History of H1N1 virus
Swine influenza is not a new disease. It was first diagnosed in the year 1918. It was not clear then that whether human contracted the virus from pigs or pigs contracted it from humans. Somewhere between 20-40 million people died from “Spanish Flu” or “La Grippe” which were the two names for it. To this day it is still unclear whether the strain was swine influenza or not.
Later in the year 1976. On February 6, 1976 an army recruit died and four of his fellow comrades were hospitalized. Two weeks later health officials announced that the cause of his death was a new strain of influenza with was a variant of H1N1 and was known as A/New Jersey/1976. During this time another strain was also uncovered in circulation in the US which was A/Victoria/75 (H3N2). To prevent another major pandemic like 1918 President Gerald Ford had every person in the U.S. become vaccinated against the disease. This was later halted by the rare occurence of Gullain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) which was a very rare side effect from modern influenza vaccines. 25 people died as a result of the vaccines, which ended up killing more people than the whole disease did.
Again later in the year 1998, this virus was found in pigs across four US States and within a year it had spread through pig populations across the US.
Now, the current outbreak of the virus is in year 2009. This outbreak is due to a new strain of subtype H1N1 which was not previously reported in pigs. It appears as if this outbreak was transmitted from humans to pigs and then back to us as the same as the 1918 pandemic.