The influenza virus was first isolated in 1933 giving rise to a new era in which all of humanity could be protected from one of the worlds most prolific killers. Lasting from February 1918 to April 1920 it infected 500 million people about a third of the worlds population at the time in four successive waves.
10 Facts About The Greatest Pandemic In History People Still Get
The conditions of World War I overcrowding and global troop movement helped the 1918 flu spread.
How did the flu start. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. In a flu pandemic these actions may include personal preventive measures such as hand hygiene. It originates actually among birds and other animals such as pigs and new viral strains of influenza come to this country and to Europe from Southeast Asia.
The jackpot events in influenza evolution occur when two different types of flu viruses happen to get into an animal cell at the same time swapping entire chromosomes to create reassorted. In the United States it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. Flu season is an annually recurring time period characterized by the prevalence of an outbreak of influenza.
The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. The H3N2 subtype causes the. An outbreak of Zika virus began in 2015 and strongly intensified throughout the start of 2016 with more than 15 million cases across more than a dozen countries in the Americas.
The Spanish flu also known as the 1918 influenza pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. While the beginning of major flu activity in each season varies by location in any specific location these minor. The vulnerability of healthy young adults and the lack of vaccines and treatments created a major public health crisis causing at least 50 million deaths worldwide including approximately 675000 in the United States.
CDC believes that this. The World Health Organization warned that Zika had the potential to become an explosive. The flu did not originate in Spain but that is where it was first widely publicized.
Their vaccine uses fertilized chicken eggs in a method that is still used to produce most flu vaccines today. It was caused by a virus known as influenza A subtype H2N2 shown at right a mixed strain many scientists believe originated from a combination of bird the Spanish flu pandemic was caused by a virus that developed from an avian source and human flu viruses. The flu spreads several ways.
Influenza activity can sometimes be predicted and even tracked geographically. Just before the outbreak And presumably the rapid growth of the disease began there is a sudden bout of The Flu. The Asian flu swept the world in 1957 the Hong Kong flu in 1968 and in 1976 the swine flu looked enough like the 1918 virus that President Ford ordered the inoculation of the entire US.
The Army is involved with this research because of their experience with troop. Thomas Francis Jr MD and Jonas Salk MD serve as lead researchers at the University of Michigan to develop the first inactivated flu vaccine with support from the US. Here is our connection.
The new H1N1 virus was first identified in April 2009 after a rash of outbreaks in Mexico and the. The origins of the deadly flu disease were unknown but widely speculated upon. This breakthrough changed thinking about influenza as previously the consensus was that the flu was caused by a bacterium known as Haemophilus Influenzae.
They evolve just enough to evade human immune systems but not enough to develop into completely new versions of the virus. Through airborne coughs or sneezes through touching contaminated surfaces like doorknobs or keyboards through contact like handshakes or hugs and from saliva shared. This virus was originally referred to as swine flu because laboratory testing showed that its gene segments were similar to influenza viruses that were most recently identified in and known to circulate among pigs.
Some of the allies thought of the epidemic as a biological warfare tool of the Germans. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. The season occurs during the cold half of the year in each hemisphere.
These viruses spread seasonally each year because of a phenomenon known as antigenic drift. Numerous nations that were involved in World War I at that time intentionally did not mention the flu. The 2009 H1N1 influenza virus referred to as swine flu early on was first detected in people in the United States in April 2009.
A national campaign began using the ready rhetoric of war to fight the new enemy of. Many thought it was a result of the trench warfare the use of mustard gases and the generated smoke and fumes of the war. It was also known that from time to time flu viruses could infect pigs and of course humans and that wild flu viruses circulated in migratory waterfowl.
Where Did The Swine Flu Come From.
