What happened: Within one week in mid-April 2009, a 10-year-old boy and a 9-

year-old girl in Southern California, both of whom came down sick with the flu,
tested positive for a new strain—H1N1. On April 24 of that year, the WHO
announced that in March and April, Mexico had reported about 900 cases
suspected to have been caused by the same strain, with 60 suspected deaths. The
WHO officially declared a pandemic on June 11. By June of that summer, all 50
American states had reported cases, and more than 30 summer camps reported
outbreaks. The flu receded as the summer wore on, then had a second wave in
the fall of that year.
Finally, in August 2010, the WHO declared the end of the pandemic. Eventually,
researchers estimated that at least 300,000 people died (though estimates are
necessarily fudgy). Unlike with a more typical seasonal flu, elderly people were
less likely to fall sick, because of immunity that derived from a flu strain that
circulated in the middle of the 20th century.
How we responded: For this outbreak, we were primed to panic, maybe because
of the precedent of SARS and bird flu. Egypt ordered 300,000 pigs killed. At the
height of the outbreak, in the summer of 2009, the emergency room at St. Luke’s,
in New York City, saw double the usual number of patients—most of them didn’t
have the flu but were just scared they had it. Colleges canceled summer programs
in Mexico; scammers sold shampoos and hand sprays supposed to protect against
“swine flu”; members of Congress pressed the administration to seal the border
with Mexico, against the CDC’s advice. The American government went all-in on
vaccination and stockpiled anti-virals, despite growing skepticism among
scientists about the effectiveness of those measures.
What we learned: “This pandemic has turned out to be much more fortunate
than what we feared a little over a year ago,” Margaret Chan of the WHO said in a
statement on Aug. 10, 2010. “We have been aided by pure good luck. The virus
did not mutate during the pandemic to a more lethal form,” widespread
resistance to oseltamivir did not develop, and the vaccine worked well.
The relative mildness of swine flu, after so much buildup, triggered some
suspicion. European countries, especially, felt deflated, having spent money on
vaccine stockpiles. In June 2010, a joint investigation by the British Medical
Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism concluded that the WHO had
taken advice from scientists in the course of its pandemic planning who were also
being paid by pharmaceutical companies that produced vaccines and anti-virals.
Responding to this investigation, the WHO convened an external Review
Committee, whose proceedings were to be made open to the public.
The committee recommended that in future, the WHO should increase
transparency around its decision-making process, but found that there wasn’t any
improper influence exercised in this instance. But, for those media consumers
who heard about the accusation but not the exoneration, this affair certainly can’t
have boosted their trust in international public health authorities.