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A new influenza pandemic could mean a flu season that’s simply more severe than the usual fall or winter outbreak. That’s the best-case scenario. 

On the other hand, it could mean global economic disaster, social chaos, and enormous death tolls. That’s the worst-case scenario.

A new worker safety alert focuses on influenza, something we usually see as no more than a workplace annoyance, causing a few days off and some uncomfortable symptoms. That version, called the seasonal flu because it shows up in fall and winter, is a limited one. It’s not normally life threatening. Segments of the population such as infants, people with compromised immune systems, and the aged, however, may be at risk.

But the newest Arizona worker safety alert recommends that both workers and employers prepare for the possibility of a pandemic.

What is a pandemic? It is the worldwide spread of a new strain of flu virus. Because the strain is a new one, scientists must develop a new vaccine. That process can take months. Meanwhile, as the disease spreads around the globe, countless lives may be lost.

Consider the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. About 20% of the world’s population contracted it, and 25% to 5% died. In just 25 weeks it took the lives of 25 million people. That is a staggering number compared, for example, to the toll of the AIDS virus, which to date has caused 25 million deaths in 25 years. A pandemic occurred as recently as 1957. That pandemic killed 1 million people before being rapidly controlled.

A more recent concern is bird flu, or avian influenza, which starts in wild birds and sometimes finds its way to domestic flocks such as turkeys and chickens. In a few scattered instances, the disease has migrated to humans from birds, but never from person to person. If a mutated strain were to be transmittable between people, a pandemic would be on the horizon.

It should be noted, however, that there is no pandemic in the world at this time, and no new strain of influenza.

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