Kirk M; Ah yes, so labelled the latest Grandad update! Thank you :) The installation process is going smoothly! As for antibiotics, I steer clear… there’s something wholly unnatural about killing antibodies I reckon.

Fat Sparrow; Well said!! Viruses seem too intelligent to be quelled so easily. In fact, it’s probably the vaccine that is to blame for the mutations. Catch 22, that is. I’m staying put with my vitamin C, thanks!

Vicky; Good luck, I hope you stay healthy this winter – I know studying is stressful so you’ve really got to take care of yourself! Plenty of Echinacea for you maybe? That stuff is a brilliant alternative.

Martin; That one short sentence that holds me in the balance. It’s hard looking at the bigger picture when you have a fever I guess.

Holemaster; Thanks, I was wondering about the real difference between strains… it explains why they’re using the standard vaccine for both types. I also heard a rumour that health/government officials are getting a different version of vaccine – but this is probably just what it is, a rumour. I try to stay clear of anything surrounded by useless gossip, it’ll be the death of me! It’s difficult to trust the people who keep bloody lying about everything else.

Unstranger; Who wants to be a civil servant?! They’re pawns! I want to be the dude that moves in an ‘L’ shape when you least expect him to! I doubt the vaccine will actually kill, but I worry about its knock-on effects to the immune system. When they don’t even let pregnant women use something as benign as lavender oil, it just seems bizarre that they’d push an un-tested toxin. Very bizarre.

Kate; Thank you!! Your experience is like that of Laughingboy’s… the poor kid was flattened the one and only time I jabbed him. I hope this winter finds you safe and healthy and warm and very slightly embibed at all times. :)

Voodoolady; Cheers! You’re of the same mind and constitution as my buddy… she’d slap me if she’d get away with it, she doesn’t see how the vaccine can do any harm at all, and got away without complications. Then again, she never got caught in class for passing notes, whereas I always did. There’s some sort of pattern there, damned if I can find it.

I got it last year and didn’t have so much as a sniffle. I’m not saying the flu jab ‘worked’ but I don’t think it did me any harm.

I guess if I am offered the H1N1 I will probably get it for the same reasons.

Also, congrats :)

Flu jabs? Well my son’s wife is a pharmacist and does not rate the new vaccine. And me – well I have twice had the ‘normal’ flu jab and on both occasions I have been very ill after it with flu like symptoms. I don’t think I’ll bother again.

Avoid the little prick?…..sound advice!

No mistake, pregnant women cannot consume anything unnatural as the effects can and have of course been devastating.
Your ability to think for yourself has always been evident in this blog.
But (an aside) did you know that that ability alone disqualifies you from ever getting a job as a civil servant here in ireland? Just thought I’d pop that in.

In any case stick to your guns and expect to eventually hear the revelations that the anti virus actually caused more deaths than the H1N1 ever did!

By the way, there is some dispute around the death of that poor woman. The family were questioning the cause of death.

Furthermore, H1N1 is not a seasonal flu. Here in Southern California people have had it since it was first identified. We had our first cases right after Mexico did. My family caught (and were diagnosed by a doctor) it in March, and we just caught it AGAIN (again, diagnosed by a doctor, who this time found that it was a different strain) in October, and this time we were down sick for most of October. Before this, I had only had the flu once in my entire life, and I’m 40 next month. So, that means that the virus is mutating rapidly, rapidly enough that people in the same area can come down with 2 different strains within 8 months. And the yearly/regular seasonal flu hasn’t even hit here yet.

But what really chaps my thighs is that the pharmacies here were offering flu shots at $25 a pop, and were pleased to let their customers think that they were being protected against H1N1. My pharmacy was not at all happy when I informed people in line that this seasonal flu shot they were getting had nothing to do with H1N1. Is that not a form of lying? I know my mother would have smacked my bum for something like that.

I figure that H1N1 is either going to peter out, or go all Spanish Flu. Either way, the best things to do about it are just what you said: Eat healthy, rest, wash your hands, etc. If it does go all Spanish Flu, there’ll be a portion of the population that won’t be affected by it, and that’s people who were alive in the mid-1950′s. It seems that this virus is related to one that went around then, related enough that people’s bodies recognize it and can fight it off. Hopefully H1N1 won’t mutate so much that that is no longer a possibility, but it could happen. The first bout we caught was mild, the second bout was horrendous.

Still, I’m wondering why there’s so much panic and hype over something that hasn’t killed, maimed, or even highly inconvenienced that many people. Again, I’m with you; I suspect it’s all about the benjamins, baby. It’s very much like all the hype and paranoia that happened over here after 9/11. Sure, some 3,000 people were killed, but how many people are killed every year here in the US by drunk drivers? I guess it’s hard to make money off of stopping drunk driving, and even harder to use that to get people to be all “patriotic” and fulfill some agenda.

There was a great bumper sticker here in the early 70′s, it said “Of course you can trust the government, just ask an Indian.”

You’re a healthy individual, K8 and as long as you haven’t pounded down the antibiotics every single time you caught a snivel your immune system should be able to handle the flu…no matter what name it goes by.

And BTW, congratulations on number 3 (current codename: “The Bump”)