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On a Friday afternoon, 10-year-old Maya Cargile of Huntington Beach went to the doctor with a persistent high fever. It looked like a bad cold or the flu, and she was advised to drink more liquids. An antibiotic was prescribed, just in case it wasn't a virus.
By Saturday night, she was in the intensive care unit of a hospital, unconscious and on a respirator, suffering from septic shock brought on by the H1N1 flu virus, the nasty bug that spread in a worldwide pandemic during the 2009-10 flu season.
H1N1, or "swine flu," wasn't as vicious as first feared, causing more than 50 deaths in Orange County and 12,000 nationwide. It was far less deadly than the regular seasonal flu, which the CDC estimates kills 36,000 Americans each year.
[More...] But the unique aspect of H1N1 was how hard it hit young people. Normally the elderly are most vulnerable to seasonal flu, but they were surprisingly resilient in the face of H1N1, which was a descendant of the devastating 1918 Spanish flu. Older people had built up a tolerance, thanks to exposure to that long-ago outbreak and others. By contrast, most of the victims of the 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic were younger than 24. Read Courtney Perkes' story from December 2009 about one family's near-death experience with the virus.
By Saturday night, she was in the intensive care unit of a hospital, unconscious and on a respirator, suffering from septic shock brought on by the H1N1 flu virus, the nasty bug that spread in a worldwide pandemic during the 2009-10 flu season.
H1N1, or "swine flu," wasn't as vicious as first feared, causing more than 50 deaths in Orange County and 12,000 nationwide. It was far less deadly than the regular seasonal flu, which the CDC estimates kills 36,000 Americans each year.
[More...] But the unique aspect of H1N1 was how hard it hit young people. Normally the elderly are most vulnerable to seasonal flu, but they were surprisingly resilient in the face of H1N1, which was a descendant of the devastating 1918 Spanish flu. Older people had built up a tolerance, thanks to exposure to that long-ago outbreak and others. By contrast, most of the victims of the 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic were younger than 24. Read Courtney Perkes' story from December 2009 about one family's near-death experience with the virus.
