Word: flu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last time a new influenza virus reached pandemic levels was in 1968, but the episode was not significantly deadlier than a typical bad flu season. Few people who lived through it even knew it occurred. Still, it killed 34,000 Americans. The 1918 pandemic was far more lethal. It killed 675,000 Americans at a time when the U.S. population was 100 million. Fifty million to 100 million people perished worldwide in the 1918 pandemic, according to Nobel laureate F. Macfarlane Burnet. The flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years. The difference...
...past two years, scientists, public-health officials and even a high-ranking government official or two have warned about the potential danger of a deadly worldwide outbreak, or pandemic, of avian flu. But it took a couple of furies named Katrina and Rita to really bring home how much can go wrong if you don't plan for major emergencies...
Suddenly old warnings about flu, which had seemed so remote, were sounding a lot scarier. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared in September, once again, that as far as an influenza pandemic is concerned, the question is not if but when, not whether millions would die but how many millions. President George W. Bush talked last week for the first time about how he, as Commander in Chief, might respond to an epidemic, raising the possibility of using troops to enforce quarantines. He also recommended that folks read John Barry's book on the 1918 pandemic that killed more than...
...prospect of a flu epidemic makes us wobbly. We bounce back and forth between being scared silly and just plain apathetic. Influenza regularly kills 1 million people a year--36,000 of them in the U.S.--yet most of us don't get vaccinated. The new threat requires a different response--a healthy respect for the toll that even a moderate pandemic may take on our society and just enough genuine fear to figure out some smart steps to take to minimize the damage. "We need to scare people into their wits, not out of them," says Michael Osterholm, director...
...DOES A FLU THAT KILLS BIRDS BECOME A FLU THAT KILLS PEOPLE...