People in weak health die every year from the flu. A friend of mine lost both parents to the flu with a week of each other (this was a couple years ago, during an average flu season.)
I thought the chain letter analogy for Captain Trips was really powerful, especially when King described the lives and actions of some of the “carriers” of CT. You feel sorry for the New York family knowing they’re all going to die. I really like the quote near the end of the chapter:
“Chain letters don’t work. It’s a known fact. The million dollars or so you are promised if you’ll just send one single dollar to the name at the top of the list, add yours to the bottom, and then send the letter on to five friends never arrives. This one, the Captain Trips chain letter, worked very well. The pyramid was indeed being built, not from the bottom up but from the tip down- said tip being a deceased army security guard named Charles Campion. All the chickens were coming home to roost. Only instead of the mailman bringing each participant bale after bale of letters, each containing a single dollar bill, Captain Trips brought bales of bedrooms with a body or two in each one, and trenches, and dead-pits, and finally bodies slung into the oceans on each coast and into quarries and into the foundations of unfinished houses. And in the end, of course, the bodies would rot where they fell.” (Book, uncut edition p. 70)
I wonder how many folks die of flu in mexico every year. I hope this story is like the shark attack stories around Florida we had several years ago, a bad flu outbreak would be awful.
Freegards