H1N1 Swine Flu

Starting in early 2009, a new flu bug, popularly referred to as the swine flu, started spreading, first in Mexico and then throughout the world. Health officials later labeled this the H1N1 influenza strain. The H1N1 virus represents a morphing of human flu, avian flu and swine flu into one potent variety that can spread from human to human. So far, it’s been contained mostly successfully, but this was true in 1918 as well when an early flu came and went with little fanfare, only to reappear later in the year with a vengeance, killing 40 million people worldwide.

The 1918 flu epidemic was spread in part by troop movements during World War II. In more recent times, both AIDS and SARS hopped aboard passenger jets and criss-crossed the globe. In Colonial times, Europeans brought smallpox to the Americas and returned home bearing and spreading syphilis. And of course, what English cosmologist Stephen Hawking calls mankind’s sole God-like creation—the modern computer virus—spreads invisibly through cyberspace. (Hawking: “I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.”) Our latest weapon of viral mass destruction and its journey around the globe also owe their success to airline travel, but also to free trade and the rapid movement of goods and foods—and their production—around the globe.

To get technical, the current virus is among those in the Influenza A classification, the deadliest type, meaning it is capable of producing a pandemic. Thus you will often see the swine flu listed as A/H1N1. The H and N both stand for surface proteins comprising the flu strand, in this case hemagglutinin (H) and neurmindase (N). There are 16 known H proteins and 9 N proteins; the virus exists as a combination of these two proteins. And here’s the scary part—the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was also an H1N1 virus, as is the current swine flu virus. That 90-year-old pandemic, remember, claimed 40 million lives worldwide, and this was before air travel and today’s free-flowing worldwide trade. However, on the plus side, both medicine and disease control and prevention have come a long ways since then. We are certainly much better prepared today to forecast, set up defenses, and then contain and control pandemics.

What to do in the workplace to prevent the spread of the swine flu?

Personnel Concepts has developed a well-researched and non-technical guide called the Pandemic Flu Workplace Preparedness Kit. Get yours today.