Quotes from John M. Barry

Spain actually had few cases before May, but the country was neutral during the war. That meant the government did not censor the press, and unlike French, German, and British newspapers—which printed nothing negative, nothing that might hurt morale—Spanish papers were filled with reports of the disease, especially when King Alphonse XIII fell seriously ill.

But if viruses perform only one task, they are not simple. Nor are they primitive. Highly evolved, elegant in their focus, more efficient at what they do than any fully living being, they have become nearly perfect infectious organisms. And the influenza virus is among the most perfect of these perfect organisms.

The disease soon became known as "Spanish influenza" or "Spanish flu," very likely because only Spanish newspapers were publishing accounts of the spread of the disease that were picked up in other countries.

Influenza is an RNA virus. So are HIV and the coronavirus.

In its wake followed a keening sound that rose from the throats of mourners like the wind.

enormous gap existed in the United States between the best medical practice and the average, and an unbridgeable chasm separated the best from the worst.

Too many physicians continued their adherence to grand philosophical systems

Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

meal" every day. All these sacrifices were of

By 1918 humankind was fully modern, and fully scientific, but too busy fighting itself to aggress against nature. Nature, however, chooses its own moments. It chose this moment to aggress against man, and it did not do so prodding languidly. For the first time, modern humanity, a humanity practicing the modern scientific method, would confront nature in its fullest rage.

Whenever a new variant of the influenza virus does adapt to humans, it will threaten to spread rapidly across the world. It will threaten a pandemic.

But influenza is not simply a bad cold. It is a quite specific disease, with a distinct set of symptoms and epidemiological behavior. In humans the virus directly attacks only the respiratory system, and it becomes increasingly dangerous as it penetrates deeper into the lungs. Indirectly it affects many parts of the body, and even a mild infection can cause pain in muscles and joints, intense headache, and prostration.

Throughout known history there have been periodic pandemics of influenza, usually several a century. They erupt when a new influenza virus emerges. And the nature of the influenza virus makes it inevitable that new viruses emerge.

Influenza causes pneumonia either directly, by a massive viral invasion of the lungs, or indirectly—and more commonly—by destroying certain parts of the body's defenses and allowing so-called secondary invaders, bacteria, to infest the lungs virtually unopposed.

Religion is inherently conservative; even one proposing a new God only creates a new order. The question "why" is too deep for science. Science instead believes it can only learn "how" something occurs.

In 1910 they distinguished between what they called "typical" pneumococci and "atypical" pneumococci.

By entering the cell, as opposed to fusing with the cell on the cell membrane—which many other viruses do—the influenza virus hides from the immune system. The body's defenses cannot find it and kill it.

Public health measures lack the drama of pulling someone back from the edge of death, but they save lives by the millions.

From the time an influenza virus first attaches to a cell to the time the cell bursts generally takes about ten hours, although it can take less time or, more rarely, longer. Then a swarm of between 100,000 and 1 million new influenza viruses escapes the exploded cell. The word "swarm" fits in more ways than one. •

Jacob Henle, the first scientist to formulate the modern germ theory, echoed Francis Bacon when he said, "Nature answers only when she is questioned.

They had not given quinine or typhoid vaccine to influenza victims in the wild hope that because it worked against malaria or typhoid it might work against influenza.

Science is at all times potentially revolutionary; any new answer to a seemingly mundane question about "how" something occurs may uncover chains of causation that throw all preceding order into disarray and that threaten religious beliefs as well.

and in contrast to earlier stage of epidemic disease now affects many schoolchildren;

They knew so little. So little. They knew only that isolation worked. The New York State Training School for Girls had quarantined itself, even requiring people delivering supplies to leave them outside. It had had no cases.