Will Swine Flu 'Crowd Out' Seasonal Flu This Year?

Dec. 17, 2009— -- There's no way to predict how much activity the United States will see from the influenza viruses for the rest of the flu season, infectious disease experts say. But some say initial predictions for the winter months suggest that the H1N1 flu may have an unexpected silver lining -- that is, it may have "crowded out" the seasonal flu.

Still, opinions split on whether H1N1 might come back strongly in third wave of disease before the season is over. And experts also couldn't agree on the probability of seeing some activity from seasonal flu viruses, overshadowed so far by the pandemic strain.

Government officials have been taking great pains during the pandemic to say that there's no way of knowing how the rest of the flu season will play out.

In a briefing by the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden repeated the message and urged people to get the H1N1 vaccine, which is becoming increasingly easier to find.

They said everyone should be vaccinated -- and not just the children, young adults, pregnant women and others particularly vulnerable to the disease who were targeted in the intitial H1N1 vaccine distributions.

Dr. William Schaffner, chair of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine's Department of Preventive Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., said he thinks there will be some seasonal influenza activity, which, in a normal year, doesn't start to pick up until December, peaking in January and February. Some H1N1 infections will be mixed in, he speculated in an interview.

But Schaffner, a liaison to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, cautioned that "flu is unpredictable, so this is just my cloudy crystal ball."

He said speculation in some quarters that H1N1 has somehow crowded out seasonal flu viruses, limiting the likelihood that they will emerge this year, are based on experience in the Southern Hemisphere, where H1N1 quickly became the dominant strain.