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A 14-year-old Virginia boy is weak and struggling to walk after coming down with a reported case of Guillain-Barre syndrome within hours after receiving the H1N1 vaccine for swine flu.

Jordan McFarland, a high school athlete from Alexandria, Va., left Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children Tuesday night in a wheelchair nearly a week after developing severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs following a swine flu shot. He will likely need the assistance of a walker for four to six weeks, plus extensive physical therapy.

“The doctor said I’ll recover fully, but it’s going to take some time,” the teenager said. Read the full story

That’s a week after granting that status to the closing of the Champlain Bridge — the disasters are coming more often — and President Obama’s declaration that the swine flu was a National Emergency.

The executive order has these effects:

• Allows health care workers who are not doctors, nurses or nurse practitioners to administer the vaccine
• Allows school-based health centers to handle vaccinations Read the full story

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If you’ve had the flu recently, chances are it was the swine flu, which first emerged in April and appears not to have let up over the summer.

Of the viruses that are going around, 98% are the novel H1N1 type known as swine flu, government health officials say. All 50 states report influenza activity, with the Southeast being particularly hard hit, as well as Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma and Maryland. Infections are mainly concentrated among children and young adults.

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