verbingnouns

Book Report

Over the weekend, I finished reading John Barry's The Great Influnza: the Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. I will get flu shots for the rest of my life.
The book was not what I expected. I guess I imagined it would be a historical fiction type of book - following the life story of a couple of people - based on a true story. Instead, I found the history of medicine, medical education, and the process of investigating diseases.
In the first section of the book, I was struck by the author's disdain for Christianity. He tried to place a strong antithesis between God and science and had a tone of mocking toward scientists who were Christians. After hitting that point early on, Barry left it alone for the rest of the book.
Of course, the most fascinating part of the book was the description of the particular spread of this particular flu virus around the world in 1918. The horror of the disease was truly devistating. Barry interviewed survivors who told stories of entire families dying in one day, the few doctors and nurses that were available dying, people dying of starvation and dehydration because they were too weak to get food or water and no one was available to help. People were stealing coffins. Cities and army bases were resorting to mass graves. Those who would generally be considered the strongest (ages 20-30) were the most susceptible to the disease. People wouldn't even help those who had been orphaned by the virus because they were scared to let any outsider in. Several times, I found myself fighting tears just reading of the horror.
Another thing I found amazing about the book was that, despite the remarkable death statistics, the pandemic is something many Americans know nothing about. We know about the black death. We know about the plagues of the midlle ages, we know about AIDS and SARS. Of course we know about flu in general, but not about this particular case.
At least 50 million people died - most of them with a 24 week period. Barry speculates more like 100 million died. Even in places like the US where statistics were kept, doctors and nurses stopped wasting their time counting the dead when they could be helping someone else. In the 24 years we've known about AIDS, there have been just under 25 million known deaths worldwide. Compare that to 50 to 100 million in 24 weeks! Consider that the world population was around 1/3 of this size it is now.
Because the flu virus constantly mutates and speads rapidly, it is possible that such a pandemic could strike again. Read the book. Get a flu shot.

Next on the list: Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.