A year in the life of H1N1`

A year to the day, I was getting ready to board a flight from Boston to Washington DC to begin my search for an apartment. The night before my flight, news broke that the new Influenza strain, H1N1, had been isolated from a group of school children in Reading, not far from the Logan airport, and I honestly was a bit nervous about getting on a plane. Admittedly, I am a hypochondriac, but at that point in time, Swine flu was causing an international panic. Schools were closing at the slightest hint of the virus, Vice Presidents were warning people not to fly, dogs and cats were living in harmony...you get the idea. We really didn't know much about the virus except that it was a new strain of Influenza derived from pigs and that no one living had seen this virus before (we found out a little bit later that a similar virus had spread around in the 1950s and that the virus was more likely avian in origin, but I digress). It didn't help that the virus was particularly devastating to children and young adults . As for me, budgetary concerns (aka paying to delay my flight) soundly defeated my fear of H1N1 and I got on the plane.

When I arrived in DC, I eagerly began my apartment search, only to find that H1N1 had been isolated at the IMF and World Bank, just a few blocks from where I wanted to live. The management company for the first apartment I viewed made me wash my hands and wipe all the surfaces I touched with wet naps to make sure that the apartments were not contaminated. Every where I went, everyone was talking about Swine flu, it was completely unavoidable. It was if the whole world was about to come under siege and no one knew what to do about it.

That was a year ago, and a lot has happened since. Flu tracker estimates that there has been over 1.5 million cases of H1N1 around the world and the World Health Organization has isolated H1N1 in 214 nations and confirmed 17919 deaths were due to the virus. When I think of these numbers in isolation, they are shocking to me. It would be as if the entire population of DC were sick and the entire suburb of Fairfax city dropped off the face of the earth. I realize that isn't the fairest comparison (DC only has 600,000 people) but its a scary thought none the less. Oddly enough, those numbers pail in comparison to what I thought might happen when H1N1 first surfaced. At the beginning, no one really knew what the percent mortality would be or if the entire nation, or world, would be completely overwhelmed. Fortunately, we got off pretty light this time. A vaccine was made (albeit, not as quickly as many would have liked) and the virus was not as deadly as predicted. While there are still pockets of outbreaks across the globe, for the most part H1N1 has run its course for this season and all has returned to normal.

As for me, I did manage to make it back to Boston after my apartment search without picking up the virus. A month later, I moved to DC, started my job and spent the next 5 months telling friends and family to not overreact. Several friends came down with the flu, but were ok after a week or so. And then, on the second Monday in November, I came down with H1N1. I'm not sure where I got it from...I think the most likely candidate is the DC Metro (aka giant microbe incubators...sorta like preschools) but I have no evidence to prove that. It started rapidly. I was sitting at my desk in the lab and my back just started aching, and I mean really aching. I could barely straighten my back all the way. I told my boss of the symptoms and he instructed me to leave. I wouldn't make it back to work until the next monday. It was a very unpleasant experience but I, like 99% of others who got infected, survived. This year, it seems unlikely that H1N1 will have quite the splash in the news. At least in the US, a large percent of the population has antibodies to H1N1 (either from being infected or the vaccine) and H1N1 is included in the 2010 seasonal flu vaccine. It seems we dodged a bullet (albeit potentially a very slow bullet show from a bb gun). In the next blog entry I hope to talk more about how we reacted to the appearance of H1N1 and compare it to public reaction to another pandemic (non influenza) from 50 years ago. I think you will be amazed at the difference, I know I was.