A NEW TYPE OF FLU VIRUS APPEARED. OUR BODIES HAD NO WAY TO FIGHT...

1918, a new type of flu virus appeared. Our bodies had no way to fight this new flu virus, and so itspread very quickly and killed large numbers of people. While there have been many differentpandemic diseases throughout history, all of them have a few things in common.First, all pandemic diseases spread from one person to another very easily. Second, while they maykill many people, they generally do not kill people very quickly. A good example of this would bethe Marburg virus. The Marburg virus is an extremely infectious disease. In addition, it is deadly.About 70-80% of all the people who get the Marburg virus die from the disease. However, theMarburg virus has not become a pandemic because most people die within three days of getting thedisease. This means that the virus does not have enough time to spread to a large number of people.The flu virus of 1918, on the other hand, generally took about a week to ten days to kill its victims,soithad more time to spread.While we may never be able to completely stop pandemics, we can make them less common.Doctors carefully monitor new diseases that they fear could become pandemics. For example, in2002 and 2003, doctors carefully watched SARS. Their health warnings may have prevented SARSfrom becoming a pandemic.