It’s vaccination time!

Good news. From the New York State website:

Governor David A. Paterson today announced that, effective immediately, health care providers may make the H1N1 flu vaccine available to all New Yorkers who want the vaccine, including those who are not in priority groups established by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

If you don’t have health insurance, get thee to a clinic this weekend. This is the last weekend you’ll be able to get an H1N1 shot for free. Clinics will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, 12/12, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, 12/13.

Hand-washing might not help

As we gear up for a flu season, with H1N1 now in the mix, we’re being advised to wash our hands on a regular basis.

Bad news. Research from the Netherlands “suggests that the H1N1 flu travels mostly by air, not via hand-to-hand contact—and therefore won’t be prevented through hand-washing.”  This is not to say that hand washing isn’t important.  It can prevent the transmission of many diseases — swine flu is just probably not one of them.

So how is one to avoid getting H1N1? One possible solution is a surgical mask, but let’s face it, only the truly crazy will wear one of those in public.

The best solution? Get the vaccine when it becomes available.

Personal Space Protector

“PERSONAL SPACE is an object classified as ‘functional art’, created by the Brazilian artist and inventor Vivian Puxian. It ensures your personal space is always kept safe, and protects you against infectious and contagious diseases, such as the swine flu.”

Get onto the subway during rush hour with one of these things, and swine flu will be the least of your worries.

Beach sand, fun but yucky.

Next time your stomach doesn’t agree with you after a day at the beach, don’t blame that hot dog that you ate. It could have been the sand.

A recent study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who played in beach sand were more likely to get some form intestinal disease. More specifically, poop is the culprit. Whether it’s from a lazy owner’s dog or from a wild animal, the waste gets washed to the beach by the rain.

The best ways to stay healthy are to use a hand sanitizer while at the beach and to shower thoroughly afterward.

Tracking the Swine Flu

Are we headed for another 1918 pandemic? Let’s hope to God not. Perhaps it’s too soon to be worried, but we definitely should be concerned.

To view a regularly updated (and somewhat disturbing) map of all the reported cases of H1N1 infections, check out Google Maps. New York City is shown above, but you can zoom out to see how the country and the rest of the world is being affected.

Update: According to Google, “Due to the increasing amount of data, we have moved to a more scalable mapping/data tracking system provided by Rhiza Labs at this URL: http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com.”