Alarm Over Possible Epidemic

Police in Seattle Washington during the Great Influenza of 1918

An emergency hospital for influenza victims in 1918

Major news and media outlets are reporting that alarms are sounding in government and major health related agencies over a serious outbreak of Swine Flu in Mexico. The Center for Disease Control has actually uttered the rarely used word "pandemic"* in describing how seriously this is being treated. As I type reports are now coming in of confirmed outbreaks in California, Texas, Kansas and New York City. There are reports of suspected but as yet unconfirmed outbreaks in Minnesota and Massachusetts.

Mexican health officials are reporting at least 1000 confirmed cases with an unknown number of suspected cases. They also are reporting about 70 confirmed fatalities. Mexico is moving aggressively to curb the spread of the disease by closing public schools, theaters and night clubs in the capitol.

Coincidentally the reported symptoms closely approximate what I was sick with during most of Great & Holy Week. I seriously doubt it was the swine flu. But it was certainly enough to make me miserable and cause me to miss most of the services that week.

*Pandemic is a term that refers to a worldwide epidemic. There were three pandemics in the last century, the most recent one being in 1968. That was a relatively mild one with an extremely low mortality rate. The 1957 outbreak, although more severe than the 1968, was still relatively moderate in severity.

The most serious by far was the Influenza of 1918 which killed about 50 million people in roughly six months worldwide. In the United States between September 1918 and November of that year approximately 700,000 people died. The spread of the lethal disease was facilitated by the mass mobilization of the armed forces and the general population for the First World War and efforts by the Wilson Administration to suppress any public alarm over the disease. More than ten times more Americans died from the influenza (mostly in those three months) than from combat related injuries in the front lines during our entire involvement in the World War.

Oddly, what could be fairly described as one of the greatest and most catastrophic events in modern history has garnered relatively little attention among historians.