Is bird flu the only global pandemic threat?
Emergency hospital during Spanish Influenza pandemic 1918, Camp Funston, Kansas
JB: This is Earth & Sky. Health experts are concerned that the H5N1 influenza virus — avian flu — might mutate into a form that could spread easily among humans.
DB: But, although bird flu is much in the news — and though experts say another pandemic is inevitable — it’s not a certainty that the H5N1 bird flu virus will be the one to cause it.
JB: David Fedson is a member of the Pandemic Influenza Task Force at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He explained to Earth & Sky that flu viruses are classified by proteins on their surfaces, called H and N for short.
David Fedson: There’s a chance that the next pandemic could be caused by another influenza virus like an H7 or an H9 and it could even be caused by an H2 virus which was the virus that caused the pandemic in 1957. And if that virus were to somehow infect mankind again, it would find that more than two-thirds of human beings born today are completely susceptible because they have been born since 1968 when the H2 virus disappeared from mankind.
DB: Fedson pointed out that, whether it’s the H5N1 bird flu or another flu virus, one thing is certain.
David Fedson: These viruses didn’t go away. They’re still out there in nature. And if a certain set of events that we can’t predict happen to occur, then we’d find that we had a pandemic on our hands.
JB: We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control describes the three flu pandemics of the 20th Century:
- 1918-19, “Spanish flu,” [A (H1N1)], caused the highest number of known flu deaths: more than 500,000 people died in the United States, and 20 million to 50 million people may have died worldwide. Many people died within the first few days after infection and others died of complications soon after. Nearly half of those who died were young, healthy adults.
- 1957-58, “Asian flu,” [A (H2N2)], caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957.
- 1968-69, “Hong Kong flu,” [A (H3N2)], caused approximately 34,000 deaths in the United States. This virus was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968 and spread to the United States later that year. Type A (H3N2) viruses still circulate today.
Read another Earth & Sky radio report on how an animal flu virus adapts to become a human flu.
More From Dr. Fedson:
David Fedson told Earth & Sky, “If you look at history, you will see that the human race has periodically experienced global pandemics of influenza. This is part of the historical record. There’s nothing from our experience that should give us any reason to think that our DNA is any different from the DNA of people who lived a century or two ago, nor that we have any greater likelihood of surviving on the face of the Earth than an earthworm.”
He added, “People can talk about what the pandemic might be. And some people for whatever reasons want to downplay what its impact might be, they say oh, it’s just not going to happen, modern medicine is better than in 1918 and that was a one off event and other pandemics were milder. Don’t get scared, we don’t want to frighten our population, we don’t want to spend the money. Other people will say, 1918 killed 50 to 100 million people. If we had the same thing occur today, we’d have 175 to 350 million who will die worldwide. And I’ve written that, and that scares people.
“But then think about a virus that kills 50 percent of the people who are infected instead of 5 percent. We could have a billion die. So then you’re really talking numbers.
“The important thing to keep in mind is we don’t know what that number is going to be. But whether it’s 2 million or 1 billion, either way, the preparations for the next pandemic are the same. And those preparations involve doing the very practical research and development necessary to give us the tools to confront the pandemic. And those tools happen to be vaccines, antivirals and other medications.
“And it’s just like a country facing war. What do you do to fight a war? You develop your defense industry. You build tanks and planes and guns and ships. And if you don’t build those things, you’re going to lose the war. And that’s what we have to do. We have to do the kind of research and development necessary to develop the tools to confront a pandemic. And we’ve not been doing a very good job of that so far. To me, that’s one of the big stories.”
Our thanks to:
David Fedson, MD
Pandemic Influenza Task Force
Infectious Diseases Society of America
