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The Great Spanish Flu - 1919Research has shown that there is or may well be a ?bacterial component in all kinds of other disorders - heart disease, asthma, ?arthritis, multiple sclerosis, several types of mental disorders, many cancers, even, it has been suggested (in Science no less), obesity. The day may ?not be far off when we desperately require an effective antibiotic and ?haven't got one to call on. It may come as a slight comfort to know that bacteria can themselves ?get sick. They are sometimes infected by bacteriophages (or simply ?phages), a type of virus. A virus is “a strange and unlovely entity - a piece of ?nucleic acid surrounded by bad news" in the memorable phrase of the ?Nobel laureate Peter Medawar. Smaller and simpler than bacteria, viruses ?aren't themselves alive. In isolation they are inert and harmless. But introduce them into a suitable host and they burst into busyness-into life. ?About five thousand types of virus are known, and between them they afflict us with many hundreds of diseases, ranging from the flu and common cold to those that are most invidious to human well-being: smallpox, rabies, yellow fever, ebola, polio, and the human immunodeficiency virus, ?the source of AIDS. Viruses prosper by hijacking the genetic material of a living cell and ?using it to produce more virus. They reproduce in a fanatical manner, then ?burst out in search of more cells to invade. Not being living organisms ?themselves, they can afford to be very simple. Many, including HIV, have ?ten genes or fewer, whereas even the simplest bacteria require several thousand. They are also very tiny, much too small to be seen with a conventional microscope. It wasn't until 1943 and the invention of the electron ?microscope that science got its first look at them. But they can do immense damage. Smallpox in the twentieth century alone killed an estimated 300 million people. They also have an unnerving capacity to burst upon the world in same ?new and startling form and then to vanish again as quickly as they came…[The Great Swine Flu, also known as the Great Spanish Flu epidemic is an example]. World War I killed twenty-one million people in four years; swine flu did the ?same in its first four months…Swine Flu arose as a normal, nonlethal flu in the spring of 1918, but somehow over the following months – no one knows how or where – it mutated into something more severe. A fifth of victims suffered only mild ?symptoms, but the rest became gravely ill and often died. Some succumbed within hours; others held on for a few days. At the time, little was know about the disease or how to treat it. Wounded soldiers returning to Canada in 1918 carried the virus home with them. By the time Canadian forces in Europe had embarked on the last 100 days of the war, the flu was spreading across Canada. The parades and crowds celebrating the end of the war in late 1918 helped spread the disease. The same thing happened in many other countries, and the flu became a global pandemic – an epidemic that affects many people in many countries. Some historians believe that as many as 50 million people, including 50 000 Canadians, died. Much about the 1918 flu is understood poorly or not at all. One mystery is how it erupted suddenly, all over, in places separated by oceans, ?mountain ranges, and other earthly impediments. A virus can survive for ?no more than a few hours outside a host body, so how could it appear in ?Madrid, Bombay, and Philadelphia all in the same week? The probable answer is that it was incubated and spread by people ?who had only slight symptoms or none at all. Even in normal outbreaks, ?about 10 percent of people have the flu but are unaware of it because they ?experience no ill effects. And because they remain in circulation they tend ?to be the great spreaders of the disease. That would account for the 1918 outbreak's widespread distribution, ?but it still doesn't explain how it managed to lay low for several months ?before erupting so explosively at more or less the same time all over. Even ?more mysterious is that it was primarily devastating to people in the prime ?of life. Flu normally is hardest on infants and the elderly, but in the 1918 ?outbreak deaths were overwhelmingly among people in their twenties and thirties. Older people may have benefited from resistance gained from an earlier exposure to the same strain, but why the very young were similarly ?spared is unknown. The greatest mystery of all is why the 1918 flu was so ?ferociously deadly when most flu is not. We still have no idea. Excerpted and adapted from: Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2004. and Colyer, Jill. Creating Canada: A History - 1914 to the Present. Toronto, ON.: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2014.Questions for Reflection:What was the Spanish flu?What were the causes of the Spanish flu?What are the mysteries of the Spanish flu?What were the consequences of the Spanish flu? ................
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