Could the Swine Flu be Worse than the Bubonic Plague?
Yes it could, although the good news is the outbreak appears to be declining, and right now it doesn’t contain the features seen in much more severe flu strains.
The bad news is the H1N1 virus could return with a vengeance in the Fall, as the deadly Spanish flu did in 1918. It started with milder cases in the spring, seemingly disappeared over the summer, and then returned as a much more virulent and deadly strain in the fall. In the Northern hemisphere, the weather is most conducive to the usual seasonal flu virus during the winter months. Thus the virus tends to disappear by April and re-emerges in November.
The 1918 pandemic is cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. It was caused by an exceptionally virulent strain of the flu which eventually infected 28% of all Americans and a fifth of the world’s population. It claimed the lives of 20 million to 50 million people worldwide. More died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Bubonic Plague.
The flu of 1918 was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40, which was different than the usual pattern of morbidity for the seasonal flu which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. The influenza virus of 1918 ”had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger).” (virus.stanford.edu/uda/)
In 1918, “People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths. One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly ‘develop the most viscious type of pneumonia that has ever been seen’ and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, ‘it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate,’ (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients ‘died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth,’ (Starr, 1976).” (virus.stanford.edu/uda/)
On the other hand, the past two pandemics - in 1957 and 1968 - were relatively mild. This flu could be a catastrophe as in 1918 or it could fizzle out as in 1957 and 1968. Nobody knows, but they do know preventive measures, such as getting a flu shot and frequent handwashing, make a huge difference. The CDC says that ’the genes of all of the viruses we have examined to date are 99 to 100 percent identical. This means that it will be somewhat easier for us to produce an influenza vaccine.”
Also, avoid the numerous scams that are surfacing in an attempt to take advantage of the current concern over the flu. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission warned consumers Friday to avoid Internet sites and other promotions that offer products claiming to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure the swine flu virus.
Read more About Influenza and How to Prevent It
Source: CDC, May 4, 2009
Source: Stanford online, http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
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