In 2009, a swine flu pandemic broke out involving a new strain of the H1N1 flu virus. This virus was especially scary as barely any younger people had immunity to it, although over 33% of those over 60 did because of exposure to other similar viruses in their life. In total, there were over 61 million cases, 280,000 hospitalizations, and over 12,000 deaths from the virus in America. In April of 2009, the World Health Organization declared the first-ever public health emergency of international concern, since the new virus was spreading quickly. Later in June, it was declared a pandemic. Similar to the flu, the virus gave symptoms such as headaches, sore throats, and fatigue; however, in serious cases, patients could have significant problems onset only a few days after the initial symptoms. One of these significant problems was respiratory failure.
However, what was remarkable was the response to the virus. After only nine days after the detection of the virus, the CDC had genetic sequences of the virus and posted them to public databases, which allowed for the rapid development of a vaccine. Furthermore, the swine flu was declared a public health emergency only eleven days after the first confirmed case in the US. Additionally, throughout the country labs had CDC tests that allowed for the diagnosis of the disease. These testing kits were available for all states in May. Later that same year, in November, vaccines were starting to be distributed throughout the country. With these vaccines, the cases began to taper off and the next year it was not a problem anymore. However, the virus was not without its controversies. In 2010, one of the WHO’s top flu expert said that the organization did not communicate well, and led to confusion and the belief that the virus was much more deadly than it actually turned out to be. Additionally, the British Medical Journal published an editorial showing that an investigation of WHO found that some of the experts who were advising WHO had financial ties with drug companies that were producing the vaccines and treatments for the virus.
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I feel that this is especially relevant during the current state of the world. Another notable outbreak that has taken place in recent years is SARS. SARS, which stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome, began in 2002 and lasted until 2004. Though it was handled quickly, with only 8 official cases in the United States, it infected about 8,000 and claimed nearly 800 lives over its course. The CDC and the WHO partnered up to control the outbreak, and fortunately, no known transmissions have been reported since 2004.
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https://www.healthline.com/health-news/has-anything-changed-since-the-2003-sars-outbreak#New-genetic-technologies
https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html
https://www.who.int/ith/diseases/sars/en/
While most of us were probably too young to truly experience this pandemic, reading you blog post was very informational because I did not know much about the swine flu pandemic. I liked how you explained the solutions to this problem such as the development of test kits and eventually vaccines. As you stated, vaccines developed in November, however, because it wasn't available until this late, the second wave of illnesses and deaths had already passed and the cases had already begun declining. As a result, people felt that a vaccine needed to be developed faster and more efficiently or that other precautions were put in place.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.biospace.com/article/2009-h1n1-pandemic-versus-the-2020-coronavirus-pandemic/