Word: a2
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...influenza outbreak, the symptoms vary widely. Some specialists in epidemics and infectious diseases are convinced that the virus labeled A2-Hong Kong-68 is proving more variable than most preceding strains. For one thing, many victims describe symptoms that seem conspicuously different from those of the patient next door. One man may suffer a three-day bout of sniffling, coughing, headache and muscle twinges, with little fever, while his neighbor may run a high fever, return to work after a miserable week in bed, and promptly suffer a disabling relapse...
Quick-Change Artists. Why does one man get off lightly, while another is hit so hard? The explanation may lie in both the nature of the virus and the patient's previous bouts with flu. The first A2 Asian virus appeared in 1957 and laid low millions around the world. Thanks to antibody formation, these people developed substantial immunity against further illness from this virus or its kin. But flu microbes, almost unique among the 500 or more viruses that plague man, are capable of quickly altering their antigenic properties. Thus they require different antibodies to neutralize them...
Nevertheless, the limited similarities between older A2 strains and HK-68 account for the sharp differences in symptoms among victims, according to the University of Illinois' Dr. Robert L. Muldoon. A severe bout of A2 years earlier left some persons' systems ready to react instantly and forcibly against any related virus. Many of this winter's flu victims had never had Asian flu, and therefore had no foundation antibody on which to build a counterattack...
...A2 strain, a biological brother to a similar virus dubbed "Asian flu" when it affected 20 million in the U.S. in 1957, turned up last July in Central China. Travelers quickly carried it to Hong Kong, where it was labeled "Mao flu" as 500,000 Crown Colony residents were infected. The worldwide epidemic had begun (TIME, Sept. 27). The flu spread to Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, where King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit were among those affected. Authorities in the Soviet Union started vaccinating between 50% and 70% of Russia's urban population...
...City. After its first confirmed appearance in the U.S.-in Needles, Calif., last November-the disease spread to Denver, paused, then galloped wildly across the country. According to officials of the National Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, there have been widespread outbreaks of A2 in 22 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico; regional outbreaks in ten states; isolated outbreaks in 14 states; and individual cases in three. Nevada is the only state that has not yet reported a single case of the virus...