A Month of Literary Gratitude, Day 17 - The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Berry

Thursday, November 17, 2016

The Great Influenza by John M. Berry is not a book for the faint of heart or those who do not lack in imagination. It is scary. REALLY scary.


And the reason it's so scary is because it's true. This pandemic killed over 100 million people in 24 months, and one of the things that made it unique was that the mortality rate was worst among young, healthy people in the prime of their lives. Typically when we thing of the flu we assume that the most vulnerable people are the very old, the very young, and those with compromised immune systems. Not so here, and this flu was not fucking around.

Such a strain of flu in our modern age of global travel and commerce would be much more deadly. And we don't really have a good handle on what to do in order to contain it should it arise. Yikes. 


1 comments:

Random Michelle K said...

Even more terrifying is The Coming Plague (1994) by Laurie Garrett, which tells you about all the different diseases that are hanging out just waiting for a chance to get at people.

Ebola was one of the diseases that got a chapter, but there are plenty of others.

But the most terrifying part is that so many of these diseases could be eradicated or controlled with good public health and poverty programs.

FREX, the avian influenza which has popped up sporadically gets into the human population because the poor often have to keep their chickens in their *houses*. Once a human is infected, there is the possibility that the avian flu can mix with a human flu virus to create something that can be passed from human to human. With proper housing, you reduce that risk.

But to reassure you somewhat, the public health community is well-aware of these risks and dangers, and there are plans for how to deal with it. The problem is that quarantine laws (as we saw with the last Ebola outbreak) haven't been tested in decades (a century, really), and that is where things could fall apart.

Also, another possible reassurance is that there are packs stored around the country with stockpiles of medical supplies that can be sent out to deal with any medical emergency. Additionally, I know that in this area at least, there are regular emergency preparedness drills, where a day is set aside for a fake crisis, with volunteers pretending to be victims of whatever the trauma is. The emergency personnel don't know *what* the emergency will be, so they have to diagnose and treat on the ground.

Exercises like this allow these groups to determine weaknesses in their systems (consider the communications issues that happened after 9-11) and how to be better prepared.

Of course, this all depends upon continued public health funding, and the DHHS isn't a money making operation.