Without the White Coat
Stopping the scare
Technology has its own rewards in making life much easier. With the advancement in electronic and information technology, obtaining information and communication has been too fast, thus being abused by some. I call them 'text mongerers', those messages that you always see with the closing statements saying 'please pass'. In the past few days it had caused some anxiety among our population with cellular phones. In the first place we should be amateur enough to own, operate and send any message. We already know in the first place that the information received in our cellular phones was never confirmed. Why send it to other human beings? To scare the community? Reports or communications about bird flu or avian flu should come from the right and proper officials or experts we should stop sending messages over the cellular phones that will cause panic and prohibit them from eating any poultry products.
Influenza viruses are spread from person to person primarily through coughing and sneezing of infected persons, in the case of bird or avian flu, the virus is spread from the poultry or bird species to human beings. (this transmission of the virus from foul to humans tend to be virulent and fatal, especially for those that are immunocompromised) Remember that any flu like the respiratory syncitial virus, common cold or the common flu are self limiting that after 3 days symptoms will disappear without taking any form of antibiotics. The typical incubation period for influenza is 1 to 4 days with an average of 2 days. Adults can be infectious from the day before symptoms begin through approximately 5 days after illness onset. On children, the infection is for 10 days or more and young children can pass out the virus for several days before their illness onset. For those immunocompromised patients or persons they can shed the virus for weeks or months. Signs and symptoms for uncomplicated influenzae or common cold are characterized by flu-like symptoms like fever, myalgia (body pains), headache, body malaise, non-productive cough, sore throat and a runny nose. Among the child population it is usually accompanied by an ear infection (otitis media), nausea and vomiting. The respiratory symptoms that we see among influenza patients will make it difficult to distinguish from other forms of respiratory pathogens based on the subjective findings that we see.
In general the illness of influenza will tend to be resolved after 3 to 7 days on most and majority of the population, although we may witness cough and malaise which can persist for more than 2 weeks. Remember that influenza can exacerbate underlying medical conditions that can lead to a secondary bacterial infection like pneumonia or a primary influenza viral pneumonia, or occur as part of another infection with other pathogens. In the younger age group as in children it will initially present as symptoms seen in septic patient as high grade fever, some will have febrile seizures, influenzae infection can be associated with myelitis, myositis, myocarditis, pericarditis reye’s syndrome and encephalopathy. The risk of complications is much higher in the extreme of ages which will end up on mortality. A 1968 influenzae A(H3N2) virus caused a pandemic which have associated on influenza-associated hospitalizations.
Deaths from influenzae are a result of pneumonia and from cardiovascular complications and other chronic diseases. Deaths of influenzae are uncommon on children and for those patients without any risk conditions.
So a lesson learned for today, ignore messages from cell phones trying to cause havoc and panic in our community or just wanted to scare the public on consuming poultry products. For those that keep on text mongering better stop what you are doing. A well informed citizenry is much more prepared on any epidemics or pandemics that will come.