April 27, 2009, 8:19 pm — Updated: 8:48 pm -->
Swine Flu: A Cause for Panic?
By The Editors
The World Health Organization raised its global alert level for the swine flu on Monday, as Mexican officials reported that the death toll from the outbreak had reached 149. In the United States, the number of people sickened by the virus reached 40 (with 28 in one New York City school), though officials said that none of the cases were serious. Amid travel advisories and health warnings, how worried should Americans be that the disease might turn into a far more serious epidemic?
David Ozonoff, epidemiologist
James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation
Ruth A. Karron and Ruth R. Faden, Johns Hopkins
Alfred W. Crosby Jr., historian
Fewer Resources Now
David Ozonoff, a doctor and chronic-disease epidemiologist, is a professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health:
Although we’ve been told for a long time to expect another flu pandemic, now that one may be just around the corner many people seem surprised. Pandemics happen, and there have been two in my lifetime — the Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968.
Whether 2009’s swine flu will become another we don’t know. Flu pandemics are caused by variants of the influenza virus which are new and novel to our immune systems, and the current swine flu virus is just such an example. There is no natural immunity to it (that we know of at this moment), it causes human disease (most of the 144 different flu subtypes just infect other animals, like birds), and it appears to be fairly transmissible. If its transmission becomes sustained as more cases are reported (at least four countries have confirmed cases), we may well face a pandemic, the contemporaneous infection of many people in many parts of the world.
So far, the swine flu virus looks clinically like the usual seasonal flu virus. That may reassure some people, but from the public health standpoint, even a serious outbreak of seasonal flu is a major concern.
It’s estimated that seasonal flu kills close to 40,000 people in the U.S. each year. A virus killing at that rate and causing a similar level of hospitalization and absenteeism would put enormous strain on an already teetering medical care, public health and social services system. Most public health services exist at the state and local level, exactly where the economic crisis has hurt government the most. Just when we need them, we are laying off substantial numbers of public health and social service workers.
Hospitals are at the bare minimum of staffed beds and can easily be overwhelmed by even a bad flu season, much less a pandemic. In 1957 and 1968, when there were more staffed hospital beds per capita than now, gurneys where lined up head to toe along university health services and hospital corridors.
It would be worse today. Given this highly plausible, though still uncertain, scenario, there’s clearly reason for worry. So concern is appropriate even as the world health authorities work to gather more facts.
Not Close to a Pandemic
James Jay Carafano is a senior research fellow in defense and homeland security at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for foreign policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.
There are some basic facts that Americans ought to know. The first is that the news coverage is driven more by the unusual nature of the disease than how serious it might be. The swine flu appeared at what is normally considered the “end” of the flu season. A flood of cases now is not common.
Second, it is a flu from a strain that normally affects pigs. Popular attention had been fixated in recent years on the threat of mutating bird flu. Americans hadn’t heard much about swine flu in decades. In 1975, a U.S. soldier died of swine flu, fueling fears of an outbreak. A vaccine was rushed out. No pandemic occurred but the vaccine had some bad side effects. The debacle helped sink the re-election chances of President Ford, who had pushed for the vaccination campaign. Since then politicians didn’t like talking about swine flu.
Third, there have been an unexpected number of deaths reported in otherwise “healthy” adults in Mexico. Usually, flu kills only the very old and young or folks with depressed immune systems, like AIDS sufferers.
All these rare facts grab headlines. In addition, news stories play fast and loose with terms like “outbreak,” “epidemic,” and “pandemic.” They are not interchangeable. Each describes an increasing degree of the number of infected and the geographical scope of the infection. We are not close to having a pandemic yet. And if we do it may not be anything like a catastrophe. The disease looks to respond to existing medication.
Finally, the swine flu makes news because we can pin it to a location. But it might be premature to call this the “Mexican” flu, just as it turned out it was wrong to call the 1918 pandemic the “Spanish” flu (which scientists think actually first appeared in Kansas).
The bottom line is we do not have near all the facts yet, and the ones we do have so far say: don’t panic, don’t rush to judgment.
For now we should all just wash our hands and go to the doctor if we have flu symptoms.
Don’t Panic, Prepare
Ruth A. Karron is the director of the Center for Immunization Research and Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Ruth R. Faden is the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.
As the numbers of reported swine flu cases increase, anxiety over the possibility of a pandemic is a natural response.
But now is not the time to panic. Panicking never helps; moreover, it distracts from things we all should be doing to reduce the impact of swine flu on ourselves and on others.
To that end, stay informed and follow evolving guidance from local and national public health authorities. While it’s always important to follow basic hygiene practices, you should also contact a health professional if you or someone in your family develops flu-like symptoms (fever with a cough or sore throat).
Don’t go to school or work while you are ill, and be prepared for the possibility that public health authorities may ask you to stay at home for a period of time to slow the pace by which flu is spread.
Making sure that you have enough food and water at home is good for your family, and may help public authorities provide for those who are unable to do so for themselves.
Details about the severity and numbers of people infected are still coming in, but this is general information that should help with any potential pandemic and will keep us all from panicking.
Infection and Its Aftermath
Alfred W. Crosby Jr. is the author of “America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918.”
Let me offer a few rules and regulations about epidemic influenza:
A truly new flu infection often travels faster than we can devise a pertinent vaccination, mass-produce it, and get it into arms. We have to be ready to deal with the clutter and rubble of our failure.
If the Mexican flu of 2009 is truly bad, we will require cots, blankets, food, shelter, transportation, medical personnel, coffins, etc, now - or even yesterday, if we can manage that. In most pandemics most people die of official ineptitude than of infection.
Swine Flu: A Cause for Panic?
By The Editors
The World Health Organization raised its global alert level for the swine flu on Monday, as Mexican officials reported that the death toll from the outbreak had reached 149. In the United States, the number of people sickened by the virus reached 40 (with 28 in one New York City school), though officials said that none of the cases were serious. Amid travel advisories and health warnings, how worried should Americans be that the disease might turn into a far more serious epidemic?
David Ozonoff, epidemiologist
James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation
Ruth A. Karron and Ruth R. Faden, Johns Hopkins
Alfred W. Crosby Jr., historian
Fewer Resources Now
David Ozonoff, a doctor and chronic-disease epidemiologist, is a professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health:
Although we’ve been told for a long time to expect another flu pandemic, now that one may be just around the corner many people seem surprised. Pandemics happen, and there have been two in my lifetime — the Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968.
Whether 2009’s swine flu will become another we don’t know. Flu pandemics are caused by variants of the influenza virus which are new and novel to our immune systems, and the current swine flu virus is just such an example. There is no natural immunity to it (that we know of at this moment), it causes human disease (most of the 144 different flu subtypes just infect other animals, like birds), and it appears to be fairly transmissible. If its transmission becomes sustained as more cases are reported (at least four countries have confirmed cases), we may well face a pandemic, the contemporaneous infection of many people in many parts of the world.
So far, the swine flu virus looks clinically like the usual seasonal flu virus. That may reassure some people, but from the public health standpoint, even a serious outbreak of seasonal flu is a major concern.
It’s estimated that seasonal flu kills close to 40,000 people in the U.S. each year. A virus killing at that rate and causing a similar level of hospitalization and absenteeism would put enormous strain on an already teetering medical care, public health and social services system. Most public health services exist at the state and local level, exactly where the economic crisis has hurt government the most. Just when we need them, we are laying off substantial numbers of public health and social service workers.
Hospitals are at the bare minimum of staffed beds and can easily be overwhelmed by even a bad flu season, much less a pandemic. In 1957 and 1968, when there were more staffed hospital beds per capita than now, gurneys where lined up head to toe along university health services and hospital corridors.
It would be worse today. Given this highly plausible, though still uncertain, scenario, there’s clearly reason for worry. So concern is appropriate even as the world health authorities work to gather more facts.
Not Close to a Pandemic
James Jay Carafano is a senior research fellow in defense and homeland security at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for foreign policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.
There are some basic facts that Americans ought to know. The first is that the news coverage is driven more by the unusual nature of the disease than how serious it might be. The swine flu appeared at what is normally considered the “end” of the flu season. A flood of cases now is not common.
Second, it is a flu from a strain that normally affects pigs. Popular attention had been fixated in recent years on the threat of mutating bird flu. Americans hadn’t heard much about swine flu in decades. In 1975, a U.S. soldier died of swine flu, fueling fears of an outbreak. A vaccine was rushed out. No pandemic occurred but the vaccine had some bad side effects. The debacle helped sink the re-election chances of President Ford, who had pushed for the vaccination campaign. Since then politicians didn’t like talking about swine flu.
Third, there have been an unexpected number of deaths reported in otherwise “healthy” adults in Mexico. Usually, flu kills only the very old and young or folks with depressed immune systems, like AIDS sufferers.
All these rare facts grab headlines. In addition, news stories play fast and loose with terms like “outbreak,” “epidemic,” and “pandemic.” They are not interchangeable. Each describes an increasing degree of the number of infected and the geographical scope of the infection. We are not close to having a pandemic yet. And if we do it may not be anything like a catastrophe. The disease looks to respond to existing medication.
Finally, the swine flu makes news because we can pin it to a location. But it might be premature to call this the “Mexican” flu, just as it turned out it was wrong to call the 1918 pandemic the “Spanish” flu (which scientists think actually first appeared in Kansas).
The bottom line is we do not have near all the facts yet, and the ones we do have so far say: don’t panic, don’t rush to judgment.
For now we should all just wash our hands and go to the doctor if we have flu symptoms.
Don’t Panic, Prepare
Ruth A. Karron is the director of the Center for Immunization Research and Johns Hopkins Vaccine Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Ruth R. Faden is the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.
As the numbers of reported swine flu cases increase, anxiety over the possibility of a pandemic is a natural response.
But now is not the time to panic. Panicking never helps; moreover, it distracts from things we all should be doing to reduce the impact of swine flu on ourselves and on others.
To that end, stay informed and follow evolving guidance from local and national public health authorities. While it’s always important to follow basic hygiene practices, you should also contact a health professional if you or someone in your family develops flu-like symptoms (fever with a cough or sore throat).
Don’t go to school or work while you are ill, and be prepared for the possibility that public health authorities may ask you to stay at home for a period of time to slow the pace by which flu is spread.
Making sure that you have enough food and water at home is good for your family, and may help public authorities provide for those who are unable to do so for themselves.
Details about the severity and numbers of people infected are still coming in, but this is general information that should help with any potential pandemic and will keep us all from panicking.
Infection and Its Aftermath
Alfred W. Crosby Jr. is the author of “America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918.”
Let me offer a few rules and regulations about epidemic influenza:
A truly new flu infection often travels faster than we can devise a pertinent vaccination, mass-produce it, and get it into arms. We have to be ready to deal with the clutter and rubble of our failure.
If the Mexican flu of 2009 is truly bad, we will require cots, blankets, food, shelter, transportation, medical personnel, coffins, etc, now - or even yesterday, if we can manage that. In most pandemics most people die of official ineptitude than of infection.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario