1918 flu.

The TED talks I watched was What can We Learn from the 1918 flu pandemic? The reason on why I wanted to watch this one was due to the obvious situation with Swine Flu. This was filmed in february 2007, but posted this april. H5N1 flu is what she refers to as bird flu. So far at that time, everyone had been exposed to it besides the americas. Why were people worried then as they are now? They have a slow vaccine production, a maximum capacity of 260 million doses at that time. She mentioned a great idea if we shut down air ports is counter productive, due to the fact that all masks are made in china and how will we provide vaccines without the planes. What is the government doing about this? well they reacted more towards the anthrax situations and the USA total for bioterrorism preparedness of $888,771,465 and Infectious Diseases is compared at $78,625,037, a grand difference. Not only that, but just 15 states are certified to give out vaccines. How important is masking? What kind of masks are available? How effective are the masks? Tons of people would use masks during the SARS pandemic, but still people would remove their masks, and get the disease then by their hands, however I think the swine flu is only transmittable by airborne. The 1918 flu the pandemic lasted 18 months circumnavigating the world three times, in the absence of commercial air travel, I thought this section was most interesting. The first wave they had health care workers, however it had taken such a toll there was barely any left to help during the second wave. In the end nearly 700,000 americans died, the highest death rate was 100% to pregnant women and their fetuses, the second highest death rate was among men and women, ages 15-40 years.