wonder if the people disseminating this false information about this vaccine realize that what they are doing could result in some people losing their lives,” said Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the director of the Department of Public Health for Los Angeles County. The comments of vaccine dissenters, which he said “politically come from the left and the right,” were frequently “not just counterproductive,” he said, “but downright disgraceful.”

Hey, as long as you can sell stuff.

Further, vitamin vendors — who in some cases operate blogs, with postings by people who claim to be doctors finding fault with vaccines — are reporting an increase in sales related to swine flu. Michael Angelo, chief research and information officer for eVitamins.com, said sales in September for flu-related products had tripled from last September. The company, he said, has sold 17,565 vitamins that it says protects against the H1N1 virus.

Caveat emptor. And lest you think it’s just the NYT noticing:

HHS counters myths with facts on Web site

Over the past few weeks, several prominent talk-show hosts from across the political spectrum,” including Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, “have stoked public anxiety about the swine flu vaccine.” Tom Skinner, the senior public affairs officer at the CDC, said it is “worrisome…that those who are critical of vaccination often do not base their opinions on sound scientific information.”