Word: flu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plane crossed the Pacific, Fukuda consoled himself with the fact that in six months only two cases of H5 flu had occurred. Upon his arrival, a medical officer with the Hong Kong Department of Health greeted him warmly, then gently told him of the latest discoveries. "The good news," the officer said, "is we will have a nice dinner. The bad news: there are two more cases...
...Hospital in Kowloon, at the far side of Victoria Harbor, where a three-year-old boy had been admitted with what turned out to be a fatal respiratory illness. Her lab quickly determined that the infectious agent was some type of Influenza A, one of two broad classes of flu virus that commonly affect humans. To identify the specific strain or subtype, the lab tested the sample, using reagents distributed by the World Health Organization. The test kits triggered no response...
...intrigued but not terribly concerned. While she did not often receive flu viruses that resisted identification, it did happen. She retested the virus and again got no reaction. A month later, she forwarded samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and to England's Mill Hill, two laboratories in the top tier of a quiet but elaborate global surveillance network that tracks changes in the world's flu viruses. Almost as an afterthought, Lim sent a sample to Jan De Jong, a virologist at the Dutch National Institute of Health and the Environment who liked...
...most of the world has heard of the "bird flu" that emerged in Hong Kong last year, infecting 18 people and killing six. One patient, a young woman, remains on a ventilator under intensive care. Although no new cases have been discovered since Dec. 28, virologists consider the emergence of this new virus one of the most significant and worrisome medical events of the day. And they don't think the danger has passed. In fact, the critical period could just now be arriving in Hong Kong. This is the start of the traditional flu season, when the new virus...
...good gauge of whether or not a disease has become a plague is what people are calling it. During the influenza epidemic of 1917, people abridged the disease's funny Latinate name to make it "the flu." The middle ages renamed the bubonic plague symptoms "posy," and our era has made us all familiar with the rather scientific acronym "AIDS." At Harvard today, a similar name adjustment has occurred. Suddenly, instead of "repetitive strain injury" or "repetitive stress injury" or "tendonitis" or any other variations on the theme, even unafflicted Harvard students have started to call our increasingly common problem...