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The great influenza pandemic: Could it happen again?
Imagine an international influenza epidemic that kept on spreading, infecting 20% to 40% of the world's population.
More than 20 million people dead in less than a year, about 500,000 of them in the United States alone. It actually
happened, in 1918. They called it the "Spanish Flu."
Between September 1918 and April 1919, the Spanish Flu devastated communities all around the world. It attacked young
and old alike, sometimes with shocking speed. Victims were often said to wake up feeling perfectly healthy, and fall ill
and die by the end of the day. Others might survive the initial illness, only to develop pneumonia and die days or weeks later.
Doctors, nurses, and emergency workers were particularly hard-hit. Then, in the spring of 1919, the epidemic faded away and did not return.
The Spanish Flu was an unusually severe influenza pandemic, but it was not the first or last one. The Asian Flu epidemic of
1957-1958 and the epidemics of Hong Kong Flu that struck in 1968-1969 and again in 1970 and 1972 show how easy it is for
influenza to spread among people who lack immunity to a new strain of virus. Today, with frequent airline travel linking the
global community ever more closely, a new strain of influenza could travel around the world in a very short time.
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Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pandemic influenza. Available on-line at
http://www.hhs.gov/od/nvpo/pandemics/fluprint.htm.
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For U.S. Residents Only
