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<\/a> Seems like everyone has the flu these days.\u00a0 We’ve had dinner dates and golf games cancelled in record numbers<\/strong> the past few weeks – all parties citing the current flu epidemic as the culprit.\u00a0 I was beginning to think we had just offended a record number of people but it turns out that the flu bug this year is unrelenting. \u00a0The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there’s widespread flu activity<\/strong> from this season’s outbreak in all of the continental U.S. \u2013 something that hasn’t happened in the CDC’s 13 years of tracking the spread of influenza.\u00a0 You know it’s serious when the CDC postpones a briefing on the public health response to a nuclear detonation<\/strong> to instead discuss the response to severe influenza, as happened this past Tuesday.\u00a0 Tragically, 30 children have died from the flu and the experts believe that number could be doubled due to cases that have gone unreported.\u00a0 As of this week, thankfully the flu is predicted to peak and the less serious strain will become dominant for the remainder of the flu season.<\/p>\nBy the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end, as those that were infected either died or developed immunity<\/strong>. In 2008, researchers announced they\u2019d discovered what made the 1918 flu so deadly: a group of three genes enabled the virus to weaken a victim\u2019s bronchial tubes and lungs and clear the way for bacterial pneumonia<\/strong>.\u00a0 Since then we’ve had further, if less fatal, flu virus outbreaks. \u00a0 A flu pandemic from 1957 to 1958 killed around 2 million people worldwide, including some 70,000 people in the U.S., and a pandemic from 1968 to 1969 killed approximately 1 million people, including some 34,000 Americans. More than 12,000 Americans perished during the H1N1 (or \u201cswine flu\u201d<\/strong>) pandemic that occurred from 2009 to 2010.<\/p>\n So, there you have it – everything you ever wanted to know about flu and its deadly consequences.\u00a0 The good news is that for most people it’s a virus and will clear up on its own<\/strong> within a week or two.\u00a0 Or, as my brother used to advise, sit in bed with a bottle of whiskey at the foot of it.\u00a0 Drink until you see two bottles.\u00a0 It may not cure the flu but in the morning you’ll either be better or the hangover will make the flu seem like child’s play.\u00a0 As for me, I’m wearing my rubber gloves<\/strong> next time I go to Walgreen’s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Suzanne Sparrow Watson Seems like everyone has the flu these days.\u00a0 We’ve had dinner dates and golf games cancelled in record numbers the past few weeks – all parties citing the current flu epidemic as the culprit.\u00a0 I was … read more![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/spit-300x207.jpg\")
<\/a>We all know how to prevent the flu – common sense measures such as getting lots of rest, drinking fluids, and staying away from crowds until the symptoms subside.\u00a0 I have some friends who have recently been brave enough to travel by plane.\u00a0 Or as a doctor friend of ours calls them – “flying petri dishes”<\/strong>.\u00a0 One person has emerged unscathed but everyone else who has flown the flu-ey skies has come down with something close to the bubonic plague.\u00a0 Sometimes you just can’t help picking up the bug, as careful as you might be.\u00a0 Me – I’m something akin to Howard Hughes<\/strong> these days.\u00a0 I touch nothing and no one out in public.\u00a0 The other day I was in Walgreens behind a woman who appeared to be coughing up her lung.\u00a0 To make matters worse, she was coughing into her hand<\/strong>, rather than using the suggested “Dracula” method of coughing into one’s elbow.\u00a0 In any event, when I got to the check-out counter the clerk asked me to punch my telephone number into their keypad.\u00a0 I asked her why I would do that when Typhoid Mary<\/strong> had just had her germ-ridden fingers all over that same keypad.\u00a0 The clerk explained that’s why they wipe the keypad off with sanitizer pads every so often.\u00a0 I pointed out that she had not wiped it since the previous customer had slimed all over it but she just stared at me.\u00a0 I’m no fool – I learned long ago not to argue with an officious clerk so I decided to forgo my “Walgreens points” and went on my merry, germ-free, way.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/CampFunstonKS-InfluenzaHospital-300x223.jpg\")
<\/a>But all this flu talk had me thinking about what it must have been like during the Spanish flu pandemic<\/strong> in 1918, before Nyquil and Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup were invented.\u00a0 First off all, it’s hard to comprehend the massive numbers of people world-wide who were infected.\u00a0 In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world’s population<\/strong> was infected!\u00a0 The flu infected 28% of all Americans and an estimated 675,000 Americans died from it, ten times as many as in the world war.\u00a0 In fact, of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them<\/b> (43,000) fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy.\u00a0 The effect of so many young people succumbing was that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years.\u00a0 The Spanish flu virus is still considered to be one of the most virulent in history; entire families were wiped out in less than a week after contracting the flu.<\/p>\n