Are Influenza Preparations Justifiable?
May 05, 2009 in Public Health
Egypt decided to slaughter all of their nation’s 300,000 pigs, President Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion for flu preparedness, and China herded and quarantined 70 healthy Mexican nationals. But why? Is all the fear and preparation justifiable?
The initial numbers seemed to suggest so as reports highlighted the deaths in relation to the relatively few confirmed cases. But we now know that this new influenza A/H1N1 strain is currently no more deadly than the normal seasonal flu. As the hype is starting to wear down the focus in the media is switching from new infections to speculations regarding how the virus could change.
Influenza is a volatile virus. Its genes change rapidly through regular mutations. And when two different influenza strains infect the same host, they can swap and borrow bits of genetic material. This process, known as reassortment, compounds influenza’s unpredictability.
Sometimes reassortments led to new pandemics. It is possible that reassortment enables flu viruses to escape the immune system so well that they can make people sicker and spread faster to new hosts.
Reassortment also played a big role in the emergence of the current swine flu. Its genes come from several ancestors, which mainly infected pigs.
-New York Times, “10 Genes, Furiously Evolving”
When the reassortment occurs between two strains already endemic in the human population, the results tend to be less than extraordinary. But when unlike strains come together, just as bird, pig, and human strains formed the 1918 Spanish flu, the result can be extremely virulent.
So it’s a fair question to ask: what if this new strain of influenza A/H1N1 becomes more deadly? Even though there have only been 1490 confirmed cases and 30 deaths globally (WHO, 5 May 2009), governments continue preparations as if a deadly outbreak were imminent.
Should the outbreak take a turn for the worse, any government taking a more conservative stand would be hard pressed to justify any inaction. Erring on the side of caution, governments more readily hedge their bets.
Will this new influenza A/H1N1 virus become more deadly? It seems unlikely, but certainty tends to be a luxury of hindsight.
May 5th, 2009 on 10:54 pm
This debate should not be presented as a chicken or egg type of problem. That is, was the excessive attention, media coverage, and governmental actions all a bunch of overblown hooey, or were these measures what prevented a more catastrophic outbreak? These are false choices, and indeed there is a middle ground.
First, we have to give credit to the press coverage that was (is) intellectually honest and well intentioned. For example, presenting constant updates from the WHO, CDC, and other professional health officials. We need to be inundated with this type of information.
At the same time we have to call much of what happened exactly what it is: FEAR MONGERING. Inaccurate reports of confirmed cases and casualties, irrational comparisons to past epidemics, and calls for steps that are simply illogical, i.e. the pig slaughter in Egypt do not help anyone.
This type of bogus stuff will eventually end up creating a boy cried wolf situation, in which we will no longer trust the information being provided and end up suffering as a result.
Clear headed sanity, that is all I ask!
May 6th, 2009 on 10:39 pm
As individuals, we have the luxury of shrugging off potential threats that seem to have little chance of affecting us. However, as to not risk losing voter approval, governments have to react accordingly and ‘prepare’ in response to the fear running rampant in the population.
“This type of bogus stuff will eventually end up creating a boy cried wolf situation, in which we will no longer trust the information being provided and end up suffering as a result.”
And with this I completely agree. The media constantly hyping up every minor outbreak will do nothing but dull the reaction the public has during any serious future outbreak.
When their business model revolves around building hype to draw readers, one has to wonder if there is even much of an economic incentive for presenting the ‘clear headed sanity’. I just hope that the CDC and WHO learn to shout over and drown out the mass media during future incidents.