Legionnaire’s Disease

It’s pretty interesting how diseases that seem to have been at the forefront of the public consciousness for a while - swine flu and Legionnaire’s Disease - weren’t properly studied in America and indeed the developed world until as recently as 1976. It goes to show how quickly epidemiology changes, and how much epidemiologists have to stay on their toes to keep up to date with the latest diseases.
It’s also interesting how health officials at Fort Dix realized that the disease that affected Private Lewis might not have ben influenza, but they could not risk the possibility of being wrong, so they went through with the assumption that the epidemic was imminent anyway. This is reminiscent of the response that China and several other Asian countries had in response to COVID-19 - they knew that COVID-19 was different from SARS and could easily have less of a health hazard, but because of how significant a toll the 2003 SARS epidemic had placed on these countries, they could not take the risk of being wrong.
In general, the parallels between comparing the 1976 Fort Dix breakout with the 1918 flu, and what we’re doing today with COVID-19 and comparing it to the 2009 swine flu outbreak, 2003 SARS, 2016-2019 Ebola, etc. are quite interesting. Obviously epidemiologists and virologists need some sort of reference to asses how serious a given outbreak is, but it is uncanny how much of the fears and discussion, sparked by a previous epidemic, hold true both now and in 1976.

February 22, 2023