Influenza

This is a mini-report that I wrote for my biology course.

From the Stanford Website:
"Microbes, bacteria in particular, are the oldest and most abundant form of life — predating humans by about 3.5 billion years. Most microbes are benign or beneficial to humans, but the portion of the microbial world that is pathogenic (capable of producing disease) has periodically wreaked havoc on human populations. Epidemics (localized outbreaks of disease) and pandemics (global outbreaks) have occurred throughout human history."

In 1918, the influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide. The virus followed the paths of shipping lines to affect global population. This particular strain was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza, which is usually a killer of the very young and the elderly. This influenza strain had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years. People who contracted the illness died rapidly.
One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate." Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth.
The origins of this influenza variant is not precisely known. It is thought to have originated in China in a rare genetic shift of the influenza virus. Recently the virus has been reconstructed from the tissue of a dead soldier and is now being genetically characterized.
The loss of life from even a particularly virulent strain of influenza would likely not be as great in modern times due to the ability to vaccinate readily. However, if the population were taken unawares by a drastic infectious agent of this nature, there could very likely be a shortage of the vaccine. Persons living in underprivileged circumstances would likely be deprived of the vaccine and of medical techniques that might save their lives. Persons in positions that involved high public contact, such as health care workers, would have a high degree of exposure to the disease.
Although scientists understand much more than they once did about influenza, the virus mutates and a highly virulent strain could still take a number of lives globally in spite of our more advanced medical technologies. Viruses are still the most difficult of all the infectious agents to combat. Unlike bacteria or parasites, they do not specifically "live." They are not subject to the effects of antibiotics. The only force that can combat them is an organism's immune system, possibly with the help of vaccines.