Swine Flu (H1N1) in North America
I heard about this on the radio earlier today, and have now been watching the uptick in interest upon Twitter, and thought I’d capture some of the pages and articles that have been coming up on ‘Swine Flu’ for reference.
Authorities
- US Center for Disease Control – Home page for Swine Flu
- World Health Organisation – Influenza-Like Illness in the United States and Mexico (20090424)
Reference & Maps
- WIkipedia – Swine influenza, the current Mexico and US outbreak
- Google Maps – Swine flu in 2009
- EpidemicFlu.com – Map of confirmed deaths, confirmed cases, and possible cases in Mexico and the US.
- Veratect – a good timeline of what has happened to date.
What is concerning in the WHO press release is this:
The majority of these cases have occurred in otherwise healthy young adults. Influenza normally affects the very young and the very old, but these age groups have not been heavily affected in Mexico.
This is something that occurred in the 1918 pandemic. Here is an excerpt (p.23) from Rice1.
Why was the 1918 flu so deadly? And why did it kill mostly young adults in the prime of life? … Burnet surmised that the high mortality among young adults may have been in direct porportion to their healthiness. Comptempories often remarked on the fact the 1918 flu struck down robust outdoor types more readily than pale unfit weaklings… It may be that the adult body over-reacts to what us usually only a mild illness in children. Burnet suggested that something like this had happened in 1918, that fast-breeding flu viruses triggered a panic reaction in the patient’s immune system, causing massive over-production of antibody, leading to dangerous imbalances in the bloodstream which invited seconday infection.
The fact that the fatalities in Mexico to date have been healthy and young adults should be cause for concern.
- Rice, G. W. (2005). Black November – The 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Canterbury University Press. [↩]