The swine flu might be spreading around the world quickly, and CNN has been running screen captions like “DEADLY FLU” and “ON THE BRINK OF PANDEMIC.”
But doctors say that doesn’t mean the end is near just yet.
“Natural selection is on our side,” said University of Maryland scientist Steven Salzberg. “It may mutate into something that’s not so infectious and go away on its own.”
Salzberg said Thursday that a virus has a better evolutionary advantage when it doesn’t lay waste to its hosts.
“The most effective way to be a virus is to have its victims walking around, spreading it,” he said.
In fact, pandemics are themselves often expressions of evolutions, Salzberg said.
“Each time we have a new pandemic it sort of pushes the old one out,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know it, but the ‘Spanish flu’ of 1918 became the normal human seasonal flu for the next 40 years or so.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Llelwyn Grant said local, national and international public health agencies have used modern technology to respond quickly to this outbreak of swine flu.
“All in all, readiness and preparations were there,” he said.
George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Amir Afkhami said it was too early to tell what the final toll will be of this swine flu outbreak. But, having written extensively on the history of epidemics, he said he was struck by the different mortality rates swine flu has left in different countries. Dozens of Mexicans have been killed by the disease. The United States’ only fatality as of Thursday was a Mexican national.
Afkhami’s research showed that the victims of the 1918 flu pandemic were more likely to have suffered from a “co-morbid” disease that affected the victims’ blood. Those with malaria, with anemia or who were addicted to opium were more likely to die. The flu also swept through the British Expeditionary Forces — mostly vegetarian native Indians fighting in Europe in World War I.
He wonders whether nutrition and blood constitution are connected to flu mortality.
“This is something that I think will pan out over the next few weeks and the next few months,” Afkhami said.
