Can we learn anything about what’s going on now from the swine flu “epidemic” of 1976?
I believe there is much to be learned from what happened in 1976. Health officials were too quick to assume that we were going to see a repeat of 1918, the so-called Spanish flu epidemic (which killed millions). In 1976, officials pulled the switch too soon and called for mass vaccinations against this particular flu strain. And they did it because they had been convinced by some bad history that there was a great likelihood of a very severe and widespread flu epidemic at that time. As a result of this mass vaccination program, some people died. They died from Guillian-Barre Syndrome (an immune system disorder) and no flu was prevented because there was no outbreak. There was the usual outbreak of garden-variety seasonal influenza but not of the new strain. For me there’s a lesson there. I think responding to flu requires balancing sound public health measures against the need to have some foresight. What happened there was the sound measures were outstripped by the desire to predict i
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