Sesame Street and Swine Flu?

Here’s a riddle for you: What do Elmo, a rapping doctor, and Ron Weasley have in common? Give up? They’ve all been used as a part of the swine flu prevention campaign. Why the use of Sesame Street and hardcore medical practitioners you ask? Simple: It’s what the people at the US Department of Health and Human Services think young people like and, whether we realize it or not, it’s today’s youth that has the most to worry about when it comes to the dreaded H1N1 virus.Obviously this kid hasn’t seen the statistics. So far, 79% of confirmed U.S. swine flu cases have been among those under the age of 30, while a mere 2% were among those older than 65. It might be hard to believe that your grandma has less to worry about than you when it comes to getting sick but, in this case, it’s true. Because of this, young people are being put at the top of the list for the H1N1 vaccine. Priority is being given to pregnant women, children, adolescents, and young adults up to age 24 and those who take care of them (caretakers, nurses, etc).

But before you go rushing to Walgreens to stock up on Emergen-C and Airborne, you should know that a healthy immune system is actually believed to put you at a higher risk for the virus. According to some health experts, swine flu works by causing the body’s immune system to overreact, meaning that young people with stronger immune systems are that much more negatively impacted by the virus. "In these cases, it's the immune system itself that reacts robustly, and it's the immune system in that reaction to the virus that is causing death in these patients," CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said in an interview with the network.

In short, it would seem that young people are at the highest risk for swine flu and a perfect immune system may just be making matters worse, plus newspapers are printing big, bold headlines about this thing like it’s the next bubonic plague. So why aren’t more people scared of this outbreak? You have to remember that this is the same generation that lived through the SARS epidemic and the bird flu scare all within the past 10 years. So far, the worst part of this whole frenzy was when Rupert Grint (who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies) came down with it and Potter fans were threatened with having to wait even longer for their next fix. Quite frankly, for young folks, these pandemics are beginning go the route of the little boy who cried wolf. But if we don’t want to suffer the same fate as him, it might be a good idea to listen to our old pal Elmo.

Even though the virus commotion has died down some since its original outbreak, it still has the potential to become a serious problem. If treated properly, swine flu can be just like any other flu outbreak…for now. But, if the virus is allowed to thrive, it is a possibility that it will mutate, become even more infectious, and grow resistant to drugs, killing millions of people worldwide. A more likely scenario, however, would be that the virus will not mutate but still infect a large amount of people and kill many, particularly those who are considered at high-risk. It’s too soon to tell which route this thing will take, but, as the saying goes, better safe than sorry. And really, when has Elmo ever steered us wrong before?


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