FLU season stalks the northern hemisphere. That is not news 鈥� it happens every year, and for most of us it is usually little more than a nuisance. But the flu of 2018 could be as bad as an annual winter outbreak gets (see 鈥�Winter flu: All the essential facts you need to know鈥�).
You may think you have heard it all before, but you probably haven鈥檛. To be clear, we are not talking about an emerging strain of bird or swine flu, the kind that keeps virologists awake at night fearing a pandemic. Right now the warnings are about regular winter flu. But it looks like a bad one. For people vulnerable because of age, pregnancy, obesity or other risk factors, it could be a killer.
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And yet the world remains astonishingly cavalier about a virus that regularly kills hundreds of thousands and occasionally more. We fend it off half-heartedly with a vaccine from the 1940s, which is better than nothing 鈥� but we know we can do more. We spend a pittance on developing vaccines that will actually defeat it, even though researchers have some very promising leads.
Why? Partly because of complacency: most of us have had flu and lived to tell the tale. Partly because denialists peddle the lie that the threat is overstated so pharma companies can sell vaccines and drugs. And partly because a better vaccine won鈥檛 be blockbuster-profitable.
This month also marks 100 years since the outbreak of the so-called Spanish flu, the worst pandemic we know about. This year鈥檚 鈥淎ussie flu鈥� is a descendant of that virus. It won鈥檛 be as bad, but we must hope that its inevitable impact is enough to tell the world that ordinary flu is still a serious disease and that a repeat of 1918 is bound to happen.
In the UK, centenarians are entitled to a birthday message from the queen. She should send one to the 1918 flu too, to remind us that it is still with us.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎tishoo, we all fall down鈥�
