The Flaw In The Ointment

 

 

# 3769

 

 

The CDC today released some `Action Steps’ for parents to take to help protect their families from the flu this school year.  It is basically a rehash of the same advice we’ve been hearing all along, but expressed in a simple `bullet’ format.  

 

First, an excerpt from this guidance . . . then some comments on why this advice may be resonating with the public less well than the CDC might hope.

 

 

Action Steps for Parents to Protect Your Child and Family from the Flu this School Year

September 25, 9:30 AM ET

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends 4 main ways you and your family may keep from getting sick with the flu at school and at home:

1. Practice good hand hygiene by washing your hands often with soap and water, especially after coughing or sneezing. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.

2. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze.  If you don’t have a tissue, cough or sneeze into your elbow or shoulder; not into your hands.

3. Stay home if you or your child is sick for at least 24 hours after there is no longer a fever or signs of a fever (without the use of fever-reducing medicine). Keeping sick students at home means that they keep their viruses to themselves rather than sharing them with others.

4. Get your family vaccinated for seasonal flu and 2009 H1N1 flu when vaccines are available.

 (Continue. . .)

 

 

From the outset, let me say that I don’t have a miracle salve for this pandemic anymore than the CDC does, and I believe the above advice – given the circumstances – to be simple, pragmatic, and for the most part reasonable.

 

But . . . when you look at this advice critically, items #2 and #3 have very little to do with protecting your kids or yourself from the flu.

 

If you are already coughing and sneezing, or are staying home with the flu-like-symptoms – you’ve probably already got the virus. 

 

They are important steps to protect others, of course.

 

Getting vaccinated (item #4) is great advice, but the H1N1 vaccine isn’t available yet . . .and even when it begins to flow in October, it may be weeks or longer before you or your kids can get it. 

 

Which leaves #1 – washing your hands – as the only proactive step suggested by the CDC that you and your kids can take TODAY to help protect against getting the novel H1N1 flu.

 

 

Washing our hands is an important hygienic step, one that I wholeheartedly approve of (and want to encourage).  And it certainly has been shown to reduce the risks of some illnesses and diseases.

 

But there is precious little scientific evidence to support the notion that washing our hands will protect us against influenza.

 

It it helps at all, it probably doesn’t help much.

 

So even bullet point #1 – the mainstay of the CDC’s prevention campaign – may have little real protective value for the individual against this pandemic virus.

 

I do understand the dilemma that the CDC finds themselves in, and I sympathize with their plight. They desperately want to give people something they can do, something to empower them against this pandemic.

 

The reality is, there is precious little that people can do to protect themselves against this virus until they can get vaccinated. 

 

No one wants to come out and say that, of course.

 

So we get advice that, while it may not protect us much as individuals, gives us something we can do (wash our hands) and should at least help limit the spread of the virus in the community by urging us to cover our coughs and sneezes, and to stay home when sick.

 

And I’m not suggesting that any of these are bad things. 

 

The danger I see is that by packaging this advice as preventatives against this virus, public health risks losing some credibility when they don’t work particularly well.

 

Most people I’ve talked to are keenly aware how `thin’ this advice really is, and some have privately expressed a growing frustration with the message.  They feel as if the government is `talking down to the public’, and they are beginning to resent it.

 

Perhaps it’s time to shift our emphasis onto how we protect our community (including other household members) in the event we become infected, instead of obsessively trying to prevent our own illness.

 

We turn this around, and make it about being responsible members of society.  Doing the `right thing’ when we are ill, and protecting others.

 

 

The advice doesn’t really change, only the way we frame it. 

 

Hand washing, covering our coughs, staying home if sick, and getting vaccinated are all good community mitigation steps that should help limit the spread of the virus.

 

It may not be quite as reassuring to some people as the current campaign, but it has the singular virtue of being the unvarnished truth.

 

And that is always easier to defend.