The History of the Swine Flu

For months now I’ve noticed that the Swine Flu (H1N1) is quickly changing our society and the way it interacts with each other. Now every time someone sneezes it’s always followed up with some witty remark about the Swine Flu. And you cant go anywhere without hand sanitizer or antibacterial soap thrown at you. I’ve even seen TV commercials advertising that their product protects against Swine Flu.

With the bombardment of the Swine Flu into pop culture I wanted to know more about it. Not what the news media thinks we want to know, (in my opinion they are just trying to stir up a panic) but the true story, the history of the Swine Flu. Maybe with that knowledge we’ll be able to make a intelligent decision on whether to panic in the streets or to go about our daily lives.

Some believe that the first recorded case in recent history of the Swine Flu was the 1918 pandemic, when pigs became sick at the same time as humans. The 1918 pandemic, also referred to as the Spanish Flu, was an unusually deadly strain of H1N1 that spread to nearly every part of the world and lasted from March of 1918 to June of 1920. It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 million people of the 500 million infected died from the strain of influenza.

Twelve years later, in 1930, scientists first identified the influenza virus as a cause of disease in pigs. What makes this extremely important is that a disease jumped from pigs to humans and then was able to be transferred from human to human. Swine Flu is a very common virus throughout the pig population, but transmission of the virus from pigs to humans is not. During the mid-20th century, once the ability to identify influenza subtypes became possible, only 50 cross species transmissions have been confirmed.

On February 5, 1976, a U.S. army recruit contracted another strain of H1N1, and died after only one day of symptoms. With fear of another pandemic, public-health officials urged President Gerald Ford that every person in the U.S. should be vaccinated. By October of that year immunizations began and three senior citizens died soon after receiving their injections. Their deaths caused a panic in the media, despite any proof that the vaccine was the cause, and by the time the truth came out that the deaths were not related to the vaccine, the damage was done. President Ford and the vaccination program had lost the publics trust.

In 1988 and again in 1998 the Swine Flu was found in pigs in the United States. While only one person died between both years, these outbreaks confirmed that pigs can serve as a host where new influenza viruses can grow. Six out of the eight viral gene segments of the 2009 flu outbreak came from the 1998 strain.

As we all know, the Swine Flu has hit the world again, and as always the fear of pandemic grips the nation. In late April of 2009, the World Health Organization’s director-general Margaret Chan declared a “public health emergency of international concern”, and several countries have taken precautionary measures to reduce the chances for a global pandemic of the disease. The 2009 Swine Flu has been compared to other types of influenza in terms of mortality: “in the US it appears that for every 1000 people who get infected, about 40 people need admission to hospital and about one person dies”.

With this brief recap of Wikipedia’s Swine Flu history, we can use this knowledge to create our own hypothetical situations and speculations that the media does. In my opinion, everyone should run to their coffee pots and water coolers and explain to everyone that will listen that the Swine Flu hits every 10 years or so and will only last for no more than 2 years. That people die but we have another 10 good years before the100 year anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, so we should be safe. Explain that you heard/read that we should be more worried about 2012 than the Swine Flu. But secretly run off and get your Swine Flu shot and hope it doesn’t get you in your sleep.

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