New cases of swine flu continue to emerge around the globe, from Ohio to Nova Scotia to New Zealand. The declaration of a "public health emergency" in the United States has further stoked fears and confusion.
The inevitable question arises: Is this the big one? Is this the next big global flu epidemic that public health experts have long anticipated and worried about? Is this the novel virus that will kill millions around the world like the infamous 'Spanish Flu' of 1918 (See Wikipedia article here)
The short answer is it's too soon to tell.
This is a new virus so there's no natural immunity. It has the potential to spread very widely. That's what raises worries about a possible pandemic. Every epidemic has its own behavior. There's really no way of predicting. This could really just fade out or it could become very serious. There have been false alarms before. In 1976 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J., became sick with an unusual form of swine flu. Federal officials vaccinated 40 million Americans. But, the pandemic never materialized. To this day, health officials don't know why the 1976 virus petered out.
The people who died in Mexico are young, healthy people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. That's a big deal. More disturbing, this virus seems to spread among people fairly easily. The 1918 pandemic began with a wave of mild illness that hit in the spring of 1918, followed by a far deadlier wave in the fall which was most lethal to young, healthy adults. Scientists have speculated that something happened to the virus after the first wave — one theory held that it infected pigs or other animals and mutated there — before revisiting humans in a deadlier form.
This outbreak of Swine Flu is certainly cause for concern but not alarm. The warmer temperatures of summer should halt the spread of the virus. The virus might return in winter but scientists should have vaccines and medicines to combat the virus by then.
Visit the website of the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) here
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