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In more than two decades with Louisburg USD 416, Pam Waite has seen many a flu season come and go at Louisburg High School.

Unfortunately, however, 2009 is already breaking new ground where the seasonal illness is concerned.

“Last week, we had more kids gone than at any time I can remember since I’ve been here,” said Waite, LHS attendance secretary.
Flu season has come to Louisburg early this year, thanks to the new, and highly-publicized, strain of influenza “A,” H1N1; or, as it is perhaps more infamously known, the swine flu.

In recent weeks, students in Louisburg dealing with the virus have missed hundreds of school days. From Oct. 12 - Oct. 16, for example, the number of absentees at Louisburg High School climbed at a steady rate, peaking with 96 on Friday, Oct. 16.

Dr. Eric Dyck, a local family practitioner with Louisburg Family Care, noted that a virus like the flu is able to spread more easily through schools for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the higher concentration of potential carriers within a confined space offers more opportunities for it to spread from person to person. A student who has fallen ill might pass it on to their friends and teachers, and so on.

“It’s been worse and it’s earlier because what we’re seeing now is H1N1,” he said. “It’s not the seasonal flu, based on what we’re told from the health department.”

However, young people are also simply more susceptible to this strain of flu, Dyck added. Their immune systems aren’t as resistant as those of their elder counterparts, as individuals born prior to 1957 may have some residual immunity from a prior infection.

Though his waiting room has been busier of late, he said, he has yet to encounter anyone older than approximately 35 years old infected with the virus.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one might look at it, Dyck said the symptoms appear to be primarily those regularly associated with the flu – fever, body and head aches, sore throat, cough, and occasionally nausea and vomiting.

Without a cure for the flu, those afflicted by it are left to do what they’ve always done, and treat the symptoms with plenty of fluids, Tylenol and ibuprofen for pain management, and over the counter flu medications.

“Really, it has to run it’s course,” Dyck said. “And there’s no way to get better, faster.”

Flu vaccines are typically a cost-effective preventative measure, but the outbreak of H1N1 is creating a new kind of problem. With so many affected nationwide, demand for the vaccine is outstripping production rates. And, as a result, local health departments are having to put tight restrictions on eligibility at this point in time.

Here in Miami County, for example, the health department is advising physicians to administer the vaccine primarily to those between the ages of six months and nine years – with no knowledge of when larger supplies may be made available.

“We just get a certain amount every week for our order,” said Rita McKoon, director of the Miami County Health Department. “And that’s based on what the (Center for Disease Control) distributes to the state of Kansas.”

Still, Dyck recommends to all of his patients that they receive their annual flu shot and, when it becomes available, the H1N1 variant as well. Though vaccines are something of a controversial topic, or perhaps because of it, many of those he sees often make up their own mind on the matter.

“You have folks that say ‘I got the flu shot, and I got the flu the next day,’” he said. “That really doesn’t happen. There are a lot of sore arms and feeling kind of achy for a day or two, but it doesn’t actually give you the flu.”

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