H1N1 personally hits doc, son :: Jerry Davich :: Post-Tribune

H1N1 personally hits doc, son :: Jerry Davich :: Post-Tribune: "Lisa Gold figured her 7-year-old son, Sam, had the flu when he returned home from school with a cough, sniffles and high fever.

Gold, a member of an H1N1-virus task force at Saint Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point, knew her son didn't have any chronic risk factors such as asthma or allergies. And that only 1 to 2 percent of H1N1 cases involve serious complications.

Gold, from North Point Pediatrics in Crown Point, contacted me to encourage parents to get their children vaccinated against the H1N1 virus.

'It's important for parents to be on top of this virus and this issue,' Gold told me after Sam returned home from the hospital. 'Parents should be cautious, but not paranoid.'

As you know, H1N1 is in the news because it is a novel strain of influenza A. Yet why it's targeting kids, including seemingly healthy kids, 'is the big mystery about this virus,' Gold said.

More than 1,000 deaths, including nearly 100 children, are related to the H1N1 virus, in addition to 20,000 patients hospitalized from its complications. (Roughly 35,000 Americans die from seasonal flu each year.)

But because the 2009 H1N1 flu is a new strain, which means people have not yet built up immunity, experts can't predict how people will physically respond to it.
So health officials"

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