TCA, vol. 73: Swine flu Part 2.
Electric boogaloo.
Big things are happening at the CDC and FDA. FDA just approved fall COVID vaccines but limited their use to only those over 65, or 6 months to 65 years with a health condition. Healthy Americans under 65 can no longer effectively get the COVID vaccine unless it’s given off-label.
CDC director Monarez was fired, then not fired, then fired again, then not fired again. Her position remains in limbo since she serves at the pleasure of the President, and he has made no statement about her as of 11:40AM on 8/28/25. Three other Directors at CDC have submitted their resignations. Their resignation letters including phrases like: “I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health……Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated.” (D Daskalakis)
Things are still very much in flux, so I’ll give this a few days for the dust to settle and come back with some analysis then.
Meanwhile…. in 1976
In part 1 of this 1976 Swine Flu Vaccine story, we discovered that after one cadet fell ill and died of swine flu infection at Fort Dix, the US Government sprung into action to head off what could have been a catastrophic 1918-like pandemic flu outbreak. We left off in mid February with an emergency meeting at the CDC. The results of that meeting was a plan to: continue to monitor Fort Dix and the surrounding area for further infection, to investigate if any of the sick soldiers had contact with pigs and to do more serologic testing to see just how many soldiers had been exposed. The results were that there were no new swine flu infections anywhere, that no soldiers had contact with pigs as far as they could tell, but there was significant exposure of the soldiers to the swine flu virus. Antibodies to the swine flu were discovered in more than 200 soldiers at Fort Dix, but there didn’t seem to be any spread outside the army base, and it is unclear how many (if any) of those 200 soldiers had actually gotten sick.
In March, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met to review these findings and came to the conclusion that a new immunization for swine flu should be made. One ACIP member summarized the committee by saying “If we believe in prevention, we have no alternative but to offer and urge the immunization of the population” but there was some dissention among the committee. Another member thought that the vaccine should be made, but stockpiled in case of emergency. Not given to the public just yet.
But time was of the essence. The 1976-77 seasonal flu vaccine manufacturing process had just wrapped, and normally, the roosters that fertilized the chicken eggs needed to make the vaccine would be slaughtered. They were still alive at this point. If the vaccine manufacturers were going to make another special swine flu vaccine, they needed to know NOW while they still had the cocks (sorry, I couldn’t help myself).
Several plans were floated that ranged from “do nothing” to “vaccinate everyone” and the head of the CDC, David Sencer, opted for the most aggressive approach: Vaccinate Everyone. He sent a memo to the Department of Health Education and Welfare or HEW (what we would now know as Health and Human Services) recommending that the federal government contract with private pharmaceutical companies to mass produce the swine flu vaccine for the entire country. The memo included this phrase: “the Administration can tolerate unnecessary health expenditures better than unnecessary death and illness if a pandemic should occur”. Later, an aide to President Ford would go on to say that this statement gave Ford no choice. “There was no way to go back on Sencer’s memo…..If we tried to do that, it would leak. That memo’s a gun to our head.”
Captain Ahab
President Gerald Ford was up for re-election that year, and distrust in the US government was at an all-time high. The country was still reeling from US withdrawal from the war in Vietnam and Nixon’s resignation due to the Watergate scandal had happened just over a year prior. In February, Ford tied with Ronald Reagan at the primary convention in Iowa, and in March, Ford actually lost to Reagan in the North Carolina primary. Ford needed a win, and he needed it now.
The very next day after losing to Reagan in North Carolina, Ford held a press conference flanked by the national heroes of polio vaccine inventions Alfred Sabin and Jonas Salk, presumably for credibilty and gravitas. He stated that he was accepting the CDC’s recommendations and asking Congress to approve funding of $137 million for the National Influenza Immunization Program (NIIP). He raised the spectre of the 1918 flu pandemic and warned that a possible swine flu outbreak could eclipse that and result in upwards of 1 million American deaths. Congress approved this bill in April and a meeting of state health department heads was convened immediately after to discuss implementing the plan (New Jersey and Wisconsin did not approve of the plan, but the NIIP rolled ahead in all 50 states regardless).
“It is not down on any map; true places never are." (Herman Melville, Moby Dick).
They were in unchartered waters. Once the trigger had been pulled by Washington, the biggest immunization program and the largest field test of vaccines in the history of the United States was underway. They were hopeful to have shots in the arm by early Fall, 1976. Then, the insurance companies got involved.
Before all this happened, in January 1976, the CDC proposed a new piece of legislation that any American harmed by an FDA approved and ACIP recommended vaccine be financially compensated. The theory was that getting vaccinated was an individual’s way of protecting society. If the individual got injured doing that, then society should protect the individual. Everyone, including the Surgeon General, was on board. Even though no such bill was passed by Spring, the cat was out of the bag that this was the direction in which America was likely to go.
By April and May, heads of pharmaceutical companies like Merck (one of the companies contracted to make swine flu vaccine) started contacting officials like Secretary Matthews of HEW saying that their insurance companies were withdrawing coverage for the swine flu vaccine and would not cover them if anyone was injured by the vaccine. They wanted government to promise some kind of protection, an indemnity that covered them in all cases except for negligence, or else they couldn’t proceed. For weeks memos flew back and forth between the pharma companies, the insurance agents, the Office of the General Council and the HEW.
Meanwhile, the government machine continued to roll. States were preparing for mass vaccination campaigns and the government was solidifying it’s infrastructure, like buying thousands of jet injector guns for quick vaccinations. Manufacturers were preparing for the possibility of having to make close to 200 million doses by November. Articles were in the paper and on the news daily about the possibility of an outbreak. But remember, the first soldier died in March. By July, there was not a single other case of swine flu identified. People started to become dubious that this outbreak would ever happen and public approval for a mass vaccination campaign plummetted from 88% favorable in April, to 66% favorable in July. The reluctance of the insurance companies to cover the vaccine and the demand that the government step in and indemnify the pharma companies led the public to believe “that there was something wrong with this vaccine” (even though it hadn’t even been made yet).
In July, most scientists in America and worldwide had backtracked on their numbers about how likely an oubreak even was. The results of more testing on the virus isolated from Fort Dix showed that it was less transmissible person-to-person than the 1918 virus, and therefore, less likely to cause a pandemic. The WHO decided on a “wait and see” approach. But the government was unstoppable.
A summer surprise
On August 2, 1976, two elderly men died of respiratory disease after attending a convention of the American Legion in Philadelphia. The very next day, Congress approved a bill to indemnify vaccine manufacturers for any liability related to the swine flu vaccine and the sensational statement “the great swine flu pandemic of 1976 has begun” was made. If you know your medical history, you may know what was really happening in Philadelphia….
By August 5, influenza was ruled out as the cause of death for those two men. But more Legionnaires began to die: there were a total of 34 deaths and 221 cases of what was soon to be known as “Legionnaire’s Disease”, a bacterial infection caused by a contaminated A/C system in the hotel where the convention was held. But the panic was real.
Conspiracy theorists, even some in Congress, claimed that the CDC was slow to identify the real cause of Legionnaire’s Disease so people would think it was swine flu and inspire more funding and motivation towards swine flu vaccine manufacture. The American Legion claimed the bacterial outbreak was a Communist plot. Congress retracted the indemnity for vaccine manufacturers, and the pharmaceutical companies stopped working. Ford got on the TV and stated that if any American died from swine flu it would be Congress’ fault.
Things were not well.
Things were going even less well over in the vaccine testing program…..
Next week, part 3 and the finale!
Stay happy, healthy, vaccinated and informed,
Jessica at TCA