influenza, bird flu, swine flu, flu vaccine, Spanish flu

Over the past three centuries, the world has seen a new flu pandemic every 30 or 40 years. Before the age of vaccines, millions of people died when new strains cropped up. In 1918, a worldwide outbreak of the Spanish flu killed about 50 million people--more than died in all of World War I. Vaccines were developed in the United States in 1944, but every time the influenza virus mutates into a form against which people have little to no immunity, scientists scramble to create and distribute new vaccines. A look back at the flu-from the earliest recorded cases to the vaccine shortages of the 21st century.

 
 
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Member Comments

  • Posted By: Cazador72 @ 05/07/2009 9:08:34 PM

  • Posted By: Seawitch Artist @ 05/05/2009 3:32:20 PM

    I remember when I went down with Mao's flu in 1971....urk, at least it's named after a person not a Pig!

  • Posted By: jremilla @ 04/29/2009 8:13:34 AM

    You guys are real gutless turkeys. You run an absurd article on 'Hate in the Age of Obama' and then shut down the comment section. I guess the overwhelming hatred that your magazine and other liberal pundits poured out onto President Bush was not actually hatred but an effective means of exercising disagreement with the political positions of the president. But whoa!!! Now that the Messiah has been elected anybody who does not agree with him is a hater! We better run an article describing a typical group of these haters. We all know that only KKK sympathizers object to Obama's policies! I will host a party the day your magazine goes bankrupt.

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