One could easily remember that not too long ago the world was in a panic at the possibility of the outbreak of the flu. But the world was not terrified at just any flu, it was the avian flu. It is a general term used for a specific strain of a virus. Avian flu refers to any strain of the Influenza A virus that has adapted to a bird host. The recent scare was caused by the H5N1 strain of the Influenza virus. It killed millions birds and even a few people in China and other parts of Asia. The possibility of it spreading to humans (as well as the fact that the media just loves to try and scare us shitless at the drop of a hat) let to a panic. Yet it was not without cause.
Almost a century ago in 1918 there was a pandemic of avian flu. This pandemic was so disastrous that it killed more people than WWI. The 1918-1919 outbreak of the flu killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. This was the worst outbreak in human history. It took more lives in a single year than the bubonic plague took in four. To put it in perspective, WWII the most destructive war in human history, the greatest taking of life in one event, killed about 40 million people. That was in a span from 1938 to 1945 and nuclear weapons were used. In one year this virus killed almost as many people as six years of humanity working as hard as it possibly could to kill itself. This is cause to give one a moment of pause; could it happen again? They feared it then, as we fear it now, because of one simple fact: It can.
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