Influenza: The Quest to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History

201 Pages·2019·1.95 MB·English

by  Jeremy Brown

ABOUT THE BOOK
While influenza is now often thought of as a mild disease, it kills thousands of
Australians each year. Dr Jeremy Brown, currently Director of Emergency Care
Research at the National Institutes of Health, expounds on the flu’s deadly past
to solve the mysteries that could protect us from the next outbreak.
In Influenza, he talks with leading epidemiologists, policy makers, and the
researcher who first sequenced the genetic building blocks of the virus to offer
both a comprehensive history and a roadmap for understanding what’s to come.
Dr Brown digs into the discovery and resurrection of the flu virus in the victims
of the 1918 epidemic exhumed from the tundra, as well as the bizarre remedies
that once treated the disease, such as fatal doses of aspirin and blood-letting.
Influenza also breaks down the current dialogue surrounding the disease,
explaining the controversy over vaccinations, antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu,
and the federal government’s role in preparing for a pandemic. Dr Brown warns
that many of the most vital questions about the flu virus continue to confound
even the leading experts.
Influenza is an enlightening and unnerving look at a shapeshifting deadly virus
that has been around since long before people and will most likely be with us for
a long time to come.

Dedicated to the memory of the dead and the living:
Private Roscoe Vaughan of Buffalo, New York, who died of influenza at Camp
Jackson, South Carolina, on September 26, 1918. His death helped us better
understand the virus that killed him and millions of others.
Autumn Reddinger, whose fight against influenza is a lesson in personal courage
and the triumphs of modern medicine.
To prevent the spread of Spanish Influenza, sneeze, cough or
expectorate into your handkerchief. You are in no danger if everyone
heeds this warning.
—SIGNS POSTED IN PHILADELPHIA RAILCARS, OCTOBER 1918
There’s nothing quite like flu in terms of the risk.
—TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL
AND PREVENTION, JANUARY 2017
CONTENTS
Cover Page
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue: Autumn
1. Enemas, Bloodletting, and Whiskey: Treating the Flu
2. The Jolly Rant: A History of the Virus
3. “Something Fierce”: The Spanish Flu of 1918
4. “Am I Gonna Die?”: Round Two, and Three, and Four …
5. Resurrecting the Flu
6. Data, Intuition, and Other Weapons of War
7. Your Evening Flu Forecast
8. The Fault in Our Stockpiles: Tamiflu and the Cure That Wasn’t There
9. The Hunt for a Flu Vaccine
10. The Business of Flu
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE
AUTUMN
Autumn Reddinger was deathly sick. Her lungs were not working. Her heart was
so weak that it could no longer pump blood through her body. The only thing
keeping her alive was a heart-lung machine. She lay corpse-like in the intensive
care unit. Her parents had called their pastor to administer last rites. How would
they tell Autumn’s young children that their mom, who was raising them alone,
was dying from influenza, an illness that was usually shrugged off as a minor
inconvenience? That a vibrant young woman who went to the gym twice a week
was now, in December 2013, at death’s door?
During the Christmas break, Autumn thought she had a cold but soldiered
through the holiday with her parents and two young children at her home in
western Pennsylvania. Two days later she felt much better and went to dinner
with a friend, Joe. When she returned to her house she began texting him, but the
messages he received were jumbled and made no sense. She had been totally
coherent at dinner, and Joe knew she hadn’t had any alcohol. Alarmed, he got in
his car and drove to Autumn’s home, where he found her confused and weak. He
called her parents to watch the kids and drove her to the local hospital in
Punxsutawney. She told the emergency room nurses that her lungs were on fire.
The ER physician went through every test: Autumn’s lungs sounded clear