2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic

The 2009 H1N1 flu was the first pandemic of the century, caused by a swine-origin virus that emerged in Mexico and the United States in spring 2009. The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on April 25, then pandemic phase 6 on June 11, and the post-pandemic period on August 10, 2010. The official count stops at 18,449 laboratory-confirmed deaths. A CDC-led study published in June 2012 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases put the true first-year toll at between 151,700 and 575,400 deaths. That is the scale of a seasonal flu, far from 1918. One feature stands out: about 80% of deaths were in people under 65, and years of life lost were three times those of an ordinary season. For life and group benefits insurers, claims stayed within annual noise. Reserved mortality shocks were left untouched, and no mortality catastrophe bond was hit. The costs came from elsewhere: sick leave, health hospitalizations, business continuity plans, public vaccination campaigns. France had ordered some 94 million doses, much of the order later canceled or destroyed. The lesson for wording is lasting. A contract triggered by the WHO declaration alone would have paid in 2009 for a low-severity event. Later parametric structures therefore added thresholds on cases, deaths and growth.