Swine flu FAQs

Didn’t we have swine flu before?

Swine flu has been present for years and commonly infects people who work with pigs. An outbreak at the Fort Dix army base killed and hospitalized soldiers there and led to an ill-fated mass-vaccination campaign under President Ford. An outbreak of swine flu happened in the Philipines in 2007. Although there were tragic deaths it did not lead to millions dying as happened with the flu pandemic at the end of WWI. According to A tale of swine flu from 1977: “The killer never came. The fact that it was feared is one of many things to show how little experts understand the flu, and thus how shaky are the health initiatives launched in its name. What influenza needs, above all, is research.”

Was the new swine flu genetically engineered as a bioweapon?

It is perhaps possible to engineer a virus, but the precursors to this present strain of influenza has been seen in the wild for years and so it would seem highly unlikely that it was synthesised. Is there a lab that could synthesise a whole new viable viral species from combined segments of human, bird, and pig influenza viruses?

But how did porcine, avian, and human viruses get mixed together?

These flu viruses have a segmented genome containing eight pieces of RNA. If two strains infect a single cell their progeny undergo reassortment so that new strains emerge. Pigs are a particularly good biological mixing bowl for flu viruses, it takes just one lucky reassortment that can infect humans to then make the species leap. This has happened several times in the past.

What is WHO doing about the outbreak?

The World Health Organisation will meet in Geneva on Tuesday (April 28) to discuss whether to raise the pandemic alert level. UPDATE: It did and raised to Phase IV (Phase VI is highest). Later it upgraded to Phase V.

Has Europe been affected?

The first case of swine flu has been tested positive in Spain and the European Union is advising citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to Mexico and the USA. Cases in Scotland, Germany and Israel have now been confirmed.

Will a face mask protect me from flu?

Doubtful. If someone is infected and has come into contact, sneezed, or coughed on door handles you touch, food you eat, hands you shake, the mask won’t protect you. What a mask can do is reduce the amount of contaminated droplets of spittle you might spread if you are infected.

What is a pandemic, it sounds scary?

The word pandemic usually refers to the distribution of a disease, in this case H1N1. It simply means an epidemic that has spread beyond a single geographical region to cover all regions within any defined area. WHO says we are the verge of a disease pandemic on a global scale. I.e. an epidemic that is worldwide.

The words pandemic and epidemic have Greek etymology. Pandemic means “pertaining to all people”. “pan” means “all”, “demos” means “people”. The “epi” prefix in epidemic means “among”, so suggesting some kind of localisation.

*Footnote on mortality rates. The often-quoted mortality rate of the 1918-9 pandemic is 2.5%, but most researchers agree that between 50 and 100 million people died during that outbreak. The world population was 1.8 billion at the time, so wouldn’t the overall world mortality rate have been between 3 and 5%, not 2.5%?