1000 Deaths from H1N1 (Swine Flu) in US

By Julie Stachowiak, PhD
Multiple Sclerosis Guide; Guest blogger

You start to wonder how all of those individual reports of death due to complications of H1N1 add up. It seems like there is always one or two every time you look at the news, but what is the bottom line?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released information on October 23rd that the 1000th confirmed H1N1 patient has died in the United States. Of those 1000 deaths, almost 100 of them were children.

To put this in perspective, each year an estimated 36,000 people die from seasonal flu. Usually these deaths are in the elderly. In 2008-2009 flu season, a total of 68 children died of the seasonal flu. In other words, 0.18 percent of total deaths from seasonal flu were in children, as opposed to 10% of the deaths from H1N1.

It looks like the H1N1 epidemic is still in the "ramp up" stage, so more deaths are expected. Rather than panicking, use these statistics as motivation to be vigilant for flu-like symptoms and get children vaccinated as soon as possible. Most of these deaths were in people who did not receive antiviral medication within 48 hours and (to my knowledge) NONE of these deaths occurred in people that had been vaccinated against H1N1.