It’s the 2009 Mexican flu - or is it S-OIV H1N1(A)?

Millions of people have already been infected by the new pandemic influenza virus, and the number may well climb over a billion. The CDC recently estimated that up to 40% of U.S. citizens may be infected over the next year, a startlingly high number. Close to home (for me), several children in my neighborhood came down with influenza just last week. They all recovered, fairly quickly. They almost certainly had the new H1N1 pandemic strain, which seems to be spreading rapidly despite the fact that flu season is normally in the winter. A postdoc in my lab was the first person I know who caught the new pandemic flu – he came down with it in early May, and was very sick for a week. (He stayed home, and no one else was infected, as far as I know.)

But the media are still calling this “swine flu”, in headlines all over the world. Government authorities decided early on to call it 2009 H1N1(A), a catchy name if there ever was one. In one of the earliest scientific publications, CDC scientists called it S-OIV, for “swine-origin influenza virus”.

Nice try, but the media aren't buying it. The problem with the name "swine flu" is that it’s not a swine flu any more. Once an influenza virus has become established in humans, it’s a human flu. If you catch the “swine flu”, you’ll get it from another human – not from a pig. So what to call it?

The choice of a name is actually pretty clear: each of the three 20th-century flu pandemics was named after the geographic location where people believed it originated: the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957 Asian flu, and the 1968 Hong Kong flu. As best we can tell, the new H1N1(A) virus originated in Mexico, and therefore we should call it the 2009 Mexican flu. This will be accurate and consistent with historical precedent.

And by the way, this idea has already been proposed, but the Mexican government objected, so government health authorities, including the WHO, immediately backed down and looked for a more politically acceptable name. Several countries have already started using the term Mexican flu, including Belgium and Israel, as the AP reported yesterday – although the English-speaking world is still using “swine flu.”

As a side note, we now know that the Spanish flu should have been called “American flu” or possibly “Kansas flu” (where it really started), but during World War I, the U.S. didn’t want to admit that it had a serious health crisis, nor did any of the European countries involved in WWI. The Spanish got stuck with the name – incorrectly – because they didn’t try to hide the fact that they had a pandemic on their hands.

So a note to headline writers in the media: I don’t blame you for calling it swine flu and ignoring alternative names such as S-OIV and H1N1(A). But it’s misleading to use the term “swine flu”, which is already used to refer to influenza viruses circulating among pigs. Calling it “swine flu” also led to the foolish decision by some countries to slaughter large numbers of pigs, which was completely ineffective at controlling the spread of the new virus.

It’s a human flu, and it started in Mexico, so let’s call it Mexican flu.