This Year's Flu

Influenza is no longer the mass murderer it was decades ago, when an epidemic could kill thousands. Doctors theorize that people have developed sufficient natural immunity to reduce the virus's impact; medicine is usually able to cope with serious complications in the rare cases in which they occur. Still, the bug is impervious to antibiotics and too versatile to be fully controlled by inoculation. It mutates quickly enough to keep a step ahead of vaccine manufacturers; a new vaccine, using live viruses, will not be ready for some years (TIME, Aug. 21).

Last year the A/2 Hong Kong strain erupted in the U.S., causing widespread absenteeism in schools, offices and factories. Now a new bug called the London flu—because it was first isolated as a distinct strain there last year—is causing the familiar sniffles, coughing, sore throat, headache and fever in many parts of the U.S.

The Public Health Service's Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reports that London flu has recently occurred in at least 18 states.* The new flu was not unexpected. Between major epidemics, which tend to run in ten-year cycles, minor mutations usually appear. The present virus is a variation of the Hong Kong organism. Once it made its British debut, American health officials felt that it was only a question of time before the new virus crossed the ocean.

Death Toll. The CDC does not believe that the current outbreak will become an epidemic, but the flu is making its presence felt. The Massachusetts state health department has reported that school absenteeism has climbed as high as 20% in some sections of the state. Hawaiian authorities have noted a substantial increase in influenza-like disease on the island of Oahu, particularly among teen-agers and young children. No area appears to have been harder hit than northern California. Since Dec. 20, health authorities in Santa Clara County have blamed 20 deaths, mainly among the elderly, on pneumonia, a frequent complication of flu. In the same period, the county has filed 19 certificates in which the flu itself was listed as the cause of death.

Because they have had no opportunity to isolate or culture a large enough supply of the new viruses, doctors have yet to develop a vaccine against the London flu. But they are advising immunization using the Hong Kong vaccine, on the theory that limited protection is better than none at all.