What is the history of how swine flu spreads from person-to-person?
In 1976, an army recruit from Fort Dix in New Jersey experienced flu-like symptoms and died one day later from was later determined by the government to be a strain of influenza called the swine flu. This strain was closely related to the strain involved in the 1918 pandemic. Alarmed officials began an immunization efforts for the US population and approximately 40 million Americans were immunized against influenza. The efforts were halted within months after several elderly persons died and several hundred cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS – an autoimmune disease that can cause paralysis and even death) were reported. It is believed that these incidences were related to the governments push for rapid vaccinations nationwide. In September 1988, a previously healthy 32-year-old pregnant woman was hospitalized for pneumonia and died 8 days later. A swine H1N1 flu virus was detected. Four days before getting sick, the patient visited a county fair swine exhibition where there was wide
