In the past couple of weeks I’ve had several patients asking me about swine flu. There seems to be a growing anxiety amongst people I speak with, and it’s hardly surprising with daily updates on numbers of swine flu “casualties” in virtually every form of media.

And that word “pandemic” somehow conjures up pictures of cholera and bubonic plague every time I hear it, and I’m probably not alone. Certainly it would seem that swine flu is here to stay at least for the next flu season or two. It has now spread to over 74 countries with 30,000 confirmed cases with an estimated 10 to 20 times that number of actual cases.

Here in New Zealand in the past week we’ve given up on any attempt at containing the swine flu outbreak, in the face of widespread community transmission, and instead have moved to management phase. To date we have around 216 confirmed New Zealand cases, but the actual number of cases is likely to be much higher, around 1000.

Should we all be freaking out about this new pandemic, and locking ourselves away at home with a stash of baked beans and bottled water? I don’t think so. Not yet at least.

So here’s a crash course in sorting out the facts from the fiction when it comes to swine flu.

• It’s true that this is a “novel” virus, that the human immune system has not encountered before. It is a mixture of viruses from pigs, birds and humans. Because it is novel we have little immune resistance and are thus very susceptible to infection when exposed.

• Swine flu is easily transmitted from human to human, through airborne virus particles (from coughing or sneezing). The virus can stay alive for some time on surfaces, so if you touch the virus on a door handle for example, and then rub your mouth or nose, you can become infected.

• Although it’s a novel virus, this is just another flu virus. Every winter around the planet, people are infected with flu...some are hospitalised and others die. In America alone there are 30 million cases of seasonal influenza each winter; 200,000 people are hospitalised and 36,000 die.

• The swine flu appears to behave differently to seasonal flu. While Influenza A usually infects those with chronic medical conditions; people over the age of 65, and young children; swine flu appears to be a virus which effects young people under the age of 20 most commonly.

• The World Health Authority decision to name swine flu as a pandemic has NOTHING to do with the severity of the disease. Instead, it is a reflection of outbreaks of the virus in multiple locations, and rapid community transmission.

• So far at least, swine flu appears to be a mild to moderately severe illness, with the vast majority of victims recovering spontaneously within several days. The worry is that this first wave of the virus may be a harbinger of more severe mutations to come.

• Based on notified cases to date, the death rate with swine flu is around 0.49%. That is, for every 10,000 cases, there are 49 deaths. This compares with a seasonal flu death rate of around 0.10%. At first glance this makes the Swine flu appear significantly more deadly than seasonal flu. However, it is highly likely that the notified cases of swine flu are in reality just a small proportion of the actual cases, which brings down the mortality rate significantly.

• Don’t believe that because you have had a flu vaccine you are less likely to contract swine flu. This is false.

• The antiviral drug, Tamiflu may reduce the severity of the swine flu, if taken at the onset of symptoms.

• Preventing swine flu is something of a hit and miss affair, in the sense that if you’re cooped up on the bus with an infected person coughing beside you, your chance is fairly high of becoming ill yourself. That said, it pays to take sensible precautions such as washing your hands frequently; perhaps using hand sanitiser regularly while you’re out and about; and trying to keep your distance from people coughing and sneezing. It seems common sense to place a lot of emphasis on building up your “wellness” in the weeks and months ahead. The healthier you are, the more able you will be to recover from swine flu if you contract it. That means eating a healthy, nutritious diet; getting lots of sleep; managing stress through relaxation, meditation and physical exercise; getting plenty of vitamin D from daily exposure to sunlight; and supplementing with immune enhancing herbs and nutrients such as olive leaf, echinacea, astragalus, garlic, golden seal, and vitamins A, C and zinc.

Lynda Wharton is a health and wellbeing writer, columnist and author. She also practises as an acupuncturist and naturopath.

lynda@lyndawharton.com

www.lyndawharton.com