Word: influenza
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...current rate, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta predicts, the total number of cases will reach 270,000 over the next five years, while total AIDS deaths will rise to 179,000. Fearsome as that count is, it falls short of the tolls taken by the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 (500,000 U.S. deaths) and by polio in the mid-'40s to mid-'50s (360,000 cases with 20,000 deaths). But then again, AIDS is still gathering steam...
Health officials have known of the new viral strain (actually a mutation of Type A influenza strains predominant in the U.S. in the 1950s) only since June, when the first cases were confirmed in Taiwan. Pharmaceutical companies, which had already manufactured a single-shot flu vaccine that is effective against three known and anticipated strains -- A/Chile, A/Mississippi and B/ Ann Arbor -- were forced to rush a separate A/Taiwan vaccine into production. Though no one knows how serious this season's attack will be, influenza generally kills 20,000 to 40,000 Americans in a single winter, more victims than AIDS...
Unfortunately, many of those in need of protection do not get vaccinated. Of the people who are vulnerable to complications from influenza because of other health problems, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates, only one in five will actually bother to get shots. The fact that two kinds of vaccine are necessary for many people this year may be a further source of confusion about who should be inoculated. According to the CDC, the two-shot candidates include anyone under the age of 35 with chronic health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, renal disease, cancer or a suppressed...
...scourges such as polio and measles have been largely conquered in the developed world? The vanquished viruses, it seems, were relatively stable, seldom changing their structure. This enabled their victims, once infected, to develop permanent immunity and allowed scientists to develop vaccines that were effective year after year. The influenza virus, however, is constantly changing the configuration of its surface proteins. Because of these changes, immune-system antibodies, developed in response to either a vaccination or a previous case of flu, fail to recognize and attack the altered virus. As a result, flu -- in ever changing forms -- returns again...
...migrating birds probably help it along. And perhaps because of commercial jets, flu has been spreading more rapidly in recent years, giving health officials even less time to prepare new vaccines. For all these reasons, says University of Pittsburgh Epidemiologist Frederick Ruben, "the only thing that's predictable about influenza is that it's unpredictable...