Down with the flu?

摘要

In 1918, a woman boarded a subway I train in New York to make a 45-minute trip. She must have felt healthy enough to travel, if perhaps a little achy and shivery. Yet a few minutes into the journey, she started having trouble breathing. Her condition rapidly deteriorated as her lungs filled with fluid. By the time the train reached its destination, she was dead. Such was the ferocity of the 1918 flu. It killed some 40 million people worldwide. Most of the dead were otherwise healthy adults; not the very young, old or sick that flu usually kills. Disease experts' worst nightmare now is that the bird flu rampaging across Asia will mutate into a similarly deadly strain that could circle the globe in weeks.