Quotes About Influenza

John Barry's The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

The Great Influenza, a book by the historian John Barry about the 1918 flu pandemic.

journalist asked her about it. "What scares me most and what I think about most," said Charity, "is our ability to respond to a new pathogen, maybe one we've never seen before, or an old pathogen, like influenza that's just mutated. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 was over 100 years ago now. The world is overdue for a pandemic like that, whether it's influenza or something else. And in public health, we know that we have to be prepared for that.

What scares me most and what I think about most," said Charity, "is our ability to respond to a new pathogen, maybe one we've never seen before, or an old pathogen, like influenza that's just mutated. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 was over 100 years ago now. The world is overdue for a pandemic like that, whether it's influenza or something else. And in public health, we know that we have to be prepared for that.

It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.

From a population point of view, it's actually very important that as few people as possible get the flu. People getting the flu is not a private matter. The risk for healthy people is really about your friends and neighbors and fellow travelers.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the use of glucose during influenza infections significantly increases viral load and illness parameters. Insulin, on the other hand, reduces them considerably and also has the added benefit of lowering HMGB1 levels.

Unintentional spreading of infection due to poor hygiene (e.g., neglecting to cover coughs) and lack of vaccination is a more likely way in which influenza will be disseminated during the next pandemic.

Pandemic influenza is by nature an international issue; it requires an international solution.

Influenza. If you close your eyes and say the word aloud, it sounds lovely. It would make a good name for a pleasant, ancient Italian village.

influenza viruses manage to wreak their harm with very little genetic information—just thirteen genes.

Like cold-causing rhinoviruses, influenza viruses manage to wreak their harm with very little genetic information—just thirteen genes.

I was born in 1920, during the influenza pandemic, and I'm going to die in 2020, during the outbreak of coronavirus. What an elegant name for such a terrible scourge.

No nation had wanted to report the true number of deaths. Only Spain, who had remained neutral in the conflict, shared news of the illness, which is why it ended up being called the Spanish influenza.

Ninguna nación admitía el número de sus bajas; sólo España, que se mantuvo neutral en el conflicto, difundía noticias sobre la enfermedad y por eso acabaron llamándola «influenza española».

Everyone is calling it the Spanish flu, even though it didn't originate in Spain. No one is sure where it came from. Spain has been the first to speak openly about it in its newspapers.

Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.

least 40 million people died as a result of the epidemic, the majority of them suffocated by a lethal accumulation of blood and other fluid in the lungs. Ironically, unlike most flu epidemics, but like the war that preceded and spread it, the influenza of 1918 disproportionately killed young adults. One in every hundred American males between the ages of 25 and 34 fell victim to the 'Spanish Lady'. Strikingly, the global peak of mortality was in October and November 1918.

in Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, where 45 percent of all civilian deaths were people aged fifteen to thirty-five.97 Death was not caused by the influenza virus itself so much as by the body's immunological reaction to the virus. Perversely, this meant that individuals with the strongest immune systems were more likely to die than those with weaker immune systems.

least 40 million people died as a result of the epidemic, the majority of them suffocated by a lethal accumulation of blood and other fluid in the lungs. Ironically, unlike most flu epidemics, but like the war that preceded and spread it, the influenza of 1918 disproportionately killed young adults. One in every hundred American males between the ages of 25 and 34 fell victim to the 'Spanish Lady'.

Two epidemics swept the world in 1918. One was Spanish influenza, the first recorded outbreak of which was at a Kansas army base in March 1918. As if to mock the efforts of men to kill one another, the virus spread rapidly across the United States and then crossed to Europe on the crowded American troopships.

the disturbing possibility that the Spanish Lady might stage a return visit,

Influenza had brought the all-conquering German army to its knees, while the Allies, stricken too, took advantage of their enemy's weakness to regroup.

THE ACTUAL WORD 'influenza' dates from around 1500, when the Italians introduced the term for diseases that they attributed to the 'influence' of the stars. Another possible origin was the Italian phrase influenza di freddo, the influence of the cold.