Swine flu already causing an unprecedented amount of illness in US children

About half of the child deaths reported since Sept. 1 have been teenagers. Until now, much of the attention has focused on younger children.

SHOOT: Locally they are reporting that swine flu is stabilising. It's a really deceptive way to report. You should look at the whole pandemic, globally, if you're going to say it's stabilising. Official worldwide cases, even though no one is counting, are now over 500 000 [based on news reports and official government figures].

clipped from news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – The swine flu is causing an unprecedented amount of illness for this early in the fall, with the deaths of 11 more children reported in the past week. And less vaccine than expected will be ready by month's end, federal health officials said Friday. Of the 86 children who have died since the new swine flu arose last spring, 43 deaths have been reported in September and early October alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. That's a startling number because in some past winters, the CDC has counted 40 or 50 child deaths for the entire flu season — and no one knows how long this swine flu outbreak will last. "These are very sobering statistics," said the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat. Overall, what CDC calls the 2009 H1N1 flu is causing widespread disease in 41 states, and about 6 percent of all doctor visits are for flu-like illnesses, levels not normally seen until much later in the fall.