A Drizzle Or A Storm

I am ironically in the middle of a thick book about the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, as we sit here in the hazy early stages of what will either be another pandemic or a fizzled-out close call with another H1N1 variant.

The influenza virus is a masterwork of evolution. It's a rapidly-evolving RNA virus that can recombine and mutate so fast that no two people truly have the "same" flu. It's this rapid churning that keeps the flu one step ahead of our immune systems at every point, and requires new vaccines every year. It's why you never retain immunity to the Flu like you do for Measles and Chicken Pox.

Many people die of conventional flu strains every year, but what makes this 2009 strain different is that it is a new one, never seen before in humans. Very few people will therefore have immunity to it. And that is when the flu virus can really take off. And worse, the strain it most closely resembles is the H1N1 "Spanish Flu".

The 1918 "Spanish Flu"* virus started out fast and mild but by its second wave it was a lethal globe-traveling killer that caused the worst epidemic in human history, worse even than the Black Death. Most estimates say between 50 and 200 million people were killed by this virus in a very short time frame. And death typically came in the form of a terrible acute pneumonia that consolidated in the lungs of its victims, stopping oxygen absorption and turning their skin blue before drowning them alive.

It was widely noted at the time that the 1918 flu strangely wiped out people in the prime of their lives with more ferocity than it did the weak. It is now known that this was because it killed by starting an immune cascade known as a Cytokine Storm, an immune over-reaction that turned healthy immune systems into a liability and spared many infantile and elderly victims its full fury.

Although there is no vaccine for this new flu, we have many tools available to us today that were absent in 1918. From powerful anti-viral drugs to near-instant global communication, to an encyclopedic understanding of the flu, we're much wiser in the ways if infectious disease. And governments around the world are on high alert.

More people will die, for sure. But my hope is that this strain ends in a drizzle and not a storm.

* Incidentally, "Spanish Flu" did not come from Spain, in fact it very likely came from Kansas. But most of the world was in the middle of the Great War and news of anything negative was automatically suppressed by the various governments. Since Spain was neutral in WWI, it's press was wide open and flu news reports were readily available, so most people assumed Spain was the origin. Talk about a bad rap.