Post about "pandemic"

The Great Influenza by John M. Barry is suddenly shooting up on the sales lists. As I write this, its #20,474 at Barnes & Noble, and has hit #3,009 at Amazon. Meanwhile at Twitter “Swine Flu” is trending and some of the comments are scarier than the potential porcine pandemic itself.

Between those with smug security because they don’t eat pork, to those who brag that fear fatigue from 8 years of color-coded panic has desensitized them to any threat, we’ve got a crucible that could concentrate this possible pandemic instead of prepare us for it.

There are lots of reasons to read Barry’s book. Even if this flu mutates into mild in the next few days or weeks (which is at least as possible as a pandemic), The Great Influenza tells far more than the story of virii. It describes how the allopaths rose to power in world medicine, and the abysmal state of medical schools and medical research in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But it concentrates on the many diverse factors that came together to make the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920 the deadliest plague in recent history. WWI moved mass populations and housed them in close quarters.  These were often people who had no history of travel and therefore little or no exposure to a wide range of virii. This was the powderkeg but a chance mutation was the spark.

In all these intervening years with all our gained knowledge we have also been filling up a new powderkeg. Though most have much greater general immunities, some of our population does not. Our international globetrotting on jets may more than overcome our increased immunity.

But in many ways we’re far better prepared. We have an international media presence that can warn a public in minutes that used to take weeks or months, along with this we also have an international well of gossip and misinformation that travels at the speed of light. If this is in fact a pandemic, we may have to deal with fear broadcast by people who believe swine flu comes from bacon, or that a neighbor’s cough is an act of domestic terrorism.

As we’ve recently seen, Twitter and similar social media can be nothing more than a giant international mood swing or a great force for good, especially when wielded by people whose <140 is backed up by the shared knowledge we’ve gained in the four pandemics we’ve suffered in the last 110 years.