Let’s face it, the flu doesn’t seem very scary. If you tell your friends that you’ve been infected with dengue, you’ll receive some very concerned letters and emails. If you tell your friends that you’ve gotten the flu, the worst you’re likely to experience is that they won’t want to shake hands with you or share your drink.
Why aren’t we scared of the flu? Historically, influenza has been the world’s largest enemy of humanity. We’ve all heard of the black plague that ravaged the world during the middle ages, or smallpox’s continuing ravage of life in less developed countries. We’re all concerned about AIDS and the millions of deaths it’s caused, but all of these actually pale in comparison to the death toll of the flu. Influenza has killed more people in one year than smallpox or the black plague during their respective 50 year reigns. Influenza has killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years. In 1918, the Spanish Flu infected 500 million people and killed 50-100 million of them. To put these extraordinary numbers in context, think of the incredible density of life in Singapore. Now imagine a virus so contagious and deadly that it infects 100x the amount of people in Singapore, and kills 1/10th to 1/5th of them. At the time, the Spanish flu killed an unbelievable 3-5% of the entire human population on earth.
Perhaps many of us aren’t scared of the flu because we’ve all experienced it ourselves. Sure, the headaches, shivering and body aches weren’t fun at all, but we’re all still alive, aren’t we? What we’re scared of is those “special” cases of influenza, like swine flu (H1N1) or avian flu (H5N8). What many don’t realize is that there is nothing “special” about these flu strains – the influenza virus is incredibly resilient and mutates every year. Many of these strains cause the same mild symptoms that we are used to experiencing, but any mutation may result in a new strain that is especially contagious, deadly, or in the worst of scenarios, both.
Worse yet, the emergence of these dangerous strains can be measured with some certainty. Over the last 300 years, the world has reliably produced 3 pandemics (wide infections by new virus strains) each century.
Every single year, influenza spreads around the world in an outbreak, infecting 3-5 million people and causing 250,000-500,000 deaths. This is considered “normal”, and not within pandemic proportions. Which, if you think about it, is quite worrisome.
My goal with this article isn’t to create paranoia in you, but to educate, and to impart a healthy fear of influenza. It’s important to be aware of how dangerous influenza can be, and with the other resources in this blog, limit its spread.
Note: the above picture is purely fiction….
INFLUENZA 
