Covid - the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science (9781684426874) by Siegel Marc

Author:Siegel, Marc
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc
Published: 2020-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

SWINE FLU–THE LAST PANDEMIC

APRIL 2009: THE WORRIED BUS DRIVER

My son’s school bus driver had told me several months earlier that he was having problems sleeping at night. I had offered advice on developing a sleep ritual, and he soon began looking more relaxed. But when the swine flu scare first hit in late April, he was again appearing fatigued. He said he was worried about the risks that going to school might pose to students. I was worried too, not about swine flu, but about his driving my son and other children in his sleepless condition.

I told him that the flu appeared to be mild and that there were only a few cases in the city. The danger was minimal, I said. He didn’t seem reassured—and he wasn’t the only one. As the new virus continued to spread, I was having difficulty helping my patients, friends, and relatives put the fear of this new flu strain in perspective.

With previous scares, such as those connected to bird flu, anthrax contamination, mad cow disease, and the West Nile virus, I’d been able to point out that the pathogen wasn’t spreading person to person and was therefore of limited concern. But this wasn’t the case with the new H1N1 flu.

I tried my best to explain the science of flu to the bus driver as well as to my patients. A flu virus is a package of genetic material (called RNA) inside an envelope. “H” refers to hemagglutinin, the protein on the envelope that enables the flu to attach to your cell and inject itself inside. The “N” is neuraminidase, the protein that helps a flu virus break off from your cell and move on to a new cell. The new strain appeared to be the result of what is known as a “triple-reassortant” swine influenza strain (with mixed genes from human, swine, and bird flu viruses) that had been confined mainly to pigs (pigs are a mixing vessel for flu) until it combined again, with a Eurasian swine flu strain. This new strain—though still mild in severity—began passing easily from human to human, causing the March 2009 outbreak in Mexico and the United States.

I also explained to my patients that though this virus was transmitted fairly easily, like many influenzas it appeared to lack certain proteins that made other flu viruses more deadly. One of these, known as PB1 2, weakens the immune system by attacking the protective covering of cell mitochondria (motors). All the pandemic flus of the twentieth century made this enzyme, but the new swine flu strain did not, which was good news. Another enzyme the virus lacked (luckily) is responsible for blocking the body’s production of interferon, a crucial chemical that helps us keep the flu virus from spreading easily from cell to cell.

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that many people (those born prior to 1957) might have a partial immunity to this strain because of prior exposure to other related H1 viruses that were circulating at the time.

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