The Worst Flu Pandemic of the 20th Century Has an Urgent Lesson for Today

If you’ve been reading about how bad the flu is this year, it’s hard not to worry, and with good reason. The 2018 influenza season has hit hard in the U.S. and elsewhere, spreading far and wide and leading to the deaths of at least 30 children. But when Laura Spinney hears the news about this flu season, she has an extra layer of context. Spinney’s recent book Pale Rider explores the legacy of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a devastating episode 100 years ago that killed perhaps as many as 100 million people across the globe. “Although this does seem to be a particularly bad flu, it is still seasonal flu, not pandemic flu,” Spinney tells TIME, when asked what goes through her mind when she reads about this year’s flu. “At the same time, we always seem to be taken by surprise. Part of the reason for that is that we have a tendency to underestimate flu as a disease. It’s not trivial even if it is ‘just,’ in quote marks, seasonal flu.” The distinction Spinney draws is important. By the standards of the World Health Organization, a pandemic must involve the global spread of a new disease. It is that novelty, and the corresponding lack of immunity among patients, that explains why a pandemic is more likely to make otherwise healthy people so ill. There were three known flu pandemics in the 20th century, of which 1918’s was the worst. In contrast, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that t...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized health healthytime Source Type: news