Comment by hga | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hga | Hacker News Reader

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Really? Here are the last three big ones, and there was a bad one in 1889–1890 about which we don't know much except that "About 1 million people died":

Hong Kong Flu (1968–1969), "killed an estimated one million people worldwide." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic#Hong_Kong_Fl...

Asian Flu (1957–1958), "Estimates of worldwide deaths vary widely depending on source, ranging from 1 million to 4 million." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic#Asian_Flu_.2...

Spanish Flu (1918–1920), "It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the world's population at the time—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history."

"Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast the 1918 pandemic killed predominantly previously healthy young adults." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

That was the big one, and if you talk to your elders they'll remember the first hand stories they heard about it. Few families escaped unscathed, I lost a great-uncle. A repeat would be catastrophic, and efforts to avoid it are not "overhyped", except by the always excitable media. To dismiss such a well documented, in living history threat as being "for the benefit of pharma companies" is beyond blind.

However, the Spanish Flu had some things going for it that were rather unique and unlikely to ever occur again: vast displacements of vast numbers of people, vast numbers of people in poor health due to years of deprivation as a result of food shortages and young adults being in especially poor health (Normally men of fighting age are the healthiest members of a population. After four years in the trenches, not so much).

The Spanish Flu clouds the issue somewhat, as it's always the first thing people think of when they hear the words "flu epidemic" but it's also the most unusual of all such epidemics.

From the limited accounts I've read this doesn't explain well the US homeland experience, except of course by the late '50s the population was likely quite a bit healthier. The research on the recovered strain that reproduces in monkeys the "classic symptoms of the 1918 pandemic, and [dying] from a cytokine storm" is of concern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic#Spanish_flu_r...), as are the intensely lethal strains that keep popping up, but fortunately with little to no human to human transmision.

Many people would have been displaced in 1918-19 (though I can't find a good number). I think mostly they would have been soldiers since it was largely fought outside of cities. In any case in 2013 there are more than 1 billion people [1] who travel internationally each year so that condition isn't unique to the spanish flu.

[1] Wikipedia - tourism

Yeah, I meant soldiers. They travelled far, came into close contact with large numbers of other soldiers and then brought back the flu with them to their home communities when they were repatriated.

Modern mass tourism is pretty bad as well, but it's a far cry from having all of the young men in your town getting shipped out and back in again.

Soldiers wouldn't be infecting Pacific Islands, far northern mining camps, where scientists first tried to get a copy of its genetic material, people in and around Brevig Mission, Alaska (fatality rate 85%) where the first useful sample came from.

It's been awhile since I've read up on it, but the speed at which it spread, prior to air travel, was frighteningly fast.

Uh - is that assuming no one will be hungry and displaced because of climate chaos?

Agreed. This is why the scientists playing with creating influenza variants freak me out. I suspect they have the 1918 variant on hand, combine that with something a bit slower to present and we'd have a winner.

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