A killer flu pandemic could be poised to sweep the globe “tomorrow,” killing as many as 33 million people in its first 200 days. A catastrophic shift in the flu virus could wipe out 300 million people, a leading flu expert has warned.
The warning comes as vicious outbreaks sweep across the United States and Britain during the northern hemisphere’s winter. One of these unusually deadly strains first emerged in Australia last year, and has since been dubbed “Aussie Flu.” Officially designated H3N2, this variant has proven resistant to the latest flu vaccine and has become the most common circulating virus.
It’s also proven particularly deadly to the elderly. ‘Aussie Flu’, along with another strain, ‘Japanese Flu,’ are being blamed in a more than 40 per cent surge in flu-related deaths in the US and UK.
Dr. Jonathan Quick, chair of the Global Health Council, said the rapidly shapeshifting flu virus is “the most diabolic, hardest-to-control, and fastest-spreading potential viral killer known to humankind.”
Describing what sounds like scenes from a horror film, Quick warned of starvation, medicine supplies running low, energy systems crippling under the pressure and the collapse of the global economy.
While his worst case predictions are unlikely at the moment, there could be pestilences in the last days that meet such a description.
And what could cause such devastation, on a global scale? “The most likely culprit will be a new and unprecedentedly deadly mutation of the influenza virus,” Quick said. “The conditions are right, it could happen tomorrow.”
Flu pandemics happen once in a generation, Professor Robert Dingwall, another flu expert, said. He explained that for a pandemic to happen, there needs to be a “dramatic shift” in the flu virus — something we can expect to see roughly every 20 to 40 years.
The last pandemic hit in 2009-10 when swine flu emerged in Mexico, while the deadly Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 claimed up to 100 million lives — infecting a third of the world’s population.
“A pandemic is when we see a shift, a really radical change that means the population has no real resistance to it. “It seems that’s what happened in 1918 with Spanish flu and 1956 with Asian flu.”
But while swine flu was classed a pandemic, it wasn’t the “big bang” it could have been. “It did infect a lot of people,” he said. “But it wasn’t very virulent.”
Despite his terrifying predictions, Quick said there are measures we can take to ward off the inevitable. Scientists are researching a universal vaccine.
The single most vital thing that must be done is to develop a universal flu vaccine, he said. The aim is for a universal vaccine is to replace the yearly jab, which each year is developed based on predictions from the World Health Organization.
When it comes to preventing a pandemic, universal vaccine aside, Dingwall warned it can be very difficult, once the bug is out there. He said: “Flu is very infectious and there is nothing much you can do to stop it moving about the planet.
The latest figures showed flu is still proving a problem across the UK, but that infections have “peaked,” PHE said.
“And there shall be… pestilences… in diverse places.” Matthew 24:7