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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 |
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