On February 3, 1976, the New Jersey State Health Department sent the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta isolates of virus from recruits at Fort Dix military base, New Jersey, who had influenza-like illnesses. Some of the isolates were similar to 1918 pandemic, thus it was labelled “swine flu” but “surveillance activities at Fort Dix gave no indication that recruits had contact with pigs” [contrary to this report]. [1, 2] One soldier died.
On March 10, 1976 the ACIP committee determined at person-to-person transmission had occurred, they recommended that an immunization program be launched to prevent the effects of a possible pandemic.
The vaccination program was established to “vaccinate 140 million Americans against the swine flu” in the “hopes to immunize “every man, woman, and child””. 45 million people were vaccinated in 10 weeks with what became known as the “swine flu vaccine”.
The program was halted in many states due to unexpected high cases (1/100,000) of debilitating Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) reported following vaccination “resulting in 53 deaths“. [3, 4, 5, 6] The WHO claimed “the risk of GBS from the vaccine is slight” and it’s cause is “unknown”.
On December 16, 1976, Dr. Theodore Cooper, Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, announced the suspension of the swine flu mass vaccination program, “in the interests of safety of the public, in the interest of credibility, and in the interest of the practice of good medicine”. He acknowledged it would be “difficult to get the public to take flu shots again”.
The virus never spread beyond Fort Dix, army base and fizzled out without triggering a pandemic! [7, 8]