Nineteen-year-old U.S. Army Pvt. David Lewis set out from Fort Dix on a 50-mile hike with his unit on Feb. 5, 1976. On that bitter cold day, he collapsed and died. Autopsy specimens unexpectedly tested positive for an H1N1 swine influenza virus.
Virus disease surveillance at Fort Dix found another 13 cases among recruits who had been hospitalized for respiratory illness. Additional serum antibody testing revealed that over 200 recruits had been infected but not hospitalized with the novel swine H1N1 strain.
Alarm bells instantly went off within the epidemiology community: Could Pvt. Lewis’ death from an H1N1 swine flu be a harbinger of another global pandemic like the terrible 1918 H1N1 swine flu pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide?
The U.S. government acted quickly. On March 24, 1976, President Gerald Ford announced a plan to “inoculate every man, woman, and child in the United States.” On Oct. 1, 1976, the mass immunization campaign began.
