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A review by kfor24
Flu: The Story Of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Kolata
4.0
Fascinating and frightening, but worth reading even with trepidation.
The last lines of the book, written in 1998, will haunt me:
"It is hard to be complacent. Would a new killer flu look just like the 1918 flu? Or was that virus more of an example of what could happen if a flu virus was perfectly made to be a deadly foe? Will the next terrible influenza virus be a new strain that is, in its own way, ideally made to kill? Jeffrey Taubenberger, for one, thinks we cannot predict what the next flu virus will look like. The only hope we have is vigilent surveillance, keeping a careful eye out for the rough beast whose hour has come at last."
The last lines of the book, written in 1998, will haunt me:
"It is hard to be complacent. Would a new killer flu look just like the 1918 flu? Or was that virus more of an example of what could happen if a flu virus was perfectly made to be a deadly foe? Will the next terrible influenza virus be a new strain that is, in its own way, ideally made to kill? Jeffrey Taubenberger, for one, thinks we cannot predict what the next flu virus will look like. The only hope we have is vigilent surveillance, keeping a careful eye out for the rough beast whose hour has come at last."