{"id":377,"date":"2009-04-26T10:09:34","date_gmt":"2009-04-26T15:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=377"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:30:58","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:30:58","slug":"swine-flu-curbsides-anthrax-sars-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/swine-flu-curbsides-anthrax-sars-redux\/2009\/04\/26\/","title":{"rendered":"Swine Flu Curbsides: Anthrax, SARS Redux?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/04\/pigs11.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-378\" title=\"pigs1\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2009\/04\/pigs11.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"117\" \/><\/a>In my email in-box yesterday AM from a primary care doc:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A patient of mine, 40 year old woman totally healthy, is going to Cancun on Tuesday for a conference.\u00a0 She&#8217;ll be there for 6 days.<\/p>\n<p>I know there are no cases of swine flu in Cancun yet, and the situation is evolving, but here&#8217;s my question:\u00a0 what should she do (besides the obvious stuff like handwashing, etc)?? \u00a0 Bring tamiflu??\u00a0 A mask??\u00a0 Should she cancel her trip???? [N.B., actual punctuation retained for effect]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ah, memories of the anthrax attacks and SARS, when an ID threat hits the headlines and people understandably want to know what they can do to protect themselves.<\/p>\n<p>So they turn to their primary care providers, who then turn to us.<\/p>\n<p>And in these situations, there\u2019s the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/swineflu\/guidelines_infection_control.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><em>official <\/em>response<\/a> to such a question, which as we all know is sometimes different from the <em>practical <\/em>response \u2014 and I define the latter being what would you do for you or your family.<\/p>\n<p>So not only did I say that it would be reasonable to bring some osteltamivir (Tamiflu), I even thought it wouldn\u2019t be crazy to consider a prophylactic strategy \u2014 though the fact that she\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/wwwn.cdc.gov\/travel\/contentSwineFluMexico.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">totally healthy<\/a> made me favor the former approach.<\/p>\n<p>And I wonder how many ID docs out there purchased some ciprofloxacin back in 2001, even though we were told not to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my email in-box yesterday AM from a primary care doc: A patient of mine, 40 year old woman totally healthy, is going to Cancun on Tuesday for a conference.\u00a0 She&#8217;ll be there for 6 days. I know there are no cases of swine flu in Cancun yet, and the situation is evolving, but here&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,8,9],"tags":[65,66,139,187,224,589,684,753,769,831,894],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","category-policy","tag-anthrax","tag-anthrax-attacks","tag-cancun","tag-ciprofloxacin","tag-conference","tag-mask","tag-osteltamivir","tag-primary-care","tag-punctuation","tag-sars","tag-tamiflu"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}