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This would certainly be far less of a problem if university health centers had the capability to diagnose H1N1. Getting the diagnosis only down to "flu" or even "some kind of influenza" simply is not efficient. Only a tiny fraction of these students likely have H1N1. Not being able to discriminate the H1N1 students from the other sick students is creating a huge hassle for educators, staff, administrators, and the students themselves.

archman: The cost of diagnosing is so disproportional to the severity of the illness that the NIH and whatever the college health center association is recommend against doing it because at this time, it is highly likely that the students do indeed have H1N1. If it's a hassle at your place, suck it up.

Mr. Webb, we had a single student actually diagnosed with H1N1 in our spring semester student body. One student. We're a mid-sized regional university. All the other students we tested last spring were negative. It took all summer for the diagnoses to get back to us from the H1N1 testing facilities.

As to the severity of the illness, we've been bombarded by every and all info sources that H1N1 is no more harmful than regular flu. If it is indeed so severe, please correct me. My understanding is that the "risk" is related to the strain's purported high mutational properties, not the damage done by the current virus itself.

Can you please provide a link showing me the NIH's position that most flu in the U.S. is currently linked to H1N1, and explaining the risk analysis against performing widespread testing for it? I have not seen such a statement released for our university. We've been told that every facility capable of testing for H1N1 is backlogged on the order of months, and *this* backlog is where the problem lies.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

For the week ending September 5, 2009, 705 out of the 725 cases that were positively identified by subtype were H1N1 2009. So 97% of those subtyped were H1N1.

We (govt) is sending very mixed messages, with many being complicitous in being caught up in all this drama. On the one hand, the official public stance is not to test, and not to treat, except for those likely to have serious complications of influenza. On the other hand ACHA and others are being pulled into being handmaidens of this drama in collecting numbers that cannot be very valid if we are following public health guidelines. To add to this, H1N1 so far is a relatively mild influenza for most who get it, and yet we are using incredible amounts of resources (time, especially) planning, buying truckloads of tamiflu and sanitizer for this mild illness. The question is: We don't do this normally for seasonal flu, so why are we being participants in the way this is unfolding? WHy are we not asking more questions and using the data to ask these questions? We are in academia, I believe.

We (govt) is sending very mixed messages, with many being complicitous in being caught up in all this drama. On the one hand, the official public stance is not to test, and not to treat, except for those likely to have serious complications of influenza. On the other hand ACHA and others are being pulled into being handmaidens of this drama in collecting numbers that cannot be very valid if we are following public health guidelines. To add to this, H1N1 so far is a relatively mild influenza for most who get it, and yet we are using incredible amounts of resources (time, especially) planning, buying truckloads of tamiflu and sanitizer for this mild illness. The question is: We don't do this normally for seasonal flu, so why are we being participants in the way this is unfolding? WHy are we not asking more questions and using the data to ask these questions? We are in academia, I believe.