To begin with, the 1976 swine flu outbreak, turned out to be more of a debacle and fiasco than any real threat. This particular H1N1 influenza strain first appeared in January 19 through February 9 and did not go outside Fort Dix, New Jersey. What most people remember about the outbreak was the encouragement of mass immunization that was propelled by the United States government. One person died as a result of contracting the virus. Thirteen people were hospitalized because of the strain.

But here’s the real kicker about the 1976 swine flu outbreak. The government and other health organizations in the U.S. pushed for everyone to be immunized. The end result was 25 deaths and five hundred cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome. Here’s how it all began – in late January 1976, several recruits at Fort Dix began complained of respiratory illness. An Army private, David Lewis died after going on a forced run. Four of his fellow soldiers were subsequently hospitalized. Two weeks after Private Lewis died, health officials announced to the public that swine flu was the cause of death and that this flu strain was very closely related to the 1918 flu pandemic.

Alarmed that the country could be headed for another pandemic, public health officials pressed President Gerald Ford to encourage all Americans to be vaccinated for the disease despite the fact that neurological damage could be caused by one version of the vaccine. More than 40 million Americans were immunized from October 1976 through December 1976. The program was suspended on December 16, 176 after there were reports of around 54 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome across ten states.