FluPortal.org

[pmagalhaes / cc (usable on your site) /
Flickr]

Would you like some tips on finding unusual leads and content for your H1N1 reporting? Then check out our new guide to tracking down smart “user-generated content” (UGC) on social-media sites. The guide will steer you to finding blog posts, photographs, video, and audio that you can use directly in your stories or to chase story ideas and sources.

To give you an example of the kind of things you can find, here are some FluPortal posts that have featured UGC found on social-media sites:
“H1N1 PSA Videos for Your Website”
“Photos You Can Use: Swine-Flu Street Art”
“Reporting on Cultural Responses to H1N1”
“H1N1 Prevention: Creative Videos”
“Photos You Can Use: More H1N1 Graffiti”

The guide also serves as a general template for using social media in your reporting on any subject.

Wordle created from Obama’s proclamation

If you were in any doubt that this week is National Influenza Vaccine Week, President Obama has issued a proclamation to that effect:

This week presents a window of opportunity for us to prevent a possible third wave of H1N1 flu in the United States. [...]

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of January 10-16, 2010, as National Influenza Vaccination Week. I encourage all Americans to observe this week by getting the H1N1 flu vaccine if they have not yet done so, and by asking their families, friends, and co-workers to do the same.

The full text is here.

In yesterday’s CDC press briefing, Ann Schuchat, Director of CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, gave a post-holiday roundup of the latest H1N1 developments.

Here’s the short course: The vaccine is now available to pretty much everyone who wants it all across the country. So far, the US hasn’t decided to return/donate/sell any of its vaccine supply as some European countries are doing. Instead, it’s focusing on the upcoming (10-16 January) National Influenza Vaccine Week (NIVW). NIVW is another big push to encourage Americans to get H1N1 and seasonal-flu shots. It has its own schedule of activities, informational materials, a media toolkit, and web tools like ecards and badges.

Why continue pushing the H1N1 vaccine when, as Schuchat announced, “we’re seeing drops in laboratory confirmed hospitalizations and deaths”? Because there’s also “activity increasing in a few other indicators.” She clarified:

We still have more activity than we usually have this time of year, though it’s certainly much below where it was several weeks ago. All the virus that we’re seeing right now is the H1N1 virus. We haven’t yet seen the emergence of seasonal flu strains in any numbers at all. We saw a slight uptick in the last week’s reporting in the influenza-like illness visits to the doctors or emergency departments. That can sometimes happen right around Christmas, so we don’t know if that will persist. We also saw an uptick in pneumonia or influenza deaths in this past week. And that isn’t something that we necessarily see around the Christmas holiday.

Minnesota was one state that reported increased influenza-like illness last week.

What CDC is afraid of, of course, is a third wave of H1N1. To drive the point home, Schuchat showed this graph of pandemic mortality in 1957:

[CDC / usable on your site]

She went on to say:

This is really a reminder of why we are saying that we need to remain vigilant. [...] [I]f you look at this graph, the bottom part of that curve, you know, the — there’s the camel hump and then it comes down to that valley. Well, that’s where we are right now in that valley. We don’t know what’s going to happen over the next several weeks or months. But in 1957, this essentially gave the all clear whistle in that December/January time period. They had vaccine, but they didn’t encourage its use and yet they did go on to see that increase in mortality.

National Influenza Vaccine Week launches on Sunday. You can check here for NIVW activities in your area.

Several notable public figures have received an H1N1 vaccine recently: President Obama, WHO Director General Margaret Chan, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius all rolled up their sleeves towards the end of December. Sebelius got hers just before promoting the vaccine during four college-football bowl games. You can see her (embeddable) ad here. This is a slightly longer version of it that includes Sebelius smiling while receiving the injection:

[HHS]

While the US government continues to push the vaccine actively, the recent news from Canada and a number of European countries is the surplus vaccine supply. Even some developing countries slated to receive donated vaccine from WHO appear to be reassessing the quantity they need.

[courosa / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Two polls released just before the holidays give some new figures on H1N1 vaccination rates in the US: one by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and one by the National H1N1 Flu Survey (NHFS). The HSPH poll was conducted on 16-17 December, 2009. The NHFS poll was conducted on 6-12 December, 2009.

The HSPH results include the following:

The NHFS results include these numbers:

[HeffTech / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

A new article in Biotechnology Journal proposes a method of producing influenza vaccine that’s more efficient than the traditional egg-based technology. It uses “virus-like particles” (VLPs) created in insect cells to form the basis of a vaccine. (This technology is apparently already approved for vaccines against some other diseases.)

The article was written by scientists in Austria who produced a VLP vaccine against H1N1 that, in mice at least, triggered a robust immune response. If this type of vaccine becomes a viable option for humans, its production speed would help public-health authorities respond more quickly to flu pandemics and viral mutations.

Veteran flu journalist Maryn McKenna cautioned recently, however, that emerging vaccine technologies like this one “remain in the realm of basic science or in preclinical testing” for influenza. In other words: flu-vaccine production will probably still rely on chicken eggs in the immediate future.

[el patojo / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Did you know that the CDC offers podcasts on H1N1? You can find them by clicking here and then selecting “H1N1″ in the “By Topic” menu. You can also go to the search page and type “H1N1″ into the “description” box to pull up a slightly different list.

The subjects of the podcasts range from underreporting of H1N1 cases to mixing Tamiflu with liquids for your kids to an explanation of the delay in vaccine production.

Here’s a recent one promoting the H1N1 vaccine. (Click on the “play” arrow to start it.)

[audio:http://www.cdc.gov/flu/podcasts/mp3/INever.mp3]

The CDC has been promoting its travel tips for avoiding H1N1 over the holidays. If you’re reporting on H1N1 spreading through family gatherings or on strategies for beating the virus while on the road, these creative-commons photos are available to illustrate your stories.

LexnGer an “Editor/Publisher of cheapeats restaurant guides” in Toronto, took this picture to prove that she was, as instructed, taking her Tamiflu with food.

[LexnGer / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Also from Toronto: Danielle Scott captured this Ontario government poster advocating the H1N1 shot.

[Danielle Scott / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Futureatlas.com caught this kid boasting a “flu fighter” sticker — presumably a reward for submitting to a flu vaccine.

[futureatlas.com (of www.Futureatlas.com) / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

[FluPortal will be back with new posts on Monday, January 4th.]

[Ian-S / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

The World Health Organization released a briefing note last week on death rates from H1N1 and from seasonal flu. It warned that comparisons are “not reliable for several reasons and can be misleading.”

The note explains that seasonal-flu death rates are based on models that create estimates; whereas H1N1 death rates are currently based on lab-confirmed deaths, which are “unquestionably” lower than the actual totals. WHO says that it won’t be until “one to two years after the [H1N1] pandemic has peaked” that “accurate assessments of mortality and mortality rates will likely be possible.”

The briefing note also points out that comparing death rates misses an important point: H1N1 appears to be more lethal for younger people than typical seasonal flu.

[Orin Zebest / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

Several new scientific studies of H1N1 have been released in the last few days. We’re highlighting four that might interest you because they appear to answer some common questions about swine flu. (Disclaimer: we’re not in a position to evaluate the quality of the research.)

Question: Is it OK to eat pork from a pig infected with H1N1?
The Department of Agriculture has consistently maintained that you can’t catch H1N1 by eating pork. Now they’ve followed that up with a study showing that pigs infected with H1N1 are safe to eat. (A PDF of the press release is here.) The virus appears not to be present in tissues other than those from the respiratory tract. The researchers found “no evidence for systemic infection that would contaminate meat with infectious virus.”

Question: How is H1N1 sometimes fatal?
Brazilian researchers, examining 21 fatal cases of H1N1, have concluded that the cause of death was typically due to lung damage (of various kinds). In other words, despite the variety of systemic symptoms caused by H1N1, “the main pathological changes associated with [H1N1] infection are localized to the lungs.” Apparently one quarter of the patients did not have any underlying complicating medical condition. (The full study will be published next month in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.)

Question: Is H1N1 more dangerous for children than seasonal flu?
A retrospective study of children who died of H1N1 this spring/summer in Buenos Aires says: yes. It concludes that the “rate of death [from H1N1] was 10 times the rate associated with seasonal influenza for the same population in 2007 and 5 times the rate reported by the CDC for the U.S. pediatric population during the relatively severe 2003–2004 influenza season.” The mortality rate for infants was especially high (“10 times the U.S. infant death rate from seasonal influenza in 2003–2004″).

Question: Do pregnant women really have an increased risk of dying from H1N1?
A retrospective California study of “reproductive-age women” (pregnant or not) who were “hospitalized with or died from 2009 H1N1 influenza” suggests this is true. It also concludes that, for pregnant women, antiviral treatment within 2 days of symptom onset reduced risk of admission to an ICU and/or death. About one third of the pregnant patients in the study had other “risk factors for complications from influenza.”