Question about Swine Flu

[Rednosty]

Th govenment advice if you think you have Swine flu is NOT to go to the GP's surgery. SO if you can't go to the surgery HOW DO you get your antiviral drugs? Walk to the chemist and say Erm I think I might have Swine flu give me some drugs?

[Teddyrose54]

I think the government still believes, that doctors make house calls.

[earthangel]

I believe the first thing you're supposed to do is ring the NHS Helpline.

[SalusLibrorum]

You're supposed to have a 'flu friend' or neighbour to go get it for you. What you're supposed to do is phone the doctor, get them to give the friend a voucher, and then they go to the nearest Tamilflu secure holding facility (ordinary chemists are not supposed to be dispensing it) to collect the one and only box you're allowed. You should give the flu friend a letter of authorisation because some have been turned back through not being the person the Tamiflu is for(!). Someone on another forum's elderly mother's neighbour was very helpful and ended up driving several miles out of town to get hers (twice - authorisation problem), I don't know who dreamed up this mad scheme, but if you've not got a flu friend, or someone who can get it for you, you're basically stuffed.

It's madness.

As you've probably found out, NHS Direct is on a recorded message sending everyone to the website or their GP, the website tells people to call NHS Direct, and the "Special flu line" number results in a recorded message giving out the same information as on the website. The only chance of getting advice from a real person that anyone has is to call their GP, which presumably is why they are complaining about being overwhelmed.

In my case I finally got through to a practice nurse who I could talk to (the doctor wasn't taking phone calls), I only wanted advice about going back to work, and I certainly didn't want to go to the doctor's surgery in case what I had wasn't flu (don't want to catch it). I can see though, how very sick people would end up travelling to their doctor's surgery and infecting lots of others, there doesn't seem to be any other way of contacting them.

[earthangel]

I think the government still believes, that doctors make house calls.

If you're a member of the government, they probably do!

[madelaine]

My son collected his tamiflu himself. He had to go to his GP for the blood test (he didn't, in the end, have swine flu).

[MagnetsAndHangers]

I dont see what all the fuss is about.

Regular flu kills more people EVERY year.

(and shouldnt go to GP with that either)

[earthangel]

I dont see what all the fuss is about.

Regular flu kills more people EVERY year.

(and shouldnt go to GP with that either)

You're quite right. This is a point I've made on another thread. However, I think this strain is more virulent than most and poses a threat to people who usually weather a bout of flu relatively easily.

[SalusLibrorum]

I dont see what all the fuss is about.

Regular flu kills more people EVERY year.

(and shouldnt go to GP with that either)

I quite agree. I had the 1968 one, and I don't remember the fuss about that that this one is getting.

I think that it probably got hyped up in the first place because it appeared to be killing so many people in Mexico, when we first heard about it. What we didn't know then was that the Mexican authorities were only counting people with pneumonia in hospital, who were already very very sick, and they weren't testing for it either, they were assuming that all cases of pneumonia (and subsequent deaths) were due to swine flu. That's why the numbers of cases and deaths kept getting revised at the start, and why the death rate appeared to be horrific, until people in the rest of the world started catching what appeared to be mostly very very mild, and the health organisations realised that there was something wrong with the Mexican figures, not that there was a super lethal virus on the loose.

Unfortunately, by the time they realised that what they're dealing with at the moment is not the lethal flu they feared, the cat was out of the bag and the media were in full hysteria mode - as are most of the public.

I think the biggest fear is that this will turn out to be another 1918 where there was a herald wave in the spring/early summer, which also consisted of a very mild flu, they called it the three-day fever type, which made people sick, but often they were back to work by the end of the week. We all know what happened in the 2nd and 3rd waves. I think that's the cause of most of the panic, no one wants to be the first part of a lethal second wave. As well as newspapers wanting to sell more.

[FairMaiden]

How did the 1968 one die down / out ?