David Ozonoff, a doctor and chronic-disease epidemiologist, is a professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Although we’ve been told for a long time to expect another flu pandemic, now that one may be just around the corner many people seem surprised. Pandemics happen, and there have been two in my lifetime — the Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968.
Whether 2009’s swine flu will become another we don’t know. Flu pandemics are caused by variants of the influenza virus which are new and novel to our immune systems, and the current swine flu virus is just such an example. There is no natural immunity to it (that we know of at this moment), it causes human disease (most of the 144 different flu subtypes just infect other animals, like birds), and it appears to be fairly transmissible. If its transmission becomes sustained as more cases are reported (at least four countries have confirmed cases), we may well face a pandemic, the contemporaneous infection of many people in many parts of the world.
So far, the swine flu virus looks clinically like the usual seasonal flu virus. That may reassure some people, but from the public health standpoint, even a serious outbreak of seasonal flu is a major concern.
During the 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics, when there were more staffed hospital beds per capita than now, gurneys were lined up head to toe along hospital corridors.
It’s estimated that seasonal flu kills close to 40,000 people in the U.S. each year. A virus killing at that rate and causing a similar level of hospitalization and absenteeism would put enormous strain on an already teetering medical care, public health and social services system. Most public health services exist at the state and local level, exactly where the economic crisis has hurt government the most. Just when we need them, we are laying off substantial numbers of public health and social service workers.
Hospitals are at the bare minimum of staffed beds and can easily be overwhelmed by even a bad flu season, much less a pandemic. In 1957 and 1968, when there were more staffed hospital beds per capita than now, gurneys where lined up head to toe along university health services and hospital corridors.
It would be worse today. Given this highly plausible, though still uncertain, scenario, there’s clearly reason for worry. So concern is appropriate even as the world health authorities work to gather more facts.
David Ozonoff, a doctor and chronic-disease epidemiologist, is a professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Although we’ve been told for a long time to expect another flu pandemic, now that one may be just around the corner many people seem surprised. Pandemics happen, and there have been two in my lifetime — the Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968.
Whether 2009’s swine flu will become another we don’t know. Flu pandemics are caused by variants of the influenza virus which are new and novel to our immune systems, and the current swine flu virus is just such an example. There is no natural immunity to it (that we know of at this moment), it causes human disease (most of the 144 different flu subtypes just infect other animals, like birds), and it appears to be fairly transmissible. If its transmission becomes sustained as more cases are reported (at least four countries have confirmed cases), we may well face a pandemic, the contemporaneous infection of many people in many parts of the world.
So far, the swine flu virus looks clinically like the usual seasonal flu virus. That may reassure some people, but from the public health standpoint, even a serious outbreak of seasonal flu is a major concern.
During the 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics, when there were more staffed hospital beds per capita than now, gurneys were lined up head to toe along hospital corridors.
It’s estimated that seasonal flu kills close to 40,000 people in the U.S. each year. A virus killing at that rate and causing a similar level of hospitalization and absenteeism would put enormous strain on an already teetering medical care, public health and social services system. Most public health services exist at the state and local level, exactly where the economic crisis has hurt government the most. Just when we need them, we are laying off substantial numbers of public health and social service workers.
Hospitals are at the bare minimum of staffed beds and can easily be overwhelmed by even a bad flu season, much less a pandemic. In 1957 and 1968, when there were more staffed hospital beds per capita than now, gurneys where lined up head to toe along university health services and hospital corridors.
It would be worse today. Given this highly plausible, though still uncertain, scenario, there’s clearly reason for worry. So concern is appropriate even as the world health authorities work to gather more facts.