John M. Barry - The Great Influenza

hmmm... ..let's breed these 12 foot killer monsters.. ..incase people are ever attacked by 12 foot killer monsters? ooooooookay?

I think they were just building "pieces" of the monsters to see how to defeat one when it actually arrives. At least that's what I got from it. Dangerous still, to be sure, but if they do nothing then while they are playing catch up millions could be dying. I became a serious believer in the lethality of influenza after reading John Barry's Historical account of the Spanish Flu of 1918. THE GREAT INFLUENZA is a book that will scare the crap out of the average person who knows not much about virology/biology. It's a little heavy in the first few chapters as he tell... [More]

The mortality rate is actually quite a bit higher for H1N1 than the seasonal flu, but since most people over the age of 60 had some amount of immunity to it, which actually helped us learn a lot about how the influenza virus mutates in general, it was not near as bad as expected.

Always nice to see a little common sense thrown into the mix.

"Seasonal flu has a death rate of less than 0.1 percent -- but still manages to kill 250,000 to 500,000 people globally every year.A category 5 pandemic would compare to the 1918 flu pandemic, which had an estimated death rate of 2 percent or more, and would kill tens of million of people.Lipsitch took information from around the world on how many people had reported they had influenza-like illness, which may or may not actually be influenza; government reports of actual hospitalizations and confirmed deaths.He came up with a range of mortality from swine flu, from 0.007 percent to 0.0... [More]

Though it did have a much higher mortality rate in the lesser developed areas, such as Mexico.

Could be this book by Tony Hillerman: a Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee interesting novel; There was also a Clive Cussler novel in which terrorists attempted to retrieve elements of the 1918 Spanish flu somewhere in the North were bodies of the victims had been buried in permafrost.

I do not need news articles, I work in this field, thanks.

I dig what you are saying Further, but technically Awest is correct. Because mortality rate refers to a number of deaths in a population, per 100,000 in a given period of time. So his statement that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic had a lower mortality rate than that years seasonal flu is correct. It did in the specified time. I also agree with what you are saying though, that H1N1 is in fact, more deadly than the seasonals that come around. If we expand the period of H1N1 infections, stretching back to cover previous pandemics than the mortality rate is higher than the yearly flu. You guys are ap... [More]

Medicine has come a long ways since the spanish flu I hope we could combate something like that a little better now. I worry about if a country wants to experiment with a biological weapon and decide to try it out. I read about a 25 year old that contracted a disease in the lab he worked at and died in two days. They are trying to locate everyone he came in contact with. One of these days something that takes longer to show symtoms will get out and by the time they realize it lots of people will be infected.