The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
More than 50 million people around the world died during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. That's why we have epidemiologists all over the world tracking whether new strains of flu emerge.
A pandemic influenza would mean widespread infection essentially throughout every region of the world.
Pandemics do not occur randomly. From malaria and influenza to AIDS and SARS, the lethal microbes have come, in the first instance, from animals, especially wild animals. And we increasingly know which parts of the world pose the greatest risk for future incursions.
Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world.
The features of globalization have huge consequences on pandemics. It just connects us so much more closely... And as a consequence, every one of these viruses that passes from animals to humans has the capacity to infect all of us.
We saw in 2003 the beginnings of an outbreak of an illness called SARS. SARS ended up killing 800 people which is a significant number of deaths, but nowhere near as high as it could have been.
Without an adequate response, an epidemic can develop into a pandemic, which generally means it has spread to more than one continent.
In spite of the advances of medicine, deathly epidemics are more menacing than ever before.
Even the pandemic flu of 1918 only killed one to two percent of the people who were infected.
Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.