Washington, DC — Have you had your flu shot this year?
The highly contagious respiratory infection is linked to as many as 50,000 annual deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An estimated 20,000 children under five are hospitalized.
If media coverage of the three Ebola cases in the United States – some of it calling attention to the far greater danger of influenza - causes more people to ask their doctors about a flu shot, Ebola could end up saving many lives. Strong statements by Fox news anchor Scott Shepherd and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni (Scarier Than Ebola) are examples of what could prove to be life-saving reporting.
Although the actual number of 'true' influenza cases and deaths annually is unknown - patients seldom get lab tests to confirm the diagnosis - infectious disease experts agree that influenza either directly causes or is a contributing factor in many more deaths each year in the United States than Ebola has caused in west Africa. Asthma or heart disease or diabetes, or even age, all increase the risk of dying from influenza, but less than half of Americans are vaccinated.
Anyone who thinks twice flying on a Frontier Airlines airplane but who hasn't had a flu shot - or, for that matter, who smokes or doesn't wear a bike helmet - is acting in what scholars of risk perception say is a classic instance of fear overriding a logical perception of far more likely causes of injury or death.
Yesterday Canada announced its first confirmed death from the dangerous ED-V68 respiratory virus, a 20-year-old man in British Columbia. The infection can cause extreme difficulty breathing, heart failure and polio-like symptoms.
Like Ebola, the disease is untreatable except with supportive care and has hospitalized hundreds of children across six Canadian provinces and been linked to a dozen cases of paralysis among children in Ontario alone.
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So far, though, I've heard no calls to close the U.S. Canadian border - not that it would be any more effective than quarantining three countries in west Africa.
Lab tests confirm that in the last two months, ED-V68 has sickened more than 825 people in 46 U.S. states and is the presumed cause of death of at least five American children, according to the CDC. Canadian media reports say thousands in the country have been struck by the virus. But no one really knows how many North American illnesses and deaths can be linked to EV-D68. It is not a 'reportable' illness in either Canada or the United States.
Another respiratory virus, RSV, kills an estimated 10,000 elderly Americans annually. Unlike Ebola, both ED-V68 and RSV, and several other potentially deadly viruses, are spread through the air.
Speaking of scary sickness you can get just by breathing near someone who is ill: have any airlines or candidates for office demanded screening passengers for tuberculosis? Last year in a New Yorker article Thomas Levenson described TB as death that "arrives like a train wreck of blood and phlegm and spit". The person in the next seat, even if asymptomatic, could pass the virus to you. And emerging, drug-resistant strains of the deadly disease evade common therapies.
Respirators anyone?
