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In 2009, global health officials started tracking a new kind of flu. It appeared first in Mexico, in March, and quickly infected thousands. Influenza tends to kill the very young and the very old, but this flu was different. It seemed to be severely affecting otherwise healthy young adults.
American epidemiologists soon learned of cases in California, Texas, and Kansas. By the end of April, the virus had reached a high school in Queens, where a few kids, returning from a trip to Mexico, had infected a third of the student body. The Mexican government closed its schools and banned large gatherings, and the U.S. considered doing the same. “It was a very scary situation,” Richard Besser, who was then the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told me. Early estimates suggested that the “swine flu,” as the new strain became known, killed as many as fourteen percent of those it infected—a case fatality rate more than two hundred times higher than typical seasonal flu. The virus soon spread to more than a hundred and fifty countries, and the Obama Administration considered delaying the start of school until after Thanksgiving when a second wave could be underway. Manufacturers worried about vaccine supplies. Like most flu vaccines, the one for the swine flu was grown in chicken eggs. “Even if you yell at them, they don’t grow faster,” Tom Frieden, who replaced Besser as the director of the C.D.C., said, at a press conference.
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Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker
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James' World 2 
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