Tri-City Herald Logo

Talking sense about swine flu in the fall | Tri-City Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Customer Service
    • Archives
    • Buy Photos and Pages
    • Contact Us
    • Mobile & Apps
    • Newsletters
    • Subscribe
    • Subscriber Services

    • News
    • Local News
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Hanford
    • Northwest
    • Nation & World
    • Obituary Listings
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • Health
    • Weird
    • Photos
    • Weather
    • Videos
    • Sports
    • Local Sports
    • Preps
    • Prep Countdown
    • Seattle Seahawks
    • Seattle Mariners
    • Tri-City Americans
    • Tri-City Dust Devils
    • Tri-Cities Fever
    • Hydros
    • Photos
    • Outdoors
    • Blogs
    • College
    • NFL
    • MLB
    • NBA
    • NHL
    • MLS
    • Golf
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Public Records
    • National Business
    • Technology
    • Entertainment
    • Local Arts
    • Celebrity
    • Mr. Movie
    • Movie Times
    • Movie News
    • Music News
    • Calendar
    • Submit Event
    • Puzzles & Games
    • Contests
    • Living
    • Food & Wine
    • Wine Press NW
    • Antique Appraisals
    • Health & Science
    • Home & Garden
    • Light Notes
    • Religion
    • Spiritual Life
    • Births
    • Engagements
    • Weddings
    • Anniversaries
    • Opinion
    • Letters
    • Editorials
    • National
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Submit Letter
    • Guest Columnists
  • Obituaries

  • Classifieds
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Cars
  • Homes
  • Place An Ad

  • About Us
  • Mobile & Apps

Living Columns & Blogs

Talking sense about swine flu in the fall

By E. Kirsten Peters, Special to the Herald

    ORDER REPRINT →

July 15, 2009 10:02 AM

Editor's note: Five drug companies are furiously making H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine for American consumption this fall. Here's the story of the last killer flu year (1918) and how that may relate to H1N1. But, as the column makes clear, plain vanilla influenza (the kind we have each winter) killed oodles more Americans last winter than did H1N1 in the spring.

PULLMAN -- In the spring of 1918, World War I was taking the lives of thousands of men from many nations around the globe.

No one paid much attention when some of them came down with influenza. After getting back on their feet, the troops were once more sent forward to be shelled and shot at.

During the summer of 1918, the flu essentially disappeared from Europe. But it likely moved to the southern hemisphere, and when it bounced back to North America in our fall, the flu had morphed into a killer.

SIGN UP

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Tri-City Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

Physicians were astounded at how quickly the influenza patients sickened and then died. And it wasn’t just the lives of the old and infirm or the very young that were generally lost. The flu added a specialty by killing healthy young adults.

Before it was over, the 1918 influenza killed more people around the world than all the battles of World War I. That’s the kind of assault on society that shapes a whole generation — even if it does so silently and by attrition rather than with bombs and machine gun fire.

Like many people coming of age at the time, my grandmother’s life in 1918 was changed by influenza. She didn’t get sick, but her high school was closed down indefinitely because of the outbreak. She was a working-class girl, so she took a job and moved on without a diploma — which she missed having for the rest of her natural life. Your family may have similar stories — or names written in the family Bible marked “died of flu” in the long school year of 1918-1919.

Most of the influenza strains that scientists fear most emerge from pig or bird hosts. That animal pathway, plus the history of the 1918 flu and lesser epidemics since then, propels scientists and medical personnel to closely follow the swine (H1N1) virus you heard about in the news earlier this year.

I chose not to write about the swine flu in this column last spring because I didn’t care to add to the media hysteria around the outbreak. But in the lull of summer, perhaps we can all regroup and look at some facts before we head into the flu season this fall.

In June, the World Health Organization assigned H1N1 its highest rating, meaning that a global pandemic of swine flu has begun. The virus is alive and well around the world — and will be for some time to come. And cases of H1N1 are being reported in most states of our national union each week, information you can track for yourself from the American Center of Disease Control (CDC).

Links from the CDC site show you the total American cases and the fatality rate for H1N1. As I type these words, the data are about 34,000 American cases and 170 deaths. That’s a death rate of about half a percent.

“Many of those deaths come about in people who also had a complicating factor like lung problems or a compromised immune system,” Dr. Phil Mixter explained to me. Mixter is an immunologist on the faculty of Washington State University.

While 170 deaths are to be regretted, Mixter also put them in context for me when he said that each year about 35,000 to 40,000 Americans die of influenza. The obvious disconnect in how the news media covers different types of influenza seems clear enough to me from those stark figures.

Still, the $64 million question for this fall is whether we will experience what the world did in 1918, with a stronger flu striking the northern hemisphere hard. If so, we’ll have the advantage compared to the old days of anti-viral medications and special flu vaccines aimed at the swine flu infection.

But even if H1N1 becomes much more common than it was this past spring, it’s also worth bearing in mind that plain-vanilla annual influenza could be our greatest adversary. Your common sense for dealing with both types of flu — staying home when ill, washing hands, eating right and getting the flu shot or shots your doc recommends — are the boring but best ways to prepare for whatever comes.

  Comments  

Videos

Watch snow pile up in time-lapse video

Drone view of muddy mess in south Richland

View More Video

Trending Stories

15 restaurants fail latest Tri-Cities inspections

February 17, 2019 06:19 PM

More snow possible in Tri-Cities this week. Travelers may want to stay home

February 18, 2019 05:35 PM

All Tri-Cities Payless shoe stores now closing

February 18, 2019 12:29 PM

Brother attacks brother coming to Richland mom’s rescue

February 18, 2019 12:41 PM

A Tri-Cities public market would be a winner, but where best to put it bedevils Pasco

February 17, 2019 06:37 PM

Read Next

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The December Unit Game

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The December Unit Game

By Tom Edwards, Manager, Richland Duplicate Bridge Club

    ORDER REPRINT →

December 16, 2017 11:39 PM

Dealer: West Vul: None ♠: AJ7 ♥: 63 ♦: JT6542 ♣: Q4

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Tri-City Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE LIVING COLUMNS & BLOGS

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The November Runner-Ups

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The November Runner-Ups

December 09, 2017 06:33 PM
Bridge in the Tri-Cities: Duane Neitzel

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: Duane Neitzel

December 02, 2017 03:49 PM
Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The November Unit Game

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The November Unit Game

November 25, 2017 11:31 PM
Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The DSIP Double

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: The DSIP Double

November 18, 2017 08:54 PM
Bridge in the Tri-Cities: Really Stupid

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: Really Stupid

November 11, 2017 05:17 PM
Bridge in the Tri-Cities: Ladies Night

Living Columns & Blogs

Bridge in the Tri-Cities: Ladies Night

November 04, 2017 04:17 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Tri-City Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
Advertising
  • Digital Solutions
  • Place a Classified
  • Local Deals
  • Contact Us
Copyright
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story