Lessons from the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak (A Reminder from History)

Jet injector immunization, 1976. CDC photo, public domain.

Yesterday I published a story on Medium about vaccinations, triggered by Alex Araz's appearance on Face the Nation this past weekend. The Secretary of Health and Human Services discussed a new program being fast-tracked called Operation Warp Speed, a massive effort to get 300 million people vaccinated by year's end.

At the end of last year I got my first vaccinations since the last time I stepped on a rusty nail, and in the process I learned some things. Even the most touted vaccines have their limitations. (Yesterday's article was titled So We Get A Vaccine, Then What?)

Afterwards I was contacted by a journalist friend whose mother was a public health nurse in 1976 when the Swine Flu outbreak occurred. I was sent a pair of article links that were quite eye-opening.

President Ford takes his turn. Photo: David Hume Kennerly. Public domain.

Very briefly, here is what happened back then. There was a flu outbreak at Fort Dix in New Jersey. As a result of a death, everyone at Fort Dix was tested and it turns out that two had what appeared to be a strain of the Spanish Flu that wiped out over 100 million people worldwide in 1919. There was suddenly a sense of panic and urgency to address this.

Before long it became a political issue as Gerald Ford put pressure on congress to fast-track a vaccination program. Merck and other drug companies balked at the initial pressure to create vaccines because they did not want to be held liable should there be negative ramifications.

Nevertheless, indemnity clauses were created to exempt the the drug companies from lawsuits, and President Ford pushed Congress to approve the program. In order to encourage the masses to get vaccinated the president himself went through with the procedure on national television.

Gagging the Whistleblower
Here are the two stories the journalist sent to me detailing the events of 1976.
The Public Health Legacy of the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak
The 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak

The second of these articles includes information about an FDA researcher who publicly raised concerns about the safety of the vaccine. His fears were not unfounded. As it turns out hundreds of people who took the flu vaccine became paralyzed by the Guillain-Barré syndrome.     

Bruce Dull stated at a flu conference on July 1 that there were no parallels between the 1918 flu pandemic and the current situation. Later that month, J. Anthony Morris, a researcher in the Food and Drug Administration's Bureau of Biologics (BoB), was dismissed for insubordination and went public with findings that cast doubt on the safety of the vaccine.

45 million people were vaccinated before the government reversed course on the mandatory vaccinations for every man, woman and child.

My friend's email adds an interesting dimension to the story, anecdotal but revealing.
My mom spent her career in public health. She was passionate about her career. To her public health was a mission, not just a job. In 2016, two to three years before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was taking care of my physically failing mother. Her memory was fine and I asked her questions about her career, thinking I might write a book. She was a specialist in maternal and child health, which included vaccinating children before entering school. I recalled a time I was a teenager, and she was called away from her usual work to give vaccinations to the general public at the YMCA. I asked her for more information on that incident. She told me that there was a swine flu scare. The president had asked her to be among the hundreds of public health workers to give vaccinations to the general public.

She stated that she didn't really believe in these particular vaccinations. Shocked, because I knew of my mom's integrity, I asked why she would do this. She said, "Because the president asked me to." I think this is indicative of a simpler time. Even though the nation had just gone through an impeachment, people, no matter what political stripe, still respected their political leaders.

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These stories are instructive on many levels. Today, more than ever, it seems like any statement that anyone makes is turned into a politically driven matter instead of considering that it may come from a good conscience and earnest doubts about a direction things are going.

I myself am not an expert, so am reliant on mediated information to draw conclusions that I can base decisions on. What I do know is that experts are not always reliable. I also know that the higher the stakes, the more challenging it is for whistleblowers to find an ear that will hear their concerns. I am thinking here of the engineers at Morton Thiokol who were concerned about the Space Shuttle Challenger's O-rings on that fateful and tragic day.

Lest anyone missed it, the incidence of Guillain-Barré was four times higher in vaccinated people than in those not receiving the swine flu. This is why the Discover article connects this 1976 incident with the Anti-VAX movement.


"Some of the American public’s hesitance to embrace vaccines — the flu vaccine in particular — can be attributed to the long-lasting effects of a failed 1976 political campaign to mass-vaccinate the public against a strain of the swine flu virus. This government-led campaign was widely viewed as a debacle and put an irreparable dent in future public health initiatives, as well as negatively influenced the public’s perception of both the flu and the flu shot in this country." 

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A maxim that I heard four decades ago rattles in my head as I consider these things. Sincerity is not truth. People can be sincere and also be wrong. Going faster may give the appearance of assurance, but if you go faster the wrong way, it will not get you to the destination you want to arrive at. 

We should take care not to be blind to the lessons of history. 

Disclaimer: I am not here advocating that no efforts be made to find a vaccine. I am (a) pointing out that there may be good reasons for being cautious about rushing the solution, (b) and legitimate reasons for why anti-VAXers have become uncomfortable with mass immunizations. 

Related Links
Who Are Your Experts (This was written as a marketing article, but applies to other situations including this one.)
So We Get A Vaccine. Then What?

Is Swine Flu Really Montezuma's Revenge

One of the things I had wanted to see when we took our 30th anniversary cruise through the Southwest last month was some kind of ancient ruins, or the abandoned adobe homes of native cliff dwellers. When we were in Holbrook for a night, at the WigWam on Route 66, I was aware that a day trip north into reservation lands would give us such an experience, but it seemed a bit off the beaten path in light of our plans.

To my great surprise, while at one of those tourist information places in Sedona, I learned that Montezuma’s Castle National Monument was just a short piece down the road, proof that we can still find our way around without Mapquest and Google. Sometimes, if you want to find wonders, you just need to ask the locals.

Essentially, Montezuma’s Castle was a 20 room high-rise apartment tucked into a limestone cliff starting about a hundred feet off the ground. The Sinagua peoples lived here about a thousand years ago. The conquistadors who named it falsely assumed Montezuma, Aztec king, had somehow been associated with this region, hence the name.

President Teddy Roosevelt is credited with making this a National Monument because of its great “ethnological value and scientific interest."

The location is interesting, a very short distance from massive underground springs, an oasis in the middle of nowhere. The Sinaguans had to climb 100 foot ladders to reach their homes at night. Whether this was for security from wild animals or enemy tribes no one knows. Tourists were actually permitted to climb up into the “castle” up until 1951, at which time public access was discontinued.

No one knows why this site was abandoned before the arrival of the white man. Perhaps they were conquered by another tribe. Or perhaps they simply moved on. Archaeologists love mysteries like this and will continue to examine all the evidence they can uncover.

What we do know is that had they lived a couple more centuries they might have been wiped out by diseases for which they had no immunity brought from Europe by white men. This is how vast swaths of the native populations were washed away. It is a tragic piece of history which we often forget. A few thousand Spanish conquerors were able to overcome millions of natives not by their mighty weapons and ingenuity, but rather by the disease which swept through the Americas on first contact. Could it be that this swine flu is simply Montezuma's revenge?

Lions and Tigers, and Swine Flu… Oh My!

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. ~ H. P. Lovecraft.

Evidently a lot of people are seriously concerned about the swine flu which has penetrated our shores. The Washington Post gave it a full page of coverage and in one hour yesterday there were 10,000 tweets on Twitter pertaining to the latest details of this potential epidemic. A search on Google News for swine flu revealed more than 33,423 news articles about the potential pandemic.

There may be good reasons for concern when it comes to these kinds of things. The 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic killed more people than World War I which preceded it. In fact, that flu killed more people than the Black Death Bubonic Plague of 1347-51.

Children would skip rope to a nursery rhyme about the flu that went like this:

I had a little bird
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
and in-flu-enza.

The number of actual deaths in Mexico from flu has been less than 200 and only 26 attributed to the strain of flu being called "swine flu." Ironically, while we're telling Americans not to travel to Mexico, the European Union is beseeching its people to forgo travelling to the U.S.

If all this flu news is giving you the blues and you want to keep current with it all, here are some steps you can take to track the swine flu.

I have not lost any sleep over this except to worry a little whether it's possible get infected thru online social networks. Actually, maybe someone will suggest that MySpace and Facebook are helping ameliorate the spread of the disease since we do all our socializing online now instead of face-to-face.

For the record, if you're especially concerned, the Center for Disease Control has a lot of good information available, too. And don't worry about those pork chops in the fridge. They'll be just fine.

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. ~ Katherine Paterson.