John, that is not what the Drs are saying in this area.
See, this is one thing that has me worried.. .
The healthcare professionals seem clueless, and seem to be parroting what others say.
Even in this article, the CDC recommends Tamiflu to certain people that meet a criteria:
Young kids and those with underlying conditions...
Why single them out?
Does Tamiflu not work with teens with no underlying conditions.. if so, then the Drs in this article make sense...
Or is it because there is not enough Tamiflu for everyone.. which does naturally lead to rationing...
But this doesn't even make sense to me...
Tamiflu has been around for yrs...
Why hasn't the production of it been ramped up over the last yr... I mean, how much time does it take to produce Tamiflu?
The CDC normally recommends Tamiflu for children and those with underlying conditions in any given flu season.
That recommendation is not H1N1 specific.
Actually, it has.
Roche Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Tamiflu, has ramped up production since the Spring of this year.
But part of what's happenning is that there's a bit of hypocondria going on.
It happens all the time with the common cold:
A person gets a cold, and goes to their physician demanding antibiotics.
Even though antibiotics have no effect on the common cold (the cold is a virus, and antibiotics only work on bacteria), a physician will sometimes prescribe antobiotics to an insistent patient to shut them up.
The result is a run on antibiotics unnecessarily.
What's happrning now is that you have a lot of people running to get prescriptions of Tamiflu, even though they're not in any particular risk group.