Virus evokes memories of ’76 outbreak

Today’s AJC Deja News comes to you from the Thursday, March 11, 1976, edition of The Atlanta Journal.

Unlike the coronavirus, which is currently shuttering schools, offices, major sports leagues and other forms of mass gatherings, pandemics are not new.

One noted doctor said, 44 years ago, that we can effectively mark our calendars by the kind of mass illness we’re seeing now.

“Worldwide epidemics, or pandemics, of influenza have marked the end of every decade since the 1940s — at intervals of exactly 11 years,” Dr. Edwin Kilbourne, then chairman of the department of microbiology at the Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City, wrote in the New York Times in the spring of 1976 when fears of swine flu rippled throughout Georgia and the rest of the U.S.

From SARS to H1N1, global illnesses have created large-scale disruptions in cities, states and nations alike.

Now, here in Atlanta and statewide throughout Georgia, public officials are scrambling to calm fears while trying to keep citizens as safe as possible. COVID19, though, is a unique virus and is creating an unprecedented set of headaches for government and health authorities.

State officials confirmed Georgia’s first coronavirus-related death March 12. A 67-year-old man with pre-existing medical conditions died after testing positive for the illness three days earlier.

The Journal’s Charles Seabrook wrote in his March 1976 article, “All-Out Flu Battle Considered,” that scientists of the time viewed

swine flu as the next potential mass health crisis.

“As one of the scientists pointed out, the swine bug represents a major change in the flu strains of the past several decades,” Seabrook wrote. “Such a major change has occurred in the flu strains of the past several decades.”

The COVID-19 virus appears to follow that pattern. While there are seven types of known human coronaviruses that cause mild flu conditions and aren’t a serious threat to generally healthy adults, COVID-19 can cause more intense and sometimes fatal illness. Since the strain is new to the coronavirus family and is believed to have started in animals, humans haven’t built up any immunity to the virus. And there is currently no form of vaccination for it.

“Past history has shown us that when a major new strain is isolated, it goes on to cause the pandemics,” a CDC official told Seabrook.

Concern over swine flu in the

mid-’70s took on special significance because a strain similar to that virus was believed to have caused the 1918-19 worldwide Spanish Flu pandemic, the worst influenza outbreak in history. About 500,000 Americans died during that outbreak.

The last major pandemic in the U.S. involved another novel virus, the H1N1/09 flu. 60.8 mil

lion cases were logged; 12,469 people died.

That pandemic began in the spring of 2009, almost exactly 11 years ago as Kilbourne predicted.