LIHUE — Every seat in the Lihue Clinic Pharmacy on Elua Street was full Tuesday morning, and the team behind the counter was in constant motion, filling prescriptions, checking insurance cards and giving out instructions to coughing and sneezing patients.
And while there was a mixed bag of diagnoses represented in the waiting room, pharmacists and health officials all say one thing — Hawaii is in the throes of the flu season.
“There’s been people recently that we’ve seen getting medications for the flu, and also a lot of people have been getting a cough,” said pharmacy manager KristiAnne Nishek. “We’re busy.”
And while the lines are long at the doctor’s office and pharmacy, Nishek said she doesn’t necessarily think there’s an uptick in those with flu symptoms compared to the 2017-18 flu season.
“I would say it’s about the same, from seeing people come into the pharmacy,” she said.
When it comes to avoiding influenza, the Centers for Disease Control recommends getting a flu shot, staying away from sick people and covering coughs and sneezes in order to avoid the spread of the sickness,
Many Kauai residents did receive the flu shot when it came out in pharmacies in October.
“I would say that we did do quite a few flu shots when it first came out and we still are doing flu shots,” Nishek said.
Flu shots are also still available at the other pharmacies around the island.
Kauai District Health Officer Janet Berreman says getting the flu vaccine is the “single-most effective thing” people can do to protect themselves and their families from flu.
“You can still get the flu vaccine now,” Berreman said. “If people have been putting off the vaccine, it’s not too late.”
Usually flu season runs through early April, and Hawaii health officials say the virus hit a little later than usual this season.
Every year, influenza immunizations are developed to target three or four strains, helping the body build antibodies and increasing response time and effectiveness.
There are multiple strains of flu virus that circulate every year, so even if you’ve been diagnosed with influenza and have the antibodies for that strain, getting a flu shot would help build antibodies for combating other strains that might come through, Berreman said.
It’s not a great match every year — the vaccines in the 2017-18 flu season didn’t wholly target the strains that were actually circulating and the Centers for Disease Control reported the percentage of deaths attributed to influenza and pneumonia was at or above the epidemic threshold for 16 consecutive weeks.
But health officials say the flu shots this season are a good match to the strains that are currently circulating.
“Last year was one of the most severe flu seasons that we had. (There were) twice as many (deaths) as there usually are,” Berreman said. “This year it’s a good match, it’s protecting people really well.”
There aren’t any indications that the flu virus strains circulating are any stronger than usual, either, and the state DOH doesn’t keep county-specific numbers of those diagnosed with the flu.
But, there are other sicknesses in circulation, like the common cold, rhinovirus. That illness can present similar symptoms to the flu and there are hundreds of strains.
“Many people who say ‘I have the flu’ actually have a cold,” Berreman said. “The only way to tell the difference is if the doctor does a swab test.”
Health officials say this season is looking like the severity won’t reach what it did in the 2017-18 flu season, which peaked in January and February, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
For those who have gotten sick, CDC says you should stay home and limit your contact with other people. If you’re out and about with the flu virus, you’re going to spread it, the agency says.
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Jessica Else, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0452 or jelse@thegardenisland.com.
Aloha Kakou,
It would be scientific to know how many people in Hawaii or Kaua’i who died from the flu each year had the flu vaccine that same year or any of a few years before.
As well, how many people who died from the flue were under the care of a doctor at the time of their death or up to the time of their death.
How many millions of people have had the flu and had no vaccine or any flu treatment and just had the flu, missed some school or work and went on with their life.
When you develop your own natural antibodies from any year’s flu strain, which you do every time whether you have symptoms or not, you store them in your body for the next time that strain comes around.
The question is are flu deaths caused from the complication of taking foreign flu strains injected into your body as in a big “rush” or overdose of the virus attacking your body even though they claim the virus is dead when injected, and who’s to know every virus of the injected flu is dead or atenuated.
Or are flu deaths caused by the complication of over stressing the body with injected or swallowed further medications after the symptoms of flu are present?
Just like the measles the same questions apply. Are we messing with our body’s tried and tested immune system and messing it up with complications of more chemicals.
In the old days…like a few generations ago, you got the cold, flu, or measles, mumps, and chicken pox and just laid down and waited it out while your body performed it’s own extremely complicated but marvelous if not the miraculous process of the internal healing mechanism of the human body, that does not need help but does need No interference in its internal processes of healing.
Trusting in Nature, isn’ that the same as trusting in God, which many people do when it comes to other things?
You got well from that cut on your hand or finger without outside help, same mechanisms are used by the body there, your immune system kicks in to prevent injury from invading bacteria and other microbes, but in addition there is excretion of damaged tissue and regenerneration of replacement of new tissue that in most cases is a perfect match of the original tissue that was cut open.
Healing is a job of your Nervous System. Let it be and let it do its thing.
Mahalo,
Charles
Or we can pay a quack to ‘diagnose’ our ailment which heals by itself without Big Pharma’s intervention…of course with some exceptions!
Aloha Ruthann, while you are correct to a degree in what you said, in fact, the entire mechanism of the healing process is under the direction and control of the Nervous System. So my only addition to your statement is that we need to look deeper into healing…you see while healing is on automatic like you say, along with billions if not trillions of biochemical and other physiological occurrences EVERY SECOND OF OUR LIVES, they are not done randomly, but in ORGANIZED INTELLIGENT manner and methods, and on automatic, again like you said.
Those Organized methods of healing and all other physiological mechanisms are under the intelligent control of the Nervous System. The healing mechanism, whether it be a cold or cancer, is so complex it requires the most vast known computer in the world…the human brain and its many ”departments”.
The Nervous System is the computer for our bodies, just like a computer controls airplanes and rockets to Mars, the Nervous System is way more complex than mere flight as in island to island or planet to planet, interplanetary.
Keep in mind when the human being is composed of only 16 cells in its initial stages of development, that is 16 identical appearing cells, the first cell to differentiate from the other 15 cells in every single human being is the Nervous System. The Nervous System appears to then takeover and directs the “symphony” of the human development cels, tissues, organs, and other systems. This extraordinary process occurs in all the other the other vertebrates on earth. Vertebrates are all the animals, birds, fish, and people with vertebrate spines that house and protect the delicate Nervous System.
Even scientist Thomas Edison said “look well to the spine for the cause of disease”.
Human very simple. The 2 parent cells, a sperm and an ovum come together…1 cell + 1 cell = 1 cell, the new human being. That 1 cell then becomes 2 cells, and they become 4, and those 4 become 8, and those 8 become 16 cells by the miracle of life…at that point the Nervous System erupts fromt the other 16 cells and the rapid process of human development occurs during Lem peothe approximate next 9 months of pregnancy.
Yes healing is automatic, and so is the AUTOnomic Nervous System. We should be grateful for our body’s Nervous System intelligence. Some people in different parts of the world call this INTELLIGENCE that automatically controls our bodies, as well as all processes of all living life on earth as well as other phenomena of nature like gravity, rain , cold and warm, volcanoes and hurricanes,the ocean and the things that grow from the ground, and outward including the atmosphere, oxygen and carbon dioxide, then the other planets, the rest of the universe, and if there is more than one, life everything else, the other universes…what a job, that is why many people call this Intelligence…GOD…and let us be grateful for it. It is everywhere and in all things. You can give it a name or define it by being masculine or feminine, or paint beautiful pictures of it…none the less it bears this INTELLIGENCE that transcends the Universe…thank God…!
As you say we get well automatically, and that is true, with some explanation like in the above. And getting well from a cold or cut finger is also called a spontaneous remission, which is controlled and coordinated by the Nervous System. If there was time today we could discuss getting well from cancer and heart disease and stroke disease…not today but another time. But we will not discuss disease care we will discuss Health Care.
Mahalo,
Charles