Our Theory

We at facts-h1n1.com believe that the actual h1n1 virus is highly contagious and can cause some critical (and lethal) complications to only a very small percentage of infected people.  We believe that the Canadian government and other global governments also know this

Thus, its important to realize that countries and officials are not really expecting or preparing for many people actually dying from the h1n1 virus

Actually, the government(s) are concerned with:

 

1)    The total health care costs (and resources) that a highly amount of infected persons (with mild to medium symptoms)  that would be involved in a winter long h1n1 pandemic.  Doctors and hospitals would be continuously overwhelmed with mild cases of h1n1 related patients causing a major strain on the health care system both in human power and financial costs (CNN reports huge increases to U.S. hospital visitations with more even expected)– Thus if they can get as many people vaccinated, then the overall amount of mild to medium cases that would require walk in clinic attention, family doctor or even hospital resources would be greatly reduced.

 

2)    The effect of a “panic” physiological atmosphere of a highly contagious virus with a potential lethal effect within a society could cause major negative local economic effects.  This was witnessed in Mexico in the spring of 2009, where citizens were requested to stay home and schools and businesses were closed for a number of days.

 

3)    Similar to above; individual countries do no want a serious H1N1 outbreak due to the obvious affects to tourism and travel into the respected countries.  Any country that is know for a high swine flu deaths, contaminations, or lack of efforts to reduce and control the spread of the h1n1 virus my be adversely viewed by other countries and their citizens as an undesirable place to visit.

 

If goverments really were trying to prevent massive deaths, then most of the upper hemisphere countries would not be getting the vaccine last minute, they would have been vaccinated in the middle of the summer if needed to ensure safety, and the administration of the vaccine would not have been optional.

  

 

Governments were  waiting (back in the northern hemishere summer) before they made any purchases or committed to any contracts for large quantizes of vaccine (and antivirals) for the upcoming flu season.  The (northern hemisphere) governments waited to see what the southern hemisphere cases and infection rate was, they followed closely countries (i.e New Zealand, Argentina, Australia) with similar heath care systems to see what affects and costs the flu season had of those countries.

 

The government’s main concern was and is “costs” and minimizing costs to their health care systems and local/ national economies. 

 

With this observed data, they made decisions on attaining the vaccine and antivirals.

The government’s main concern was and is “costs” and minimizing costs to their health care systems and local/ national economies.  The greatest and most effective way to reduce this potential cost was to have a certain amount of the population (not necessarily as many citizens as possible- as there are costs to that too)  that would ensure a low amount of per capital of infected people requiring health care attention.

 

Even in the administration process of the vaccine,  the actaul overriding and trumping variable is and still is “costs” – that is why vaccine clinics are operated in a manner to “cost effectively”  vaccine the populous. 

 

 In Canada,  (not officially confirmed), local MDs and doctors need to purchase the vaccine to administer to their patients (and in turn charge back the nation wide health care system).  However there is a minimum purchase quantity of 500 vaccine units for doctors and walk in clinics. (not officially confirmed).  Notice that governments were not willing to have highly paid doctors administer the vaccine in order to reduce line ups and wait times, even though it may mean that the general population starts to become vaccinated earlier than having to wait for their turn at overcrowded vaccine clinics.  Again the costs involved in having the vaccines shipped individually to doctors scattered throughout out the country and doctors been paid by the medical health systems to administer the vaccine, would be extremely expensive.

 

 

So in actuality, the actions (or lack off) of governments really revolve around minimizing costs related to control, prevention, treatment and internal effects of a h1n1 virus outbreak to the mass population.

 

We think that the current advice right now is “We can’t stress enough that most people need to get thir vacination”

 

BUT and in a month or so it will change to “We can’t stress enough that most people don’t need to come to the ER” and infected people living at home with H1N1 (with mild to medium) will be the norm, and within a week or so they will be better.