Category Archives: Flu pandemic

Huge number of deaths linked to superbugs can be avoided, say experts

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Models suggest deaths in poorer countries could be cut by 18% – or about 750,000 a year – with preventive measures

Every year 750,000 deaths linked to drug-resistant superbugs could be prevented through better access to clean water and sanitation, infection control and childhood vaccinations, research suggests.

Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, is a huge global challenge, with the evolution of drug-resistant superbugs, driven by factors including inappropriate and excessive antibiotic use, raising the prospect of a future where modern medicine fails.

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Respiratory infection clusters in China not caused by novel virus, says health ministry

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Data has been supplied to World Health Organization and China says flu and other known pathogens are culprits

A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and adenovirus, as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.

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A Christmas pandemic like no other? They thought that in 1918

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The post-first world war flu outbreak also came in waves and led to school closures and face-mask rows

This is not the first time that a pandemic has gripped the holiday season. In December 1918, preparations for the first Christmas without war in four years took place in the midst of the worst pandemic since the Black Death.

The 1918-19 influenza, like Covid-19, came in waves. The deadliest began in autumn, peaked in late November and continued through the first weeks of December. It struck hundreds of millions and killed tens of millions worldwide.

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Flu and Covid: winter could bring ‘double-barrel’ outbreak to US, experts say

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But the same measures that fight coronavirus are effective against the flu – and vaccines offer another weapon against it

Public health experts, researchers and manufacturers warn the coming flu season could bring a “double-barrel” respiratory disease outbreak in the United States, just as fall and winter are expected to exacerbate spread of Covid-19.

At the same time, researchers said the strategies currently used to prevent Covid-19 transmission – namely, hand-washing, mask-wearing and social distancing – could also help lessen flu outbreaks, if Americans are willing to practice them.

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How would a coronavirus vaccine work and will we even get one? – video explainer

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Science editor Ian Sample explains how vaccines work, runs through some of the main obstacles to creating one for coronavirus and preparing it for public use, and tells us which scenario he thinks is most realistic in the next 18 months 

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What does the leaked report tell us about the UK’s pandemic preparations?

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Leaked National Security Risk Assessment describes threats posed by flu- and non-flu-type infectious diseases

Careful analysis of the National Security Risk Assessment document illustrates how the Covid-19 pandemic represents a hybrid of two of the major threats to the UK anticipated by the British government.

The first, an influenza-type disease pandemic, predicts waves of a novel flu virus striking several months apart. This type of threat represents the basis of the UK government’s blueprint for how it would respond to a pandemic.

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Real estate for the apocalypse: my journey into a survival bunker

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Doomsday luxury accommodation is a booming business, offering customers a chance to sit out global pandemics and nuclear wars in comfort – as long as they have the money to pay for it. By Mark O’Connell
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Not long ago, I travelled to the Black Hills of South Dakota to see the place from which humanity would supposedly be reborn after global civilisational collapse. The end of the world was trending, and it seemed as good a time as any to visit a place for sitting out the last days. Over the previous few months, perhaps as a means of sublimating my own anxieties about raising a small child in an increasingly dark and volatile world, I had become preoccupied with the apocalyptic tone of our culture.

One of the more perverse aspects of this obsession was a months-long binge of doomsday prepper content, of blogs and forums and YouTube videos in which burly American guys, most of whom were called things like Kyle or Brent, explained how to prepare for a major catastrophe – your global pandemics, your breakdowns of law and order, your all-out nuclear wars – by pursuing various strategies for “tactical survival”. And this had opened out on to a broader vista of apocalyptic preparedness, and to a lucrative niche of the real estate sector catering to individuals of means who wanted a place to retreat to when things truly went sideways.

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How Spanish flu nearly ripped apart Australia’s fledgling federation | Paul Daley

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A nation supposedly forged in the hellfire of war almost crumbled in the face of a virulent threat at home

Newly federated Australia, with its population not yet 5 million, was still enduring shocking fatalities on the European western front when its authorities began paying attention to the virulent strain of pneumonic influenza sweeping Britain.

Early Australian awareness of the “Spanish influenza” – an epidemic in Britain by mid to late 1918 – came with an acknowledgment that the new states grown of old colonies would need to stick together should the virus reach this isolated continent.

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Four lessons the Spanish flu can teach us about coronavirus

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Up to 100 million people died in 1918-19 in the world’s deadliest pandemic. What can we learn?

Spanish flu is estimated to have killed between 50 million and 100 million people when it swept the globe in 1918-19 – more than double the number killed in the first world war. Two-thirds of its victims died in a three-month period and most were aged 18-49. So what lessons has the world’s deadliest pandemic taught us?

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