Time for a Pandemic

I recently completed a microbiology class at Utah State University, and after completing it I was afraid to eat, shake hands, and basically breath non-sterilized air.

The influenza pandemic of 1919 is a reminder of what a little virus can do when it has changed it's adhesion to something that our vaccines are not prepared for. We are long overdue for something for a devastating disease.

Everyone thought that AIDS would do in humanity, but in the end it it is going to be something much simpler. AIDS is too complex, it requires to many variables to be right for you to acquire the disease in the first place, and the stages of progression are too slow.

Influenza on the other hand requires that you breath to acquire the disease and it has a fulminant progression which means you can get sick in the morning and be dead later that night or the next day. Influenza typically targets people with weaker immune systems, but in the case of the 1919 pandemic it targeted healthy individuals and knocked out a significant portion of the population. I am not familiar with the individuals that have died from the swine flu, but it is possible that this flu could be targeting healthy adults.