"I Survived Swine Flu" Facebook Group Transcends Borders

"I Survived Swine Flu" Facebook Group Transcends Borders

Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency
http://www.israelnewsagency.com/swineflufacebooktwittersupportgroupsisurvivedpandemicdeathscdchumorfactssocialnetworkingvirusadvicewebchatisraelnewyorklondon48121109.html

Tel Aviv ---- November 12, 2009 ..... For me, Swine Flu arrived in the shape of an email back in May.

A well respected, global advertising firm in Switzerland was given my name as an authority on Internet PR, viral marketing and Web 2.0. They asked if I would advertise through digital PR a software widget that they had created to inform millions worldwide as to the threat of something called Swine Flu.

Before creating a massive advertising campaign, first I needed to do some research. What I found was both interesting and frightening. I knew that Swine Flu or H1N1 was out there somewhere and that it was very mild. I also knew that it was going to go away, fade, sleep, go on vacation and then come back with a vengeance in the late Fall. I knew that Swine Flu had killed between 50 to 100 million people during the 1918 flu pandemic and experts were bracing for a similar attack. The drug companies started to work on vaccines that they promised would be ready by October.

Throughout the entire summer of 2009, I knew that Planet Earth was going to be hit by something bad and that only a few hundred medical professionals knew this as well. I felt as though I was walking around with a dark secret.

Fast forward, I am reading reports of Swine Flu spreading rapidly throughout Europe and North America during the first week in November as my 9-year-old daughter sneezes on me. I looked at this precious, beautiful little girl and said to myself: "what has this little monster done?"

Sure enough, two days later I am at the family doctor with all of the symptoms of flu.

"So doctor, do I have Swine Flu," I asked. "Joel, 98 percent of everyone who is sick has Swine Flu," he replied as if I was talking about having just scratched myself. "So you think I have Swine Flu?" The doctor smiled and said: "everybody has it, you just need to rest, eat right and take aspirin for your fever."

He seemed almost oblivious to the fact that this was going to kill me. I thought to myself that maybe he has Swine Flu and is not responding all that well.

"Did you get it?," I inquired. "Yeah, about a week ago."

Now I started to feel like a film extra in the movie Village of the Damned. Everybody got it but nobody is taking about it.

After exhausting about a dozen boxes of tissues, 24 bottles of mineral water, 14 blue cold medicine tablets and passing this disease unto my two unsuspecting cats, (yes, people are passing it to cats) the fever started to break. But now a female friend of mine started to cough, sneeze and complain that she was extremely weak. Again, back at the doctor and again he stated that there was no need for a blood test, she has Swine Flu.

After a few days had passed, her physical state really deteriorated. Tonight she is lying in a hospital bed with double pneumonia. Doctors at the hospital told me that half the people in the emergency room had Swine Flu. Most of them were middle aged or older. Everyone was wearing white masks except for me. I mean, what was going to happen to me in the emergency room - no one was going to give it to me or me give it to them. I became curious as to how much money the surgical mask people are now making?

Today, the CDC - Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, announced that Swine flu has sickened about 22 million Americans since April and killed nearly 4,000, including 540 children.

"I am expecting all of these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We have a long flu season ahead of us."

During week 43, 14,151 specimens were tested for influenza of any type and that 5,258 (37.2%) tested positive for influenza. Of the specimens tested, 14 were influenza B. The remaining 5.244 were influenza A; 4 were seasonal influenza A, 2 each of H3 and H1; 41 were unable to be subtyped, 1,310 did not have sub typing performed, and the remaining 3,889 - 74.2 percent - were all confirmed A 2009 H1N1.

The number of deaths reported due to Pneumonia and Influenza (P&I) were well above epidemic levels, as it had been for four weeks previously.

In Israel three more Israelis have died of swine flu today, bringing the total number of deaths from the virus to 45.

Those who had died matched the profile for those most at risk - having contracted Swine Flu with an existing chronic disease.

The profile emerging is of a distinctive virus. Although seasonal flu tends to infect just the cells high in the upper airway, H1N1 penetrates down into the terminal air sacs called alveoli. "This is not an area of the lung where you would usually see seasonal flu," Zaki says. He has seen such behavior before, though — in the few samples of lung tissue he has examined from humans killed by the H5N1 avian flu virus. But the virus is much more prevalent in the tissues from the severe H1N1 cases he has examined — "like avian flu on steroids" as Zaki puts it.

It's scary. And no one wants anyone to panic. Doctors say that Swine Flu in it's present form is mild. I would say from personal experience that the reality would be somewhere between mild to moderate. If you have a chronic disease or your immune system is weak, it can kill you.

I originally opened a Facebook group entitled: "I Survived Swine Flu" as comic relief that would provide for a few smiles to the many who are or who have suffered from it. But now as I again witness the severe seriousness of this disease, I invite doctors, nurses and health care professionals to join this Facebook group to provide the latest news, facts and advice.

One poster on the Facebook group "I Survived Swine Flu" group said: "hey, joel: spent almost two days YEARNING for death . . . . . couldn't remember the names of the children who were talking to me . . . seemed to recall once being married . . . on the other side of the worst but still weak and hacking up a storm. this flu is the MOTHER of ALL influenzas!"

Yes we need to smile. We need to have hope. We need to support each other as we go through this dreadful disease.

But most of all we need to let those who are now suffering know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. You will ache, sweat from high fever, use much toilet paper, cough and sneeze, but Facebook and social networking is there for you to communicate, chat, post photos and videos in real time with others who are either also suffering or have suffered and have lived to tell their story.

As we isolate ourselves to the confines of our warm homes and our soft beds, it's reassuring to know that with the touch of a button one can be on-line chatting with others from New York, London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Damascus, Beirut, Montreal, Amman, Baghdad or Tokyo sharing the pain and the smiles to pass the time.

And who knows, Swine Flu just might eliminate some physical, racial, religious and emotional borders as Jews, Christians, Muslims, liberals and conservatives who come from very different political and ethnic backgrounds come together on Facebook and Twitter to find a warm and common thread through a disease whose original intent was to kill and destroy.

Pass the tea, the tissues, the jokes and reload that Microsoft or Firefox browser.

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