Episode 1048
2009 flu pandemic
Mon, 2020-Mar-16 01:48 UTC
Length - 3:18
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Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 202,325 views on Sunday, 15 March 2020 our article of the day is 2009 flu pandemic.
The 2009 flu pandemic or swine flu was an influenza pandemic that lasted from early 2009 to late 2010, and the second of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first of them being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic), albeit a new strain. First described in April 2009, the virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 which resulted when a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine and human flu viruses further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, leading to the term "swine flu". It is estimated that 11–21% of the then global population (of about 6.8 billion), or around 700 million–1.4 billion people, contracted the illness — more in absolute terms than the Spanish flu pandemic, with about 150,000–575,000 fatalities. A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the 2009 H1N1 flu was no more severe than the yearly seasonal flu. Unlike most strains of influenza, H1N1 does not disproportionately infect adults older than 60 years; this was an unusual and characteristic feature of the H1N1 pandemic. Even in the case of previously very healthy people, a small percentage develop pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This manifests itself as increased breathing difficulty and typically occurs three to six days after initial onset of flu symptoms. The pneumonia caused by flu can be either direct viral pneumonia or a secondary bacterial pneumonia. In fact, a November 2009 New England Journal of Medicine article recommended that flu patients whose chest X-ray indicates pneumonia receive both antivirals and antibiotics. In particular, it is a warning sign if a child (and presumably an adult) seems to be getting better and then relapses with high fever, as this relapse may be bacterial pneumonia.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:48 UTC on Monday, 16 March 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see 2009 flu pandemic on Wikipedia.
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