HAD YOUR FLU SHOT?
It disturbs me when I find sol many people taking the threat so lightly. It is not that I think we ought to be complaining of symptoms or putting on sad faces and mope around worried worthless about possible epidemics striking at any moment.
I do not see any reason or stay in a constant state of emergency, but I do think we ought to know the facts - that ,for instance, it has been influenza which has killed more than anything else. It has happened in relatively modern times, too. In 1918 and part of 1919 - twenty months more or less - 675,000 American citizens died of flu infection.
We were lucky. World wide estimates show that in that in that same period about
one-sixth of the total population of planet Earth died of influenza; between fifty-one and one hundred million people died. Figure have to be pretty much guesswork in China, much of Africa, India and other heavily populated areas.
The total killed here in the United States was large enough to actually shortened our national life span by ten per cent or or more because the killer disease chose victims between twenty and forty years of age. The first suggestion that a potential epidemic might be underway came from Kansas where a U. S. Army installation reported more than usual number of cases of a flu-like nature and a rising death toll because of it. A quick survey of other military installations around the nation showed that such an epidemic was, indeed, underway. The disease spread rapid and troops shipping out for overseas took it with them. The virus in which the 1918 attack was set was isolated and treatment devised but not quickly enough to forestall numerous deaths in many lands.
Many people today are familiar with the symptoms of the malady we rather lightly call "the flu bug." We even use a saying 1918 survivors said: "I felt like somebody had beat me all over with a big board" . We also hear people say "Oh, he's o.k! He had touch of the flu." We should remember that the 1918 never did find out what caused the flare up at that time. They now know that the virus which caused the earlier trouble is not all that different from those causing "Avian Flu" today.
We seem to have "Killer Flu" on Death Row. But, how securely?
A.L. M. April 1, 2006 [c417wds]
