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Updated Friday, December 18, 2009 10:11 am TWN, By Professor James Chin, Special to The China Post

Downgrading the 2009 H1N1 scare

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Although the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic appears to have peaked, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the top flu expert of the World Health Organization (WHO), recently said a third wave could still be ahead. Third wave or not, there is sufficient data since April 2009 to show that this virus is less severe than normal seasonal flu and that efforts to prevent the spread of this pandemic were futile — especially hand-washing, still promoted by the WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other national agencies.

According to WHO estimates, recent normal seasonal influenza viruses have killed between 250,000 to 500,000 people a year — about 0.005 percent of the world population. This can be used as a yardstick to compare the severity of past and current influenza pandemics.

The initial fear was that the 2009 H1N1 flu virus might be as deadly as the 1918 “Spanish” H1N1 influenza pandemic that killed an estimated 30 to 50 million people, or about 2.5 percent of the world population. The 1918 influenza pandemic was therefore 500 times as severe as recent seasonal outbreaks. In contrast, the death toll of the 1957 “Asian” H2N2 influenza pandemic was about 14 times, and the 1968 “Hong Kong” H3N2 influenza pandemic about six times more than the death toll of current seasonal influenza viruses.

As of late 2009, the new H1N1 virus has actually killed fewer people overall than recent seasonal influenza viruses, including the 32 so far in Taiwan and 178 in the PRC, although it may be more severe for children. Global transmission of the new H1N1 virus has apparently peaked or is just beginning to peak, and while it is definitely not over, its overall death toll may well end up lower than the death toll of recent seasonal flu viruses.

Initial fears of a repeat of the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic led to an unprecedented public health response, which included expanding the target groups to receive the H1N1 vaccine, travel bans from infected areas, isolating and quarantining suspected infected persons, school closures, canceling or limiting large public gatherings or events and recommending universal hand-washing.

Measures such as isolation or quarantine, school closures and so on were not implemented uniformly, but left to the discretion of national and often local health departments. At best, they may have slowed the spread of this virus in some areas.

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