With the recent death of a toddler in Texas due to swine flu, the World Health Organization elevated the risk status to Level 5, which means that it’s infecting humans in at least two countries. This is one step away from the final level—a pandemic, or global outbreak of the virus. With reported cases growing daily around the world, people are starting to panic.
Given the media’s penchant for overdramatizing things and the public’s eagerness to swallow the hype, it’s still unclear how scared we should be about swine flu. Perhaps learning about past flu scares will shed some light on how we should respond to this current one.
1. Spanish Flu
Also known as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, it infected and killed more people than any other flu virus worldwide—the exact number isn’t known, but some believe it’s anywhere between twenty to fifty million people (more than those killed in Black Death plague or World War I)—and lasted until 1919. What was truly scary about the Spanish Flu pandemic wasn’t just the high mortality rate, but the fact that it gravely affected people across generations and health levels. Most flu-related deaths occur among people with weaker immune systems, like the very young or the elderly, but this pandemic targeted people seemingly indiscriminately. Though it’s called the Spanish Flu, no one’s quite sure where the virus came from originally. (The virus hit Spain particularly hard near the beginning, so that’s where it received its name.) It’s theorized that the war was largely responsible for the spread due to constant troop migrations and its monopolization of necessary resources, like medical supplies and hospital space.
2. Asian Flu
This pandemic lasted from 1957 until 1958 and originated in southern China, making its way to the U.S. in June of 1957. Because technology advanced in the almost forty years since the Spanish Flu disaster, scientists were able to identify the strain of flu and pinpoint its origins—a virus usually found in ducks crossed with the human flu virus and created a new variation. A vaccine was created, but not before the virus infected and killed almost two million people around the world, with over 69,000 of those in the U.S. School-aged children were the most infected population; they passed it to each other in the close quarters of classrooms and then spread it to their family members. However, the elderly had the greatest mortality rates from the pandemic.
3. Hong Kong Flu
The virus hit Hong Kong in 1968, landed in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America the same year, and then traveled to Japan and South America in 1969. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classified it as a Category 2 within the Pandemic Severity Index, which means that the infection-fatality ratio is slightly above mild. (To compare, Spanish Flu was categorized at 5.) Hong Kong Flu was an offshoot of Asian Flu, but it had fewer deaths than its pandemic predecessor, possibly because of the viruses’ relation. Peoples’ immune systems were already introduced to a similar strain, so they were perhaps better prepared for this type of flu. Also, medical advances allowed for more efficient treatment. The mortality rate is estimated anywhere between over 700,000 to one million people; almost 34,000 of them were in the U.S.
