Swine Flu @ ND

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Notre Dame
21

<p>^^^^ nope not taking it down a notch.
Sportsfire, I heard the NPR interview with the nurse at the Queens prep school, who quickly knew she had a problem at her school. As a former NY Heath Dept worker she knew who to call, within hours. </p>

<p>A baby has died in Texas. The young healthy college age student’s own immune system can cause a deadly response to fighting this strain, thereby causing death. </p>

<p>From NYTIMES Article today describing how virulent this is;
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/nyregion/29nurse.html?ref=nyregion[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/nyregion/29nurse.html?ref=nyregion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>By 10 a.m., dozens of students were pouring into the hallway outside her office, sitting miserably on the floor, nauseous and confused.</p>

<p>“Wow, we have something going on here,” she recalled thinking in an interview on Tuesday.</p>

<p>“I don’t feel like I’m a hero,” said Ms. Pappas, who had not been identified on Sunday when the city revealed her role in spurring its investigation. “But I feel like I have very good instincts, based on my experience, and that’s why I’m here. I think school nurses should be at all schools. You’re like the hub, if something doesn’t go right.”</p>

<p>Among her previous experiences was a whooping-cough outbreak, which forced the postponement of a few football games, but nothing else of the magnitude she was seeing.</p>

<p>By about 10:30 Thursday morning, she said, she had gone to the principal’s office and called Dr. Gary Krigsman, a supervising doctor in the bureau of school health, on his cellphone to tell him that students were dropping sick, many with fevers of 101.5 and 102 degrees. (Her son, a junior at the school, also came down with a mild fever.)</p>

<p>Dr. Krigsman connected her to Ada Santiago, a nurse who works closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.</p>

<p>“Then I felt better and went back to my office, where it was pretty chaotic,” Ms. Pappas recalled. Her two assistants, her mother, Agnes, and Kathy Carroll, were so busy that they had been joined by secretaries, assistant principals and even school security officers. Everyone was taking temperatures, triaging cases and using cellphones to call parents to come and take their children home.</p>

<p>Students sat on the floor, miserable and confused, as school employees scrambled to find enough chairs. Ms. Pappas sent 102 students home on Thursday and another 80 on Friday, even though a small number of those, she noted, were suffering from allergies and injuries rather than flu symptoms.</p>

22

<p>Interestingly, we had heard that it was a female student. So, I guess you just don’t know w/regards to info at this point-we are advising our own student to keep washing hands and drink plenty of gatorade. We know it won’t prevent, but being that it is so close to the end of the semester with finals and all, I guess it will be a day by day issue. If more students become ill, I feel certain there will be more updates. We did read that student was in isolation at Student Health after diagnosis. Of course, that does not make up for the period of contagiousness beforehand. I feel quite certain that ND is monitoring this situation very carefully and esp since CDC is involved. We hope that the school can get thru finals and perhaps students will be leaving campus as soon as possible when finished with exams. I wonder if Pres. Obama will change his mind about speaking at graduation (esp if more cases surface on campus)?!?</p>

23

<p>notredameal- check out the video on the local TV news of flu report.
Did I hear it right- the student resumed her normal activities until it was confirmed and since they asked her to stay in the dorm?
Confined to dorm? </p>

<p>I may have misunderstood
segment is on home page —on right
[WNDU</a> - Home Your Severe Weather Station, South Bend, Indiana News, Weather, Sports, Notre Dame News, StormTeam 16](<a href=“http://www.wndu.com/]WNDU”>http://www.wndu.com/)</p>

24

<p>Not good news! I told my daughter “the usual…wash the hands and keep them out of your mouth!” She isn’t too concerned (typical!) but of course I’m sure if any symptoms arise, she will head to St. Liam’s. I’m worried, but what more can you do? Bad timing though…</p>

25

<p>WNDU is reporting that a student HAS the swine flu. However, the student has already recovered from it–all it took was so ibuprofen and some decongestant according to WNDU as well. Sounds like the patient got better quicker than students with regular colds. So why all the hype? As long as it’s treated soon enough–and I’m fully confident in ND’s ability to do so…we’re fine.</p>

26

<p>I honestly don’t understand the hype around swine flu. Regular strains of the flu kill thousand of individuals each year, and so far most of the deaths from swine flu have occurred in Mexico (where healthcare is no better than a 3rd world country).</p>

<p>I think this is just a case of the media taking a story and running with it.</p>

27

<p>WHO flu chief Dr. Keiji told reporters that developments in the disease were moving the agency closer to pushing its pandemic alert level up a notch to phase 5 — indicating widespread human-to-human transmission and an “imminent” pandemic. Phase 6, the highest in the scale, is for a full-scale pandemic.</p>

28

<p>Gravity----more
***uda said it was too soon to know how severe a pandemic might be.</p>

<p>“We just don’t know what the future is going to hold,” he said, noting that the 1918 pandemic started mild in the spring, was quiet during the summer, but then exploded into a much more severe form by autumn. In the end, the so-called Spanish flu infected as many as one-third of the world’s population and killed about 40 million people.</p>

<p>WHO, which only adds to its case tally when it receives notification from countries, said there were 114 confirmed cases in seven countries, but reports were still coming in. The agency was rushing to organize its third emergency meeting in a week — perhaps as early as Wednesday night or Thursday morning.</p>

<p>In the United States, Dr. Richard Besser, the acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said 91 cases have now been confirmed in 10 states, and health officials there reported Wednesday that a 23-month-old Mexican boy had died in Texas from the disease.</p>

<p>Across Europe, Germany confirmed three swine flu cases and Austria one, while the number of confirmed cases rose to five in Britain and 10 in Spain.</p>

<p>Germany’s national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, said the country’s three cases include a 22-year-old woman hospitalized in Hamburg, a man in his late 30s at a hospital in Regensburg, north of Munich, and a 37-year-old woman from another Bavarian town. All three had recently returned from Mexico.</p>

29

<p>as usual with many schools, organizations, etc, I am sure that ND just does not want to start chaos on campus, and are dealing with the problem to the best of their ability. </p>

<p>additionally, a school with such talented students, faculty and staff, probably would not send the sick individual back to his/her dorm.</p>

30

<p>A disease being considered a pandemic does not indicate the severity of said disease, it just indicates its infection rate. If everyone in the US and UK woke up tomorrow and had a mild cold, that would be a pandemic. But that doesn’t make the disease more fatal.</p>

<p>And it’s pretty dubious to analogize this outbreak to the 1918 pandemic, considering the quality/quantity of medical care in 1918 is absolutely nothing like 2009.</p>

31

<p>Hawkswim from my understanding…</p>

<p>the student resumed normal activities for many days, until the CDC confirmed the diagnosis. </p>

<p>And, FYI- people are contagious ONE day before symptoms and SEVEN days with symptoms. Long time…lots of people exposed. Sorry to say this</p>

32

<p>Really neat to read the Veratect Twitter feed.
US officials stated today, that there will be more deaths, two critically ill now in Texas.
So I really don’t think this is a case of a “cold” sweeping around the world. It’s more than that.</p>

<p>VeratectUS, Utah: Health officials report first probable swine influenza case. #swineflu
1 minute ago from web<br>
VeratectUS, Puerto Rico: Six New Swine Influenza Cases Reported; Cumulative Total Reaches Seven Cases. #swineflu
7 minutes ago from web<br>
VeratectCanada, Ontario: Three additional swine influenza cases in Durham, Peel and York regions; national total reaches 16. #swineflu
8 minutes ago from web<br>
VeratectArgentina: 21 New Possible Swine Influenza Cases Reported in C</p>

33

<p>WHO raised to Level 5 …FYI</p>

34

<p>SJCM, I really don’t think you need to be so worried. They’ve sent us all many e-mails. I know I’ve gotten at least 3 now with information on how to avoid getting sick. I don’t know what more they can do at this point- they can’t shut the campus down. And yes, getting sick now right before finals would suck, but all the sources say that the risk of complications is very low for healthy young adults. The deaths that have occurred have all been in Mexico, which suffers from sub-par healthcare, with the exception of a 23-month old child who had traveled from Mexico and received treatment in the US. No doubt the baby’s age played a huge role. The two critical cases now are another 23-month old and a pregnant woman- again, falling into the CDC’s list of groups at high risk. Notre Dame students are generally healthy young adults and we have very easy access to good healthcare. I know you’re a mom and can’t help worrying a bit, but calm down. You should probably be worrying more about the plane dragging an aborted fetus banner and flying in circles over our campus crashing on South Quad…</p>

35

<p>From someone shooting it down, no doubt.</p>

36

<p>who’s up for it? jk, for the record</p>

37

<p>Shellzie- are any students showing up at the Health center with symptoms?
Thank you for trying to reassure a mother watching this very closely. But, unfortunately, your age group may not be quite as protected as you think. It is early in this probable pandemic. Level 5 means imminent pandemic …sorry to say this.</p>

38

<p>Lol, my friends and I were discussing that earlier. The area around the dome should be a no fly zone. :)</p>

<p>And SJCM- Not that I’ve heard of. And I know we’re not completely protected, but I’m pretty sure the chances of someone my age with access to proper healthcare are pretty slim, just from looking at the numbers.</p>

39

<p>I think, that as parents of current ND students, that the best thing we can do is to stay in pretty close contact w/our students and be vigilant about the hand-washing, and not trying to pull all-nighters at this point (as finals arrive!)-try to maintain healthy lifestyle as much as possible during exam week. The students are aware of the flu outbreak and I am confident that ND is following protocol w/utmost concern. I think we need to just try to keep reminding our students over the next week about the hand-washing, etc. because with finals on them, many are very distracted and also do not see the news, etc. And as I mentioned earlier, perhaps many will be leaving campus as soon as possible when finals are finished.</p>

40

<p>^^^^ very solid good advice notredameAL !!!
Bolstering immune system during stressful final exams great advice.</p>