by KYW's Ian Bush
As health officials look forward and try to contain the swine flu outbreak, some are looking back to a scare more than three decades ago, right in our own backyard.
It was 1976. The death of a soldier at Fort Dix amid an outbreak of swine flu at the Burlington County, NJ base prompted fears nationwide:
(Televised public service announcement): "Get a shot of protection. The swine flu shot."
Tens of millions got the vaccine; no one else died.
There were health problems victims contended were related to the shot itself, including a disturbing number of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome among those receiving the immunizations.
The vaccination program was ended in December 1976; the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. David Sencer, was dismissed several months later. He's since written about the period for the CDC publication "Emerging Infectious Diseases."
Sencer doesn't credit the jab for preventing epidemic; simply, the disease didn't leave Fort Dix.
But the feds did learn they'd have start saying more, much earlier, to tell the public what they need to know to prevent panic. It's something he says they're doing right this time:
"What we say today may be wrong, and tomorrow we may tell you something differently, but you have to expect in the early stages of a situation like this, things are going to change rapidly."
He says they've been forthright with information, and they're planning for the long-term -- without repeating past mistakes.
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