Epidemics: Approaching a Disaster

In Washington, President Lyndon B. was bedded down with it — or something suspiciously resembling it. In Chicago, Mayor Richard J. Daley was just recovering from it. In Hollywood, Actress Natalie Wood was felled by it while shooting a $3,000,000 film. In Seattle, a pair of twin baby orangutans were placed in isolation when they came down with its symptoms. With jet-age speed A2-Hong Kong-68, more commonly known as "Hong Kong flu," spanned the nation last week, respecting neither station nor species.

With millions of Americans already victimized by the epidemic, the American Red Cross declared a "disaster situation." Federal health authorities, warning that the worst is yet to come, predicted that the peak should be reached around New Year's Day or mid-January. Before the virus has run its course, perhaps 30 million citizens will have been abed with coughs, chills, fever, and general aches and pains.

Johnson, who entered Bethesda Naval Hospital with a temperature of 101.6, was one of many notables felled by the virus. Others: Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Mamie Eisenhower, Senator Edmund Muskie, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earle Wheeler, and White House National Security Adviser Walt Rostow. Mayors seemed susceptible; Atlanta's Ivan Allen Jr. and Boston's Kevin White joined Daley on the sick list.

For most people, the flu means a miserable few days in bed. To the elderly and those suffering from chronic heart or respiratory diseases, it can be a prelude to fatal complications. Last week some 213 deaths in the U.S. were at tributed to the disease and accompanying complications. To try to protect the aged and infirm, seven national drug firms have produced 17 million doses of vaccine that are now being distributed across the country. Among the first vaccinated: former President Harry Truman, 84.

The A2 strain, a biological brother to a similar virus dubbed "Asian flu" when it affected 20 million in the U.S. in 1957, turned up last July in Central China. Travelers quickly carried it to Hong Kong, where it was labeled "Mao flu" as 500,000 Crown Colony residents were infected. The worldwide epidemic had begun (TIME, Sept. 27). The flu spread to Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, where King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit were among those affected. Authorities in the Soviet Union started vaccinating between 50% and 70% of Russia's urban population.

Flu City. After its first confirmed appearance in the U.S.—in Needles, Calif., last November—the disease spread to Denver, paused, then galloped wildly across the country. According to officials of the National Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, there have been widespread outbreaks of A2 in 22 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico; regional outbreaks in ten states; isolated outbreaks in 14 states; and individual cases in three. Nevada is the only state that has not yet reported a single case of the virus.