You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Your escape to reality.

Good evening.

This is Stephen Novella, the host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

This is a special episode about the H1N1 or Swine Flu and the Vaccine.

For this episode, I am joined by several of my colleagues from Science-Based Medicine.

Joining me for this episode is David Gorsky, Mark Chrislip, and Joe Albeets.

Joe, we're going to start by talking a little bit about the flu itself, influenza.

A little bit of quick background on influenza and specifically what we should be expecting

this season with the flu.

Sure.

So influenza is nothing new.

It's a virus that we see every single year and on average, on normal flu season.

We've got about 5 to 20% of the population that gets infected, about 200,000 people hospitalized,

and about 30,000 people in the U.S. were killed from influenza and pneumonia subsequent

to influenza.

Difficult infection that people are going to see is fever, chills, muscle aches, cough,

congestion, occasionally some diarrhea, although that's more of a common in kids.

And after only about one to two days of incubation, this thing can hang around for several days

and sometimes up to two weeks.

In the past, it's had a very distinct impact on the population in general.

We've got 60% of hospitalizations and 90% of all influenza related deaths occur in people

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