Fascinating Facts about Influenza

Here are some interesting facts about the influenza virus and how it has affected the world.

• The word influenza is traced to a 1743 outbreak of disease in Italy that people attributed to the “influence” of the stars—astrology, in other words. The name was applied to a range of fever-inducing contagious illnesses, including scarlet fever. The French term for the disease was the grippe.
• It’s possible that the 1918 H1N1 virus first cropped up not in Spain but in a military camp in Kansas in the United States. The camp’s pigs suffered from a swine flu that they passed onto the troops stationed there, who were sent overseas to Europe to fight during World War I.
• The classic novels Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter and Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe were born of the authors’ experiences during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
• Although the first virus was identified in 1899 by Walter Reed (the yellow fever virus), the influenza virus wasn’t located until the 1930s.
• In February 1976 a healthy 18-year-old soldier named David Lewis became suddenly ill and died at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in the United States. Test results showed Lewis and a few others who recovered had swine flu, even though none of them had been around pigs. Health officials in the United States and some other countries feared a repeat of the 1918 pandemic and manufactured millions of swine flu vaccines at great expense. It was a false alarm. The swine flu remained confined to Fort Dix. People who came down with illnesses that they attributed to the vaccines launched a volley of lawsuits, fomenting years of public mistrust of flu vaccines.
• New flu strains tend to originate in southern China, where people, pigs, and domesticated ducks share rice fields.
• Pigs are usually the source of genetic reassortment because their bodies can accommodate both bird flu viruses and human flu viruses.
• The iconic image of a flu outbreak, from the 1918 to the 2009 pandemic, is people wearing white masks. A surgical mask keeps germs in, preventing the wearer from infecting someone else. A respirator mask keeps germs out, protecting the wearer from other people who are infectious.