Reply #13: Well do you remember hearing about the Spanish Influenza of 1918

[willing dwarf]

It killed something like 10 million people around the world? That was a Swine Flu. Unlike the bird flu in Southeast Asia which appears not to have achieved human to human transmission, this one passes easily from animal to human and mutates to suit its new situation.

Also, I think the surprise of starting with a brief report on two boys in California and then discovering that there was something big going on in Mexico-- and then discovering that the virus in Mexico matched the one in California -- it came as a shock.

The Swine flu in 1918 almost killed my father and grandmother, so I have a personal awareness of what can happen. You know that the epidemiologists are watching it closely.