Its Name Was Enza

After watching the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, I was surprised that I had never known how extreme the pandemic was. Why was such a huge event in history, not mentioned in any previous course? We learned about World War I in almost every history class growing up. The 1918 pandemic killed over 50 million people, so how did it get left out?

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The video explained a lot about the influenza pandemic, and there were a few things that stuck out to me. When people think about the flu, usually it is the old, the young, or the immunocompromised who suffer from fatal cases. The fact that so many strong individuals, like the soldiers, were dying from the flu was so strange even in 1918. Another surprising part was when the children in the video were jump roping to a song about influenza:

I had a little bird, 

Its name was Enza

I opened the window, 

And in-flew-enza.

If they were singing about a bird during the time of the pandemic, did they already know it was from a bird virus? The video portrayed it as if they only knew it was spreading from person to person. 

In microbiology we were shown the top 10 leading causes of deaths in 1900. Influenza and pneumonia topped this chart and were followed by several other diseases caused by microorganisms. Then we were presented with the top 10 causes of death in 2010. Surprisingly, a little less than a century later, influenza is still in the top 10 for leading causes of death in the United States. Why is influenza still causing so many deaths? One cause is that the strains are continuously changing and it is not possible to vaccinate someone for their life. Also, some viruses are only transmitted from animals to humans while others can be communicable from person to person. 

In 2008, MIT researchers explained why the H1N1 flu was able to spread the way it did in 1918. The avian flu viruses can only bind to human receptors if they match. The avian viruses mutated to be able to bind to the human receptors. They found the two specific mutations in the virus that made it easy to bind to receptors in the upper respiratory tract, which resulted in the pandemic. 

In more recent news, two days ago, 6 new cases of the the avian influenza A(H7N9) were reported to the WHO including one death. This strain was first found in 2013 and has not spread widely throughout China. There is currently no evidence that the virus can be transmitted person to person.

KR