[Gimlet]

There are strains off flu not so easily dealt with. The so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 -1919 killed 40 million. The symptoms came on fast and were unlike the kinds of flu most of us are familiar with.

[Old Student]

The Spanish Flu was a scary thing. It nearly ended WWI all by itself. It certainly ended a lot of the combatants (and noncombatants) at the time. I remember an article about the discovery of the grave of an individual who probably died of it north of the Arctic Circle, and had been buried in a permafrost layer. They exhumed him to try to get samples so they could figure out what it really was. (Virii were unknown at the time, as the technology wasn't up to seeing them, so tiny are they.) Didn't work. Fortunately, or not?