Transitions exercise: In your group, plan a transition between the paragraphs at the number you are assigned, assuming you would be giving this as a speech. It infected an estimated half-billion people worldwide, killed an estimated 50 million of them including 675,000 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website accessed January 3, 2019. Mortality rates were highest among 20–40-year-olds. City morgues across the United States became overwhelmed with bodies stacked like cords of wood. Undertakers rapidly ran out of coffins, and graves couldn’t be dug fast enough to accommodate the rising death toll, so bodies often lay in homes for days or even weeks. According to highly respected New York Times science journalist, Gina Kolata, in a book she wrote on the subject, victims suffered agonizing symptoms that included high fever and violent coughing fits that cracked ribs and spewed blood from victims’ mouths. Fluid filled their lungs, causing many to drown in their own juices. [1] The Black Death of the fourteenth century revisiting the human species? AIDS? Some biological warfare agent? The start of the Zombie Apocalypse? The global killer was the flu! The so-called Spanish flu of 1918–1919 caused a pandemic, or worldwide epidemic. [2] A 1957/1958 “Asian flu” killed almost 70,000 Americans and 2 million worldwide. In 1968/1969, the “Hong Kong flu” killed almost 34,000 Americans, and as many as 575,000 people worldwide died from the 2009 H1N1 flu strain. Even more recently, 80,000 Americans died from the 2017/2018 flu. Medical researcher Chris Murray of Harvard University and his associates, in a frightening December 23, 2006, issue of Lancet, estimates that the H5N1 “avian flu,” still circulating mostly among birds, could kill as many as 81 million people globally if it were to mutate and cross over to humans. No one knows if or when this could happen. Why should we care about flu pandemics of the past? There are two good reasons: (1) a flu pandemic could strike again, and (2) everyone in this room is a potential victim of a deadly flu virus. Consequently, you’ll want to listen carefully as I inform you about ways to prevent contracting the flu. My careful and extensive research on this subject leads me to make three main points. First, even seasonal flu viruses are a serious health hazard; second, flu viruses are difficult to combat; and third, there are several ways to prevent the flu. In order to emphasize the gravity of the issue, it is important to highlight the devastating impact that flu viruses can have. Even ordinary flu viruses that hit the United States every year between the months of October and April are killers. An April 19, 2017, report by the CDC notes that flu-associated deaths in the U.S. vary from a low of 12,000 to a high of 56,000 annually. Most of you won’t die from a common flu virus, but you may wish you were dead. According to the CDC website previously referenced, typical flu symptoms include high fever, sore throat, intense muscle aches, congestion, cough, and severe fatigue. My friend Terry once described how he feels when he gets the flu: “It’s like being suddenly hit by a speeding car, catapulted into a concrete wall, roasted in an oven, then forced to participate in the Ironman marathon. Death, by comparison, seems pleasant.” Symptoms of flu can last from a few days to several weeks. The flu can often lead to severe complications, such as bronchitis and pneumonia, which may require hospitalization. [4] Flu is hazardous to humans because it is highly contagious. The CDC website again notes that coughing, sneezing, even talking can spread the flu virus. Long ago, Daniel Haney, science reporter for the Associated Press, in a November 8, 1998, article in the San Jose Mercury News, called young children “flu incubators.” He vividly noted, “In epidemiological terms, children are in the same category as ticks, rats, and mosquitoes: they are vectors of disease.” Nothing in this regard has changed. Day care centers and classrooms are flu breeding grounds where sick children spew the virus everywhere by coughing, sneezing, and wiping their runny noses and leaving the residue on a wide variety of surfaces. Children also bring the flu home and infect adult parents, who pass it along to coworkers, and so it spreads throughout the population.
