Before COVID, There Was Flu
By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD
Will bird flu be the source of the next global pandemic?
As a microbiology professor and a science thriller novelist, I’ve been fascinated by deadly plagues for a long time. My interest began when I discovered Richard Preston’s seminal book The Hot Zone, a novelized nonfiction account of Ebola virus coming to the US. Since then, I’ve studied both the science and the sociology of smallpox (especially the story of its eradication), polio (especially the history of polio vaccines), tuberculosis, Legionnaire’s disease, various agents of biological warfare (especially horrific acts of the Japanese Imperial Army in China during the 1930s), typhoid (and the tale of Mary), syphilis (and the infamous Tuskegee experiment), HIV, the discovery of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic resistance, and of course the emergence of coronaviruses as an unexpected threat with COVID-19.
But the granddaddy of them all for me has always been influenza.
The 1918–19 global flu pandemic loomed large in my imagination. Partly this is because of the shockingly swift severity with which that virus emerged, spread, and killed untold millions. Unlike COVID, the 1918 flu was more deadly for people in the prime of life than for the aged-and it killed much faster. A twenty-five-year-old…
