Relative: Waseca man who died after contracting H1N1 had no und...

A Waseca hospital administrator who died after contracting the H1N1 flu virus had no underlying medical conditions, a family member said.

[Beaver Cleaver]

Of course he had an underlying medical condition.

You do not "die from the flu". Normal, functioning kidneys do not shut down for no reason. Lungs do not fail for no reason.

If he was a smoker, even a former smoker, he permanently damaged his lungs. If he drank alcohol, he permanently damaged his kidneys.

Not to say this is what happened. An autopsy will determine what really killed him.

I wasn't "the flu".

[Irritated]

The headline of the article is misleading. Do not make statements in the headline that are false. A relative said he was healthy, but that is not what your headline leads people to believe. The MDH has not confirmed whether or not he had underlying health problems so please don't create more fear and panic just to get people to read your article. Lame trick. Shame on you.

[Frank]

Irritated wrote:

The headline of the article is misleading. Do not make statements in the headline that are false. A relative said he was healthy, but that is not what your headline leads people to believe. The MDH has not confirmed whether or not he had underlying health problems so please don't create more fear and panic just to get people to read your article. Lame trick. Shame on you.

You and the Beaver make good points. People can be missing half their organs and be termed as "healthy". That's a very general term. It also sounds like this guy didn't get help until he was pretty sick, unless I read it wrong.

[JTY]

Beaver Cleaver wrote:

Of course he had an underlying medical condition.
You do not "die from the flu". Normal, functioning kidneys do not shut down for no reason. Lungs do not fail for no reason.
If he was a smoker, even a former smoker, he permanently damaged his lungs. If he drank alcohol, he permanently damaged his kidneys.
Not to say this is what happened. An autopsy will determine what really killed him.
I wasn't "the flu".

Actually any type of flu can be fatal. It is far less common for a healthy person to die from a flu virus, but it does happen.

[Hearwegoagain]

JTY wrote:

<quoted text>
Actually any type of flu can be fatal. It is far less common for a healthy person to die from a flu virus, but it does happen.

True, but very rarely. But a person doesn't just enter a hospital and start kidney dialysis right away. That's where this poor man started going down hill. Dialysis is crippling in itself, and adding any more health issues or conditions onto that....well, here's the end-story.
I agree with the above comments. Very misleading headline. And frustrating that the media keeps exacerbating the issue.

[Truth Missle]

JTY wrote:

<quoted text>
Actually any type of flu can be fatal. It is far less common for a healthy person to die from a flu virus, but it does happen.

Having researched information on the swine flu pandemic of 1918, healthy individuals were more likely to die as a result of their immune systems aggressively fighting off the disease. It is one of the fears of H1N1 and it's characteristic trait of going deeper into the lower lung, causing a stronger immune response, overwhelming the lungs with more fluid, irritation, bleeding and death. Their is worry amongst our health care community that this variation will strengthen into a very powerful virulent that kills it's hosts in numbers not seen since the 1918 swine flu pandemic.

[fruit bat alert]

I usually don't get too worked up about media driven fear and pandemic threats, but this H1N1 virus is a scary one. I have seen first hand how sick and hard hit students are at the school I work for. This isn't like the regular seasonal flu, it's much worse and highly contagious.

Can't believe that the vaccine isn't available in mass quantities yet. Health Dept says it takes longer to grow in eggs then they expected but didn't we hear about this threat last spring? Hmmm.

[Chekov]

Freedom of the press pushed this sorry right to the limit. It's very sad he died--but he wasn't exactly free from underlying medical conditions was he? Very poor reporting.

[Jinn4u]

Sad news. But it looks like this is an equal opportunity flu, unlike employers now adays

[JTY]

Truth Missle wrote:

<quoted text>
Having researched information on the swine flu pandemic of 1918, healthy individuals were more likely to die as a result of their immune systems aggressively fighting off the disease. It is one of the fears of H1N1 and it's characteristic trait of going deeper into the lower lung, causing a stronger immune response, overwhelming the lungs with more fluid, irritation, bleeding and death. Their is worry amongst our health care community that this variation will strengthen into a very powerful virulent that kills it's hosts in numbers not seen since the 1918 swine flu pandemic.

The 1918 flu was the SPANISH flu not the swine flu. While the share some of the same genetic make ups, they are both part of the most common flu straign H1N1.

As far as more healthy people sucumbing to the swine flu, I have heard that before, but have not seen any hard numbers to be able to confirm or deny it. The only thing that I seen is that the mortality rate of the swine flu seems to be in line with the normal seasonal flu. The reason why more people seem to be dying is because the infection rate seems to be higher (possibly because of the longer flu season).