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Despite the high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the epidemic, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness over the decades until the arrival of news about bird flu and other pandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. [320] [321] This has led some historians to label the Spanish flu a "forgotten pandemic". [177]
Flu viruses can remain infectious for about one week at human body temperature, over 30 days at 0 °C (32 °F), and indefinitely at very low temperatures (such as lakes in northeast Siberia). Most influenza strains can be inactivated easily by disinfectants and detergents. [10] [11] [12] Flu spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics.
Following warnings and increased preparedness in the 2000s, the 2009 swine flu pandemic led to rapid anti-pandemic reactions among the Western countries. The H1N1/09 virus strain with mild symptoms and low lethality eventually led to a backlash over public sector over-reactiveness, spending and the high cost of the 2009 flu vaccine.
Low pathogenic avian influenza H5N2 virus in poultry later gained accentuated virulence in the United States [14] and Mexico. [15] A highly pathogenic strain of H5N2 caused flu outbreaks with significant spread to numerous farms, resulting in great economic losses in 1983 in Pennsylvania, USA in chickens and turkeys, in 1994 in Mexico in ...
Flu season is an annually recurring time period characterized by the prevalence of an outbreak of influenza (flu). The season occurs during the cold half of the year in each hemisphere . It takes approximately two days to show symptoms.
Beyond the bird flu, the federal government’s handling of the outbreak reveals cracks in the U.S. health security system that would allow other risky new pathogens to take root.
One day after this announcement, every bed in Philadelphia's 31 hospitals was filled. One week later, 4,500 Philadelphians were declared dead of the Spanish flu and 47,000 people were infected. [1] [8] On October 3, the outbreak of the Spanish flu in Philadelphia had gotten so bad that the city had to be essentially shut down.
Recent research of Taubenberger et al. has suggested that the 1918 virus, like H5N1, could have arisen directly from an avian influenza virus. [19] However, researchers at University of Virginia and Australian National University have suggested that there may be an alternative interpretation of the data used in the Taubenberger et al. paper.