While reading and correcting a PhD thesis on ‘flu virus I thought I would check what strains I have encountered.
In February 1978 after playing a match for what was then RC Hermance (now HRRC) on a Sunday. I fell ill on the Tuesday, called home and was picked up by my mother. Unfortunately, though a very smart person, critical thinking was not part of her education, which stopped at 16, and she dabbled in homeopathy. So I got sicker, spent 4 days at 41°C or above, but happily was then under our local GP (my mum was not daft) and was receiving anti-pyrogenic injections. That time is a bit hazy, though my mother did say she thought she would lose me, so I must have been pretty ill. This turns out to be an H1N1 virus, which mainly affected those under 26 years old. As this article argues this particular ‘flu virus seems likely to have emerged from a lab (bio warfare) accident in the USSR or from vaccination (infection?) tests with live virus in China or the USSR, since the strain was almost identical to that from 26 years earlier and had not been seen in the wild in the intervening quarter century.
Fast forward to 1999 and I get a call from Tristan Bernard, past teammate at RC Hermance (now Life President, well deserved, a true evangelist for the sport) asking for a bed for him and a mate who were watching the World Cup; Liverpool was on a commute between games. A great evening, stated off in the Vines, and finished with a meal sometime after 2 am. A few days later ‘flu – this was I think brought to the UK by an Australian supporter and was an H3N2 strain virus. Not a major health incident for me though, a few days in bed and I was fine.
So the worst that rugby has done for me is ‘flu, twice, though I do have a wobbly ankle joint too.
As a side issue the murky past of the 1978 H1N1 ‘flu virus highlights the stupidity of allowing the gain of function engineering of pathogens. Regardless of whether the 1977 ‘flu virus did re-emerge from a lab, accidents, by definition, happen and viruses such as ‘flu remain an obvious war tool. I would be far more worried by N. Korean efforts in the molecular biology of viruses than by a few missiles with nuclear warheads. The latter can be stopped in flight, whereas viruses cannot.
Update 26/11/2022:
The matter of biosafety and engineering gain of function and ‘lab leaks’ has moved to centre stage with SARS-Cov-2. Previous experience has to be an important guide to best practice and it is worth noting that in February 1978 I was ultra fit (rugby, skiing, climbing) and three month later in my first climb of the year (in fact my first sporting outing) I was a bit of a wobbly mess. There is an earlier article on the subject in Nature Medicine.
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