pursue

最近在墨西哥興起的豬流感

讓人不免恐慌是否會造成全球性的流行性感染

之前的SARS 是因家禽類鳥類所引起的

這次卻換成了豬隻

全球性的大流感

讓我想到了1918年的全球大流感

於是找了一下資料，雖然是英文的 但是卻不難懂 :

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

   The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

    In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon. The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans. Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy (Deseret News). An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza (Crosby). 1918 would go down as unforgettable year of suffering and death and yet of peace.

    One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate," (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth," (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza.

In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme (Crawford):

I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza.

I opened the window,

And in-flu-enza.

    The influenza pandemic circled the globe. Most of humanity felt the effects of this strain of the influenza virus. It spread following the path of its human carriers, along trade routes and shipping lines. Outbreaks swept through North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific (Taubenberger). In India the mortality rate was extremely high at around 50 deaths from influenza per 1,000 people (Brown). The Great War, with its mass movements of men in armies and aboard ships, probably aided in its rapid diffusion and attack. The origins of the deadly flu disease were unknown but widely speculated upon.

   They found humidity to be linked with more severe epidemics as it "fosters the dissemination of the bacteria," (Committee on Atmosphere and Man, 1923). Meanwhile the new sciences of the infectious agents and immunology were racing to come up with a vaccine or therapy to stop the epidemics.

資料來源

http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

大紀元內對於最近流感所聯想到的新聞

1918流感高死亡率；鏈球菌恐為肇因

在調閱與1918流感有關的資料後，美國埃默里大學(Emory University)研究人員發現，此番流感引發的高死亡率係由鏈球菌雙重感染所致。

根據維基百科，1918流感造成全世界約10億人感染（當時世界人口約17億人），在短短6個月內便奪去2千5百萬到4千萬條生命，比持續了52個月的第一次世界大戰死亡人數還多。

路透社援引美國的研究資料指出，1918流感中士兵的平均死亡時間為10天，和細菌感染致命的型態較為吻合，研究人員進一步判斷出這波死亡高峰乃由鏈球菌雙重感染所引起。

這項結果提供了預防大流感的新指引：在人類儲備抗病毒藥物之際，儲存抗生素以抵禦細菌傳染其實是同等重要。

新指引抵禦大流感 專家心中有譜

根據路透社，一般的季節性流感有25萬-50萬人喪命。歷史上除了1918這場大規模的流感，1958年和1967年也曾爆發流行規模稍小的流感。多數衛生專家相信，另一場大流感再度引爆是不無可能的。

報導引述專家看法認為，假使抗生素對於抑制細菌仍能發揮作用，加上有足夠的供應量，一旦流感大肆爆發，可預期的是，死亡率會比起1918那場流感降低許多。更何況，人類現在還有免疫血清療法，以及各種疫苗用以防治併發肺炎和腦膜炎的不同肺炎鏈球菌株感染。

-------------------------------------------------

未來會怎樣

是不知道

但是個人衛生倒是值得去注意

從自己做起

至少就可以減少與細菌接觸的機率..