According to a new study by the World Health Organization (WHO), the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic may have been responsible for up to 203,000 deaths. When deaths due to flu-related complications such as cardiac and respiratory issues are added in, the total could go up to nearly 400,000 fatalities. This is a steep rise from the original laboratory reported number of deaths of 18,449. While this flu pandemic was nowhere near as lethal as other strains of the virus, particularly that seen during the 1918-1919 flu season that resulted in over 50 million global deaths, the impact of the 2009 flu pandemic now stands at 10 times the original estimate. Moreover, the new study demonstrated that the infection and death rates varied greatly based on demographics and geography.

Indeed, one of the key take home points of the new study is that even a global pandemic can have great heterogeneity in terms of its deadly impact. For example, the Americas were impacted much more heavily than Europe or Australia, causing great difficulty for the WHO as it tried to craft a global response. Indeed, the impact of the disease varied greatly even within regions; for example, Argentina was hit very hard, while the impact in Chile was far less. Some have proposed that exposure to past disease strains that were similar to the 2009 strain may have had a preventative effect, whereby past exposure almost acted like a vaccine to the new disease. Most experts agree that quality of care was not a sufficient explanation for differences in impact, but the disease was more deadly in countries in which it peaked during cold weather months.

Additionally, the 2009 pandemic took an especially heavy toll on children, young adults, and pregnant women. Approximately, 80% of deaths from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic were in people younger than 65 years old, a sharp contrast to the typical influenza epidemic in which 80-90% of deaths occur in people over 65. Therefore, in terms of years-of-life-lost, the 2009 pandemic had a much greater impact than a typical flu season.
In short, experts are still trying to determine the exact reasons the disease took a deadly toll on certain regions and age groups. However, the additional data will be integral to improving public health response to future pandemics and to build out better influenza monitoring systems that take these key variations in disease impact into account.

In the United States, the flu season tends to begin in October and can continue into the springtime. If the news about the high death toll from the 2009 pandemic has concerned you, remember that it is not too late to get your flu shot, the best preventative measure you can take.

Sources
https://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/26/247379604/2009-flu-pandemic-was-10-times-more-deadly-than-previously-thought
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/27/health/who-revises-estimate-of-swine-flu-deaths.html?hpw&rref=health&_r=3&
https://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001558

Imagine sending your daughter off to school, but she never comes home. That is what happened to Grace Nye, a mother from Toppenish, Washington, in October of 1918. A letter to her from her daughter’s headmaster reads as follows:

“Absolutely everything possible was done in the way of medical care and nursing. The sick was never left alone for one minute, someone was administering to their needs and looking after them and I want you to feel that in this sickness that your daughter has had as good attention as she possibly could have had in any hospital or home.”

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Influenza dates back approximately 2,400 years.

First mentions of the virus stretch to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. He was first person to accurately describe the virus’s symptoms, which mirrored any other respiratory infection.

As the virus spread, there was a need to name the illness.

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Measles is, without a doubt, a fairly scary virus. In 2014, there were just under 200,000 measles cases confirmed by the World Health Organization across the world. That number is about 92 percent less than where it was in 1980, when 2.6 million cases were reported. This decline is attributed to one thing: measles vaccination.

The WHO, Centers for Disease Control, and medical organizations all around the world plead with parents asking them to get their children vaccinated to avoid measles and other deadly diseases. However, despite numerous studies showing that vaccines are safe, some individuals claim that vaccination is unsafe and can cause serious side effects. These voices are generally loud, and involve many Hollywood stars who receive significant international attention despite espousing often ill-informed beliefs.

But, there are some famous and well known individuals who have touching and important stories about the safety and importance of vaccines, beliefs backed by literally hundreds of studies proving that vaccines not only work, but have few to no harmful side effects and will save lives.

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Today, few question the legitimacy of a vaccination. Even fewer people consider a time when vaccinations were completely nonexistent. It is bizarre to think we owe our thanks to a cow, a dairymaid, an eight-year old boy, and the doctor who made a connection between them all.

People refer to Dr. Edward Jenner as “the father of immunology”. Immunization was not new, but Jenner was the first to study and document vaccination use. His curious experiment has saved an innumerable amount of human lives.

Smallpox was the greatest killer of Jenner’s time. In its most common form, the virus killed about 30% of those who caught it. It was the most feared disease that reached every part of society – even royalty suffered from it.

Smallpox is a virus that causes flu-like symptoms later accompanied by raised pink spots that grow over time. The spots cover the entire body. If the victim recovers, the blisters will shrivel up and fall off. They often leave behind sunken scars.

A similar but far less deadly disease than smallpox, is cowpox. This virus, which originates from cows, can transfer from animals to humans. It wasn’t uncommon for dairymaids to experience the mild infection. They would feel run down for a couple of days and develop some pocks, usually on their hands. Other than this, the sickness was harmless and did not cause any concern.

At the young age of thirteen, Jenner was an apprentice to a country surgeon. During his apprenticeship he overheard a dairymaid working nearby say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face.”

Jenner took note of dairymaids’ natural immunity to smallpox. Many believed that those who had contracted cowpox were immune to smallpox.

Years later in 1796, a dairymaid consulted Jenner about a rash on her hand. Seeing the mildness of the infection, he diagnosed her with cowpox. She later verified to him that one of the cows she was working with recently had cowpox. Jenner saw this as his golden opportunity to prove the disease’s protection from smallpox.

To test his hypothesis, Jenner needed someone who never contracted cowpox or smallpox before. His gardener’s eight-year old son served as a perfect candidate. Jenner collected drops of fluid from the sores on the dairymaid’s hands and injected a small amount into the healthy boy’s arm. The boy became mildly ill with the cowpox infection, but recovered about a week later.

Two months later, Jenner injected some fluid from a smallpox sore into the young boy. As Jenner expected, the boy never became sick. To confirm his findings, Jenner continued to test the boy’s immunity. Hi various experiments all proved his hypothesis correct.

Jenner soon coined the word “vaccination”, of which the root word is derived from the Latin word “vacca”, meaning cow. Jenner published his research and discoveries, excited to share his success with the world.

Despite the success of Jenner’s techniques and findings, he faced opposition from others in the medical field. One criticizism was that cowpox wasn’t common. It was usually found in rural areas with farms having cows and dairymaids. This meant many doctors would have to get the vaccine from Jenner.

Edward Jenner continued to attempt to win approval as well as spread his new vaccine to the world. He came up with new, easy ways to have the cowpox matter widely transported. He was successful in his commitment to his scientific discovery.

Jenner’s work helped eradicate smallpox. Samples of the virus only exists in two labs permitted and trusted to secure it.

Jenner himself laid the foundation of vaccination as we know it today.

To learn more about the various vaccines that have been made since Jenner’s development, see our main vaccinations page.

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How do you feel about Dr. Edward Jenner’s experiments? If you were living during his time, would you agree with his testing on an eight-year old boy? Leave your comments below, on Facebook, or via Twitter.