No question: more people are sick of it than are sick with it. This isn’t our first big rodeo, after all, so how can a flu virus throw us into such a tizzy? But a tizzy we are in, mass hysteria fueled by a news media intent on keeping us healthy, informed and on the edge of our seats. At the end of the day, though, the barrage of scare-mongering is better than not knowing.
People weren’t as well-informed back in 1918 when another flu virus spread throughout the world, to the Arctic, to remote islands…everywhere. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic lasted two years, infecting more than half the world population and killing as many as 100 million people.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) calls the 1918 influenza “the mother of all pandemics.” Almost all flu viruses since that bug got loose are descendants of the 1918 virus. In 1918, health care workers were too ill to tend the sick and grave-diggers too far gone to bury the dead.
So what’s the difference between epi-demic and pan-demic? Epi- means almost all; pan- means all. An epidemic spreads rapidly and extensively affecting many individuals in an area or population at the same time. A pandemic is a widespread epidemic over a great geographic area, affecting a large proportion of the population. A human pandemic in our global village could conceivably touch practically everyone.
Although we didn’t have television to rub it in back in 1918, we were scared. Rather than providing too much information like we have now, the government downplayed the influenza, spinning the country into confronting World War I cannons instead of the flu. Disinformation: some things never change.
Viruses do change, however, and the 1918 flu virus finally mutated into a less virulent and deadly beast. People stopped dying, got well and went about their business. And in the frenzy of world war, we the public forgot the whole thing. The CDC didn’t forget, though, and estimates about 36,000 U.S. deaths each year from flu.
We started paying attention again in the late 1990s when avian flu spread into our human population. Bird flu is a different breed of slime than our current swine flu. Instead of spawning in pigs it occurs in wild birds and can spread quickly to domestic fowl. In 2005, bird flu hit five states, Asia, Europe and Canada.
After bird flu, for the first time in modern history, we began to understand how easily seasonal flu outbreaks could evolve into epidemics. On our constantly shrinking planet, we could conceive of a pandemic, an unknown viral messenger carrying doom on international flights throughout the world. Scary stuff, that.
And in April when swine flu suddenly swept out of Mexico after killing scores of people, I admit: it scared hell out of me. Several circumstances contributed to my paranoia. This was the first time I had watched a pandemic spread on television, itself a viral medium. Watching people in masks was sobering.
Furthermore, the bug was an unknown strain of virus, something new that we couldn’t identify and for which we had no silver bullet flu shot. Lastly, this flu was killing people, not in Asia or some far-flung cauldron of contagion. Instead, people were dying right here in North America, just south of the border…too close for comfort.
Perhaps paranoia is too strong a word; after all, paranoids catch the flu too. So I am one of those who washes his hands until they chap. I don’t sign with public pens, I sanitize the grocery cart, I don’t use handrails and I touch doorknobs only with my outside fingers. As a result, I don’t get sick too often. Yeah, I know…I’ve been called that before.
Maybe I watch too much scare-television or maybe I read too many “outbreak” novels. Maybe it’s because up here at the head of the draw we aren’t continuously exposed to nasty viruses. And maybe it’s because I feel too readily the global nature of our modern lives; one minute you’re in Mexico City, eight hours later you’re anywhere in the world.
Undoubtedly, a nightmare pandemic will happen because historically influenza pandemics of varying severity occur at 20-40 year intervals. In 2004, one World Health Organization director described an influenza pandemic as “inevitable.” Don’t worry, though, and don’t be scared because that might weaken your immune system. But don’t cough, don’t sneeze and wipe your nose. Then go wash your hands.
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