So we are on the threshold of a “pandemic”?

Several students from the King’s-Edgehill private school in Windsor, Nova Scotia brought Swine Flu home as souvenirs of a visit to Mexico, resulting in media focus on them as Canada’s first group of victims. Word now is that these students have mainly worked their way through this, as they normally would with “The Flu”, though, again like normal flu, there has been spread to others.

I have to feel things are a little over the top with “Swine Flu”, now officially dubbed H1N1– a wonderful name for the man on the street to remember. This Influenza is another strain of Influenza-A virus. Health officials in nations all over the world have been threatening us for the last decade with horror stories of “pandemics”, and no doubt they are now excited about having something to act on. The “pandemic” term refers to the spread of the virus into a number of countries, unlike an “epidemic” that might be restricted to only one area.

There is no doubt that this strain of flu will cause a lot of trouble, but like most disease situations, the excessive deaths will occur if it gets running in poorer countries where people are weakened by malnutrition and health facilities are limited. We need to be worried about that, but media efforts to spin this for North Americans into a creeping cloud of death worthy of a blockbuster movie are hopefully excessive.

This is the flu, people. The symptoms are the usual influenza symptoms, the course runs as typical influenza does, and in a few days most people successfully recover. Like any strain of influenza, there are people at risk: babies with underdeveloped immune systems, the elderly, those with contributing medical conditions, and those whose immune systems are weakened. There are possibilities of this affecting healthy people more than the normal Flu, as did the 1918 Spanish Flu (healthy people produced an immune reaction that was more dangerous than helpful in the lungs), but judging from the King’s-Edgehill experience, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

In the US, the first death due to “H1N1” occurred yesterday, a small child from Mexico. No doubt in the next weeks, counts of deaths from H1N1 will be displayed in US and Canadian newspapers and on TV, raising our fears that something terrible is being unleashed on us.

Part of the stronger than usual public reaction to this outbreak comes from the fact that we expect Influenza in January and February, but we are not used to it landing in April and May. One TV commentator this morning indicated that had it landed in February, we might well have dubbed it “Mexican Flu”, and put up with it as the usual winter trouble, without raising undue attention.

If it kills a thousand people in the US over the next month or so, no doubt the newspapers will have a running tally in three-inch black letters on front pages. Scarey stuff. Hide in your basement.

But how does normal Influenza do? The usual death toll in the US from a normal winter of “normal” Influenza— would you believe thirty-six THOUSAND deaths?

And the poor pig farmers… as if they didn’t have enough trouble promoting pork, they get the label of “Swine Flu” stuck on the virus. Suddenly poorly informed people won’t go near a pork chop with a ten-foot fork. Egypt has apparently ordered the slaughter of all 300,000+ the pigs in the country. But you can’t catch the disease from pork! It just happens to be a combination of a human strain with a fairly common influenza virus that is usually restricted to pigs. The combination has allowed this “swine flavored” virus to spread to humans, much like the Avian Flu was a bird strain that modified.

How have we done with pandemics in the past? Some of the older ones were terrible, no question. The worst situation was the Spanish Flu of 1918, still talked about in Canada as a horror story, particularly in sections of Quebec. That pandemic took 40 million lives (some reports say 50 to 100 million— exact numbers are difficult to get, particularly at that time), 2% of the world population at the time. The Asian Flu of 1959 was the next Influenza pandemic, and took just under 4 million lives. In 1968 the Hong Kong Flu was fatal for under a million people. Canada was a disease area for SARS in 2003, though much of the disease spread in Asian nations. SARS was not Influenza, but closely related. It took only 800 lives. The last Influenza considered pandemic was the Avian Flu of 2006, which took only 250 lives. Obviously with dramatic improvements in health care, if H1N1 continues to behave as a reasonably typical Influenza, it will certainly not duplicate the situation of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

It’s good that our health system is responding to this current strain; I wouldn’t have it any other way. Much of the “over the top” aspect of this situation, as anticipated, lies with the media… “Impending Pandemic” has been a useful news story over the last few years, to the point where we expect to see grey-bearded prophets walking the streets with sandwich board messages: “The Pandemic is Coming!! — Repent!” Warnings of our being destroyed by an asteroid hit (infinitesimal odds) gradually faded with the film Armageddon, so they needed something new to plump the ratings.

I certainly hope that H1N1 runs its course over the next month or so, and that it can be stopped from spread into third world nations where it might do serious damage.

For the rest of us– the Flu is about! Protect yourself. Wash your hands. Sneeze into your elbow. Stay away from other people’s elbows. And if we ever get the impending election in Nova Scotia– shake hands with politicians at your peril (sorry– that was always the case). And if you are out for the vote, don’t kiss babies with runny noses.
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