# 2352
With somewhere around 50 million deaths worldwide, and 675,000 fatalities just in the United States, the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 is hard to describe as anything but horrific.
But evidence is emerging that it could have been worse.
That during the Spring of 1918, a milder version of the virus affected millions of people, killing very few of them. Of those infected, the vast majority picked up immunity against the killer flu that was to come in the fall.
Had a mild wave not come first, millions more would likely have died in the fall of 1918.
Robert Roos of CIDRAP gives us a detailed look at this study, along with comments from a variety of researchers and epidemiologists including Dr. Michael Osterholm.
I've just printed the opening paragraphs to what is a lengthy, but important article. It is well worth your time to follow the link to read the entire article.
Study: First flu wave in 1918 was vaccine for some
Robert Roos
News Editor
Oct 2, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – In the influenza pandemic of 1918, those who got sick in the first wave of illness were up to 94% less likely to fall ill when the second and much more severe wave struck, according to a new analysis of historical data.
The authors, led by historian John M. Barry, sifted data mostly from US Army camps, along with some from the British navy and British cities, to conclude that infection in the first wave acted like a vaccine, conferring immunity that protected people when the second wave arrived. Barry wrote the 2004 book The Great Influenza, a chronicle of the pandemic.
Their analysis "strongly points to cross-protection between outbreaks of respiratory illness during spring and early summer of 1918 and the influenza pandemic wave in the fall of 1918. The cross-protection effect was estimated to range from 35% to 94% for clinical illness and from 56% to 89% for mortality," says the report, published online by the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The authors say their findings suggest that when novel flu viruses emerge and initially cause a mild wave of illness, public health authorities should think twice before taking aggressive steps to limit exposure, since people infected with the virus might benefit later on if the virus grows more virulent and triggers another wave of cases.
Besides Barry, the authors are Cecile Viboud of the Fogarty International Center in Bethesda, Md., and Lone Simonsen of George Washington University in Washington, DC.
<snip>
Barry JM, Viboud C, Simonsen L. Cross-protection between successive waves of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic: epidemiological evidence from US Army camps and from Britain. J Infect Dis 2008 Nov 15;198 (early online publication) [Abstract]
