Tamiflu

[tagryn]

If you get the flu this year, Tamiflu may not be a viable option: the NYT reports that while only 11% of the flu strains were resistant to it last year, this year 99% of them are. This reflects a trend of Tamiflu-resistant strains found in Europe last year, according to the article.

Comments

[foomf.livejournal.com]

I've always preferred vaccination as a flu preventative.
When Tamiflu was introduced, we were on Kaiser and they didn't allow it (being an extremely conservative HMO that would still be using blood-letting if their doctors didn't say no.)

I vaccinated regularly until my allergy to thimerosal became more exaggerated (last time: very large lump on arm at injection site, 103 fever within half hour, and rash over shot site).
Since then I was able to get a shot, once, using "child safe" low-thimerosal vaccine without a response, but that was off-label and only because they were past the point of distributing the shots.
But this year, I got the inhalant-form, attenuated-live-virus form.
So far, no active flu, unless the "gastrointestrinal excitement" plague going around has been a flu. Although my experience has been much less energetic than most others I know who got it.