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Get Your Swine Flu Shot
Posted April 28, 2009 by Shakti Sombrero
Luckily we don't need to waste time making new swine flu commercials. We still have the ones from 1976.
 
Indeed, swine flu panic raced through the politically charged atmosphere of the 70s with a fury. Calls for worldwide mass vaccinations, worry of communist plots, vaccine fears, and mystery diseases swirled. In 1976 we were warned:
There is evidence there will be a major flu epidemic this coming fall. The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of the flu. In 1918 a half million Americans died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976.
-- F. David Matthews, secretary of health, education, and welfare (Feb., 1976)
But mass vaccinations never reached the levels thought needed to avoid disaster. Less than a third of the population was vaccinated before the program was scrapped two months later.
Gerald Ford's attempt to gain credit for keeping America safe was busted. He lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter that November. The 1976 to 1977 flu season was the most flu-free since records had been kept; a condition that was apparently unrelated to the vaccination program. The Great Swine Flu Epidemic of 1976 never took place.
Will 2009's version of the swine flu behave exactly like the 1976 one? Of course not. But the article is right: the last panic holds important lessons for this one, lest we repeat the same mistakes.
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