The virus spreading around the world should not be called “swine flu” as it contains avian and human components and no pig has so far been found ill with the disease, the world animal health body said on Monday.

It would be more logical to call the virus “North American influenza”, a name based on its geographic origin like the Spanish influenza, a human flu pandemic with animal origin that killed more than 50 million people in 1918-1919.

(“Swine flu” name is wrong -world animal health body, Reuters, 04/27/09)

I wonder if public relations speak isn’t guiding our names on this? It does sound better blaming it on the swine rather than a geographical location that happens to be our backyard.

But it wouldn’t be the first time … the “Spanish Flu” might have begun here in North America too by some reports.

Although in 1918 influenza was not a nationally reportable disease and diagnostic criteria for influenza and pneumonia were vague, death rates from influenza and pneumonia in the United States had risen sharply in 1915 and 1916 because of a major respiratory disease epidemic beginning in December 1915 (22). Death rates then dipped slightly in 1917. The first pandemic influenza wave appeared in the spring of 1918, followed in rapid succession by much more fatal second and third waves in the fall and winter of 1918-1919, respectively (Figure 1). Is it possible that a poorly-adapted H1N1 virus was already beginning to spread in 1915, causing some serious illnesses but not yet sufficiently fit to initiate a pandemic? Data consistent with this possibility were reported at the time from European military camps (23), but a counter argument is that if a strain with a new hemagglutinin (HA) was causing enough illness to affect the US national death rates from pneumonia and influenza, it should have caused a pandemic sooner, and when it eventually did, in 1918, many people should have been immune or at least partially immunoprotected. “Herald” events in 1915, 1916, and possibly even in early 1918, if they occurred, would be difficult to identify.

(1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics, CDC)

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. The recombination of its surface proteins created a virus novel to almost everyone and a loss of herd immunity. Recently the virus has been reconstructed from the tissue of a dead soldier and is now being genetically characterized. The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain (BMJ,10/19/1918) where it allegedly killed 8 million in May (BMJ, 7/13/1918). However, a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. Wilson had just given his 14 point address. There was virtually no response or acknowledgment to the epidemics in March and April in the military camps. It was unfortunate that no steps were taken to prepare for the usual recrudescence of the virulent influenza strain in the winter. The lack of action was later criticized when the epidemic could not be ignored in the winter of 1918 (BMJ, 1918). These first epidemics at training camps were a sign of what was coming in greater magnitude in the fall and winter of 1918 to the entire world.

(The Influenza Pandemic of 1918, Stanford University)