The great swine-flu scare of 1976 is remembered in the United States as a costly public-health fiasco during which more people died from vaccinations than the dreaded influenza.
In Canada, it's hardly remembered at all, though it remains vivid to Marc Lalonde, who as federal health minister in 1976 ordered some 10 million doses of vaccine.
“Ah, mon Dieu , that was the time I threw away $10-million,” Mr. Lalonde said in an interview yesterday. “But that is the nature of these things. If you do too little, you are accused of negligence. If you do too much, you are wasting money and causing panic. These are very difficult calls.”
Canadian and international health authorities are facing similar tough decisions as the flu continued to spread yesterday.
In Canada, the number of confirmed flu cases climbed to 51, as Nova Scotia, Ontario and British Columbia reported several new cases each, all of them accompanied by dire warnings that additional cases were all but certain and deaths a very real possibility. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he did not “sense a panic” in the country.
The government announced an expanded prevention campaign that will target mainstream media and social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and emphasize the importance of hand-washing, covering sneezes and staying home when sick.
As the World Health Organization and public-health officials and scientists pursue a vaccine for the 2009 flu outbreak, the Canadian and U.S. experiences from 1976 offer contrasting cautionary tales.
THE POLITICS OF VACCINATION
The waste of some dollars in Canada back in 1976 was nothing next to the hysteria triggered in the U.S. by a toxic mix of flu, suspicion and politics.
When a sudden February outbreak of flu killed a single soldier at Fort Dix in New Jersey, officials in Ottawa warned Mr. Lalonde: Deadly swine flu could be on the way. With little fanfare, Mr. Lalonde ordered the vaccine and offered it to the provinces to distribute.
“There was no big announcement about it,” he said. “If there was a big announcement and nothing happened, we'd be accused of throwing away money afterward. But we wanted to go on the side of prudence.”
As it turned out, there was no flu pandemic. Only 800,000 Canadians, mostly in Ontario, bothered to get the flu shot. The next year, Canada's nine million unused doses of vaccine expired and were eventually flushed.
In the U.S., President Gerald Ford was in the thick of primary election campaigning when the flu struck down the soldier. In March of 1976, he assembled a summit of scientists and ordered vaccinations for all 220 million Americans.
By December, 45 million Americans had received the shot but the program was in tatters. Two dozen deaths from Guillain-Barré Syndrome were blamed on the vaccine, though no conclusive link was ever proven.
The swine influenza outbreak was limited to the one death and a couple hundred sick soldiers in the barracks at Fort Dix. Scientists never solved the mystery of the outbreak's origin and limited spread.
The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control was fired and Gerald Ford lost to his Democratic opponent, Jimmy Carter, although the flu fiasco was just one factor in his defeat.
COSTLY MISTAKES
The world was due for a flu pandemic on the chilly day in February, 1976, when Private David Lewis told a superior he was feeling under the weather.
The 19-year-old army recruit still insisted on setting out from Fort Dix on the day's big hike.
Twenty-four hours later, Pte. Lewis was dead. Within two weeks, public-health officials announced to Americans that the swine flu, which was erroneously believed to be at the root of the catastrophic 1918 pandemic, was back.
President Ford, fighting Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination and desperate to show he was a man of action, quickly convened experts, including Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin, the men behind the polio vaccine.
Time was pressing. The full brunt of any influenza epidemic was expected with flu season the following autumn, and several months would be needed to produce enough vaccine. In an added twist, the flock of specialized chickens whose eggs were used to produce the annual flu vaccine was about to be slaughtered.
