Facebook And Twitter Spreading "Swine Flu Parties"

May 16, 2008 (LPAC)--Deliberately seeking out infection with "swine flu", instead of avoiding it, is being actively debated on the Internet and even among some flu experts. Infectious-disease specialists say they understand the logic: surviving the current, apparently mild strain of the virus may be protective if a more virulent strain emerges next fall. But, they are generally against it.

The first open debates of the idea of intentional self-infection was on Effect Measure, a public health blog. On April 28, a user calling herself OmegaMom posted: "Just a quick note. I just got a Tweet from a mom suggesting swine flu parties because the U.S. version seems to be a mild version. Can you speak to the utter insanity of doing this, please?"

Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu specialist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said she had been called by a reporter for a women's magazine, asking if mothers should hold swine flu parties, like chickenpox parties. "I think it's totally nuts," Dr. Moscona said. "I can't believe people are really thinking of doing it. I understand the thinking, but I just fear we don't know enough about how this virus would react in every individual. This is like the Middle Ages, when people deliberately infected themselves with smallpox. It's vigilante vaccination, you know, taking immunity into your own hands."

The idea has arisen from the history of the 1918 Spanish flu. A mild spring outbreak was followed by two deadly waves in the early and late winter of 1918-1919. Some believe, although there is little evidence beyond anecdotal reports in old newspapers, that those who got sick in the first wave were less likely to get sick in the second and third.