The Russian Pandemic of 1889 and the H1N1 Pandemic of 2009/10
May 19, 2010

I received an interesting e-mail from a reader with a link to a short, on-line article by Casey Johnston entitled "Much slower travel couldn't contain influenza even in 1889?. This article looks at the Russian flu pandemic (aka Asiatic flu) that predates the Spanish flu of 1918; once I read the article, I wanted to know more.

The article discussed conclusions drawn by Russian scientists based on new data gathered on an influenza pandemic that started in 1889. The scientists were able to follow the spread of the virus across the globe using medical records from various European armies. These records indicate that the virus spread at an amazing rate, moving from Russia, through Europe and over to North America in only 4 months. In other words, the Russian scientists found that "the virus was able to spread rapidly across the ocean despite the limited travel of that era" and "despite much slower travel in the 19th century, the flu was able to spread almost as quickly as it can today, suggesting that there is a trade-off related to how quickly people move around. Someone carrying the virus can infect fewer people in many places, or many people in fewer places; either way, the virus spreads at more or less the same rate". Extrapolating from this new data, the Russian scientists in turn concluded that the public health measures we use today should be refocused. "To contain influenza, researchers suggest that we would do better to tailor our methods to the population profile of individual cities, rather than trying to lock them down"....