vaccine being questioned, page-9

mw03, if you looked at the reference on surveillance data I referred to, you will see that every season influenza acts in much the same way. A big spike, then it disappears. I conceded that it may well be useful for the Northern Hemisphere and novel H1N1 may well become the dominant seasonal strain from now on, in which case it will be included in the normal yearly vaccine. But in Australia, I hold to what I said, that it is largely a waste of effort and resources.

With antivirals, continual prophylactic treatment is probably most useful for front line health workers. It will become much more practical with LANI. The actual influenza season often only lasts a couple of months. This might mean 8 doses of LANI altogether.

If you catch the illness very quickly, you can actually avoid getting sick almost entirely. I myself caught swine flu and treated myself within 6 hours with Relenza. I got better within hours. Having had exposure to the virus, I am now immune. Side effects of any sort to meds are much rarer with Relenza than Tamiflu in my experience.