Scary H1N1 Spread

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know that H1N1 seems to be spreading all too quickly and that the vaccine is in short supply.  Our doctor told us today that we are on a four page list of people waiting for the vaccine.  We also found out that 66 of the 270 children in NHL’s school were out today.  That’s nearly 25% of the kids out!

After picking up NHL, B told me that he was complaining of having a headache.  That sparked a memory of him complaining of having a headache this morning.  That, combined with B not being sure if he had a fever and the obvious rampant infection rate in his school, leads us to worry about NHL having H1N1.  B, JSL and NHL are off as I type this to get NHL some Tamiflu to have onhand in case he really has influenza.  Meanwhile, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that he’s just feeling tired and run down and not H1N1-sick.

In related news, I checked out the CDC’s FluView website.  The map intrigued me and I wanted to see how H1N1 has been progressing.  I managed to locate all of the archival maps (except for week 16) and strung them into a Flash animation:

[flv]/2009/10/usmap.flv|566|395[/flv]

Note how the brown "widespread" states multiply starting the first week of September, aka When School Starts.  I have a bad feeling that NHL’s school in particular and schools in general are going to see worse infection rates before things improve.

Here’s hoping that everyone out there stays healthy!