It’s too soon to say if the Millennium Flu will be unusually widespread or severe, but anecdotes and statistics both suggest that it has struck with unusual swiftness. In the last week of 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 35 states reported “regional” or “widespread” flu outbreaks (map), more than triple the number a year ago; of the specimens collected by doctors and sent to the CDC for testing since October, 14 percent were positive for flu–more than 7 times the percentage at this time last year. Flu cases often peak in February; before the bug goes into its springtime torpor this year, about one American in 10 will be stricken, estimates Dr. Jennifer Bridges, a CDC spokeswoman. “My impression is that it’s worse this year than in recent years, and it’s getting worse,” says Dr. Stephen Baum, chairman of the department of medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. “I don’t think we’ve seen the peak yet.”
One troubling footnote to this year’s outbreak comes from Dr. Kenneth Zangwill, a pediatric-infectious-disease specialist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He has noted an unusual number of children with symptoms such as mental confusion, severe muscle inflammation and shock–all known complications of flu, but typically quite rare in children. Dr. Mark Smith, head of Washington Hospital Center’s emergency department, also said this year’s flu seemed more severe: “My impression is the numbers are greater and people are sicker.”
On the positive side, the CDC reports that more than 95 percent of the cases that have been classified since October fall into the Type A-Sydney variant–one of the three strains that was included in this year’s standard flu inoculation. Health officials must decide each year which subtypes to include in the following winter’s vaccines, which involves some guesswork; the nightmare scenario is an outbreak of a virulent subtype for which no vaccines were prepared, but that hasn’t happened so far. The existing vaccine will prevent illness in about 80 percent of people, and cut the fatality rate by 85 percent in the high-risk population of elderly people. It takes about two weeks for immunity to develop, but doctors say it’s not too late to get a vaccine even now. The virus will likely be around for several more months–and so will the lines at the drugstore.
