As the U.S. goes about recovering from the double whammy punch of the two hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast region over the past month or so, this NY Times article reminds us that a potentially much more serious threat to our well-being is looming on the horizon:

“Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history’s most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.
The work, being published in the journals Nature and Science, involved getting the complete genetic sequence of the 1918 virus, using techniques of molecular biology to synthesize it, and then using it to infect mice and human lung cells in a specially equipped, secure lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The findings, the scientists say, reveal a small number of genetic changes that may explain why the virus was so lethal. The work also confirms the legitimacy of worries about the bird flu viruses that are now emerging in Asia.
The new studies find that today’s bird flu viruses share some of the crucial genetic changes that occurred in the 1918 flu. The scientists suspect that with the 1918 flu, changes in just 25 to 30 out of about 4,400 amino acids in the viral proteins turned the virus into a killer. The bird flus, known as H5N1 viruses, have a few, but not all of those changes.”

Here is a companion NY Times article on the growing political concern in Washington over the prospects of an epidemic. The 1918 flu pandemic killed an estimated 25 to 50 million people and, as the articles report, we are not much better protected from the virus now as the world was then. Even the mere reconstruction of the virus for research purposes has raised concerns:

Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, said he had concerns about the reconstruction of the virus and about publication of procedures to reconstruct the virus. “There is a risk verging on inevitability, of accidental release of the virus; there is also a risk of deliberate release of the virus,” he said, adding that the 1918 flu virus “is perhaps the most effective bioweapons agent ever known.”

During a closed door Senate briefing last week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael O. Leavitt and other senior government health officials warned of the implications of such a flu pandemic in the U.S.:

Mr. Leavitt warned in the briefing last week that an outbreak could cause 100,000 to 2 million deaths and as many as 10 million hospitalizations in the United States, one person who was present said. Those numbers have been presented publicly many times before. But hearing them in closed session gave them urgency, some who were at the meeting said.

Since 1997, avian flu strains have infected thousands of birds in 11 countries, primarily in Southeast Asia. So far, it is probable that virtually all of the 100+ people who have been infected with the disease (about 60 of whom have died) received the virus directly from infected birds. Thus, at least to date, there has been no or very little transmission between people, which is a requirement for an epidemic. Moreover, if the virus does begin being transmitted between humans, then there is a possibility that the mutated virus may be weaker and less lethal than the viral strain contracted directly from birds.
However, this remains a huge potential public health problem and not one that should be ignored merely because the pandemic may not occur or may be years away. Here’s hoping that the federal government does a better job planning for this potential problem than it did for a direct hit by a category 4 hurricane on New Orleans.
Update: Eric Berger chimes in with this informative post over at his very smart SciGuy blog.