History lesson, H1N1 version

The spread of H1N1 flu - or swine flu - continues throughout North America. As of this writing, New York City has confirmed 201 cases of the flu, including one fatality, and has closed 30 schools. Closer to our base of operations, Boston has closed four schools, including Boston Latin, the city's largest.

One question that seems to come up repeatedly is the likelihood of future outbreaks, and how severe they're likely to be. To get some historical perspective, we turned to Andrew Price-Smith, who teaches political and environmental science at Colorado College and is the author of The Health of Nations and Contagion and Chaos. The latter book deals in some detail with the 1918 outbreak of H1N1 - the so-called "Spanish flu" pandemic - and its destabilizing effects. Andrew's main message was to beware of talking heads who don't know their history. Here's what he sent us:

It is troubling to see the parade of quasi-ignorant MD’s as talking heads on CNN, Fox and other cable news since the H1N1 epidemic began in North America. Getting the history of pandemic influenza wrong seems to be a prerequisite for air time in the USA these days. Few public health historians are ever given air time to discuss the actual historical patterns of the 1918 influenza.  The platitudes offered by the talking heads include the usual (paraphrasing here) “well it’s the end of regular flu season, so we only have to worry about a second wave in the Fall.”

Wrong. Anyone who has ever studied the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic knows that the pandemic took the form of three viral waves with the first appearing in the Spring of 1918 in the USA. (Although I have published Austrian data that suggests the flu may have originated in Vienna and environs in the Spring of 1917). The ‘second’ wave of the pandemic struck Europe and North America in the mid summer of 1918, and the ‘third’ and deadliest wave hit Central Europe in the Fall of 1918.

That pandemic was also generated by an H1N1 variant that exhibited some similarity to the current strain. So, if history serves as a guide, it is reasonable to suggest that we might see another viral wave hit this summer, with greater intensity.

Let’s try to get some real experts in the media to discuss the implications of this emerging virus.