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The history of
the swine flu |
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Swine flu is not the same as other kinds of
disease. Swine or pigs, have different abilities in the way they handle
invading viruses. When a pig conrtacts a flu from another species,
human or bird, the pig's biology is able to provide a way for the virus
to recombine and emerge in a new drug-resistant avatar.
The flu is a familiar disease to the human species; it has always been
a controllable disease except in certain notable epidemics and
pandemics.
The Spanish Swine Flu
For an year starting in 1918, this influenza strain infected what is
thought to be one in three people on earth. It may have caused tens of
millions of deaths according to the CDC. In the year 1918, antibiotics
had not yet been discovered, and the secrets of the influenza disease
and its relationship to similar diseases in pigs were not known. Every
flu attack that has pursued mankind ever since, has been some kind of
derivative of that Spanish flu. The Spanish flu virus in turn
originates from a still more ancient strain, from the epidemics of 1847
according to research done in 1930.
The Swine Flu Epidemic of 1976
in 1976, army recruits in New Jersey were hospitalized, and some died,
of a disease that was later discovered to be swine flu. The
1976 strain
was found to be a close relation to the 1918 strain. The government
tried to step in with large-scale vaccination drives. The population
though, reacted to the vaccine more than it did to the influenza going
around. About two dozen people died from pulmonary problems and from
immune system reactions to the vaccines.
Today's Swine Flu
The year 2007 saw the swine flu outbreak in the Philippines. When the
disease was seen to spread around areas that had farms, the government
raised an alert for the entire region, for farming communities. The
strain found in today's outbreak is a virus seen in pigs in the US for
the last 10 years, though it has never made the mutation to infect
humans successfully with. There are similarities that this virus shares
with viruses found in European pigs. There is a belief that the
European and North American viruses combined in Mexico when migratory
birds from those continents arrived in certain seasons.
It is becoming clear today that the US has no system in place that
keeps tabs on all the different organisms that are found in animals
raised for slaughter today. This needs to change.
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