In early 2009, an outbreak of flu virus in Mexico City sent the media and the local population into a panic over the possibility that a new pandemic flu virus may be emerging within the country. The virus was identified as what was then called the swine flu and has since been renamed H1N1 virus.
Most of the people who were severely affected by the virus in Mexico were young, healthy adults who were between the ages of three and 60. It appeared that no one under the age of three and no one over the age of 60 were as severely affected as others. Following this initial observation researchers were able to determine that those over the age of 60 had been exposed to a similar virus earlier in their life and had been effectively immunized against this particular strain. (1,2)
Apparently, US public health officials did not become aware of the growing outbreak of the H1N1 virus in Mexico until nearly a week after the country began protective measures. At the same time of the apparent outbreak in Mexico City epidemiologists in Southern California were investigating milder cases of the illness. All of this came on the heels of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the issues of bird flu or H5N1 in Asia. Following these events communication between countries had appeared to be more open but in this case the communication was delayed.
Today, the H1N1 flu virus is considered to be a pandemic. The last pandemic was in 1968 when the Hong Kong flu killed approximately one million people around the world. This is compared to the number of deaths caused by the 1918 and 1919 flu virus which numbered over 20 million individuals around the world. Because of the open availability of worldwide travel and closed air systems used in air flight, the virus is more easily spread from country to country than it once was.
However, scientists and researchers have also discovered new ways of supporting an individual’s body through severe cases of flu and anticipate that the number of deaths will be significantly less than they were during the 1968 pandemic.
Resources:
(1) ConsumerReports.org: Adults Over May Have Protection Against Swine Flu
(2) Center for Disease Control and Prevention: Serum Cross-Reactive Antibody Response to a Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus After Vaccination with Seasonal Influenza Vaccine
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5819a1.htm
(3) University of Oxford: Swine Flu Origins Revealed
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090613063849.htm
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