Research

The Study of a Pandemic

 

 It is an old rhyme that describes the situation in the 1918, during the first wave of influenza pandemic. What started as a mild common cold soon spread worldwide, killing an estimated 40 million people and shattering the previous notion that the flu was not a mortal illness (Pandemic). The results were devastating. The pandemic killed more people than World War Ι, and more people than 4 years of the Bubonic plague. (Molly Billings, 1997) Since, two other influenza pandemics have occurred: the 1957 Asian Influenza and the 1968 Hong Kong Influenza. While both were terrible, the 1918 influenza has been the only flu pandemic associated with mortality measured in 1000 per 100,000 population ( Belshe 2005).