-Source-USA Today-
One hundred years ago, death came with astonishing speed and horrifying agony.
Some influenza patients admitted to a Boston hospital in the morning of October 1918 would be dead by the evening, their bodies turning blue from lack of oxygen. Hospitals reported an average 100 deaths a day, overwhelming morgues.
Up to 500 million people – about one-third of the world’s population – became infected with the influenza virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. As many as 50 million died, or one out of every 30 human beings on the planet, killing more American troops than those that died on the World War I battlefields.
The intensity and speed with which it struck were almost unimaginable, the worst global pandemic in modern history.
Most chilling is that such a calamity could again occur today.
"A global influenza pandemic is number 1, 2, 3 and 4 on our list of the most feared public health crises," according to Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Another expert, Vanderbilt University infectious disease specialist William Schaffner, said "we fear flu. We know how serious it is."
It could happen again
Top health and science groups, such as the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prediction, predict influenza pandemics are nearly certain to recur.
"Influenza viruses, with the vast silent reservoir in aquatic birds, are impossible to eradicate," the World Health Organization warned. "With the growth of global travel, a pandemic can spread rapidly globally with little time to prepare a public health response."
A pandemic could also arise if a strain mutates with or develops directly from animal flu viruses, the CDC said. The main contributors to a potential pandemic are the lack of a universal vaccine and humans' lack of immunity to those potential unborn strains.
"The threat of a future flu pandemic remains," the CDC said. "A pandemic flu virus could emerge anywhere and spread globally."
If an equal ratio of Americans died in a pandemic today, that would be an unimaginable 2 million Americans. That's the current population of the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area. In a near worst-case scenario, a new, lethal and highly infectious flu virus would break out in a crowded, unprepared megacity that lacks public health infrastructure, according to Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Heath.
Such a fast-moving virus could burst from a city and catch a ride with international travelers before public health officials realize what is happening.Specifically, avian influenza viruses like H7N9 top pandemic threat lists, according to Johns Hopkins. While these strains are mostly harmless in chickens, they could potentially evolve into much deadlier strains for humans. Read more
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