Echinacea

The flu season has hit unusually early this year with the pandemic spread of the H1N1 swine flu virus spanning the globe and creating widespread fear and panic. This is a new form of the flu that has never circulated through humans before and therefore is expected to spread rapidly affecting a larger population than the normal seasonal flu. It seems, at this point, that most of the cases have been mild to moderate and have not required medical treatment.  This is quite fortunate although, it is important to keep in mind that the flu can and has mutated during mid-season which has been part of the difficulty in creating effective vaccines from year-to-year.

The current medical treatment for the seasonal and H1N1 flu viruses is vaccination and anti-viral drugs such as tamiflu and, although these are no doubt helpful and sometimes necessary, they are not always enough.  There is not yet a vaccination available for H1N1, but the CDC speculates that one will be available by about mid October. My opinion on vaccinations is provisional as I have heard convincing arguments from both opposing camps and have formulated a middle-of-the-road perspective.  I could, and probably will, provide an entire post on vaccination philosophies, but for this post I will just say that the flu vaccine seems to have moderate efficacy and potentially serious side effects. I will also say that there seems to be controversy, even among medical doctors, on the safety of vaccinations in general.  Paul Bergner gives statistics on flu vaccine effectiveness in his Summer 2009 Medical Herbalism  journal: