President Obama declared H1N1 a public health emergency before anyone in the United States died

President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus is being defended with an attack on how President Barack Obama handled the outbreak of H1N1, also known as swine flu, in 2009.

The headline of an article shared on Facebook made this claim:

"Flashback: Obama waited six months to call swine flu an emergency after thousands died."

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

The article was published on Prntly, which describes itself as a conservative news website that defends Trump. The article goes on to say that "it wasn’t until six months after" H1N1 became a global pandemic that "then-President Obama declared a public health emergency on what was already a pandemic. By that time, the disease had infected millions of Americans and more than 1,000 people had died in the U.S."

Not only is this timeline wrong, but the story and headline eliminate important facts and distort others, imparting a false narrative that social media users are resharing.

Let’s take a look.

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The H1N1 influenza virus was discovered in the United States in the spring of 2009 and spread around the world.

It was originally referred to as "swine flu" because many genes in the virus were similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs in North America.

It was serious. From April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, in the United States, there were 60.8 million cases of swine flu, 274,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated.

Obama and his administration issued two emergency declarations, but the article refers only to one.

Obama’s acting director of health and human services declared H1N1 a public health emergency on April 26, 2009.

That was when only 20 cases of H1N1 — and no deaths — around the country had been confirmed.