Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

Dr. Jeremy Brown, an ER doctor from the USA, explores the history of the Influenza virus. Its complications, the devastation that it caused in the past up to recent times claiming millions of lives and the race to create the ultimate cure to defeat the disease once and for all.

The purpose of this book is to provide insight into the Influenza virus and similar zoonotic diseases so we could be conscious of our unreadiness for another occurrence of epidemic or pandemic disease judging by the response that we have on past outbreaks.

I have included this on one of my next-read lists during this isolation considering its similarity on the current pathogen that stricken the world at the moment. I want to be enlightened with facts and not just mere guesswork prompted by emotional stress.

Such a terrifying crisis evokes various emotional reactions due to self-preservation instincts. This book reveals, indeed, that historically fatal and contagious disease causes panic and fear that leads to speculations and reliance on bizarre cures and treatments.

One of the conjectures made, as mentioned in this book, that the flu virus diminish during the summer season. Medical science could not possibly find the correlation except that one of their theory was that sunlight exposure grants us Vitamin D necessary for the enhancement of our immune response.

They also have a theory of close contact contagion during winter where the causal factor is that since it is often freezing, people tend to crowd together to beat the chilling season. Getting together in a confined space would be a perfect environment for contagion.

Theories materialized also in our own time of crisis which is now circulating online. They have this conjecture that the virus would die down when the summer season arrives. Experts have no scientific evidence to prove that based on the empirical facts provided by this book. It just does not work in that manner. The virus is just complex in nature and difficult to predict.

Hence, one of the challenging factors by medical professionals in finding a vaccine on the Influenza virus was its ability to mutate so quickly. Frustration arises when a vaccine was already developed and it turned out to be a mismatch because it had already mutated itself. I pray that such a dreaded scenario will not befall in the search of COVID-19 vaccine.

The impacts of a pandemic have a uniform pattern since time immemorial. One of its devastating impacts is the serious economic consequence that comes with it. There is always a catch, and we cannot have the best of both worlds. It is rather grueling to find a solution that would both save the economy and protect the citizens at the same time. But there is always an option, however, to strike a balance as much as possible.

Mankind has reached heights in terms of medical advancement. We have reached the peak of modernity. Be that as it may, the ingenuity of these pathogens still outmatches us despite our cunnings. We just lack the awareness of its enormity not until at present and we have learned it, unfortunately, also at our own peril.

This book implies that the response system in times of an outbreak is outdated and the budget for advance research for pathogens is a pittance. Experts have warned us of an outbreak now and again but it fell on deaf ears. Another 1918 pandemic is just a matter of time, warned Dr. Brown, and it already landed on our shores and arrived on our doorsteps.

This book is so appropriate in this dark time. How can we utilize our time constructively in this lockdown except by gaining insights on the history of these pathogens? Being aware might perhaps influence future policies or it might bear our interest to urge our children to consider the calling of being an epidemiologist. This book is highly recommended at a times like this.

This book is very well written and looks at the topic of influenza from key perspectives. I would like to see a sequel from this author addressing the Covid-19 epidemic.

In these Covid-19 times, it is an incredibly illuminating and prophetic book, that can help as individuals to better support ourselves through these difficult times!! If you think today is a unique situation, then you should surprise yourself reading this eye-opening book on the past!

Influenza – The Hundred year hunt to cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic by Dr. Jeremy Brown
The book is about the Spanish Flu of 1918 and what all has been done to find a cure for it.
The Phrase ‘The 1918 Spanish influenza’ is a misnomer. The flu started in America. It spread to Europe and to the rest of the world because American soldiers wanting to help the allied forces, during the first world war, went to Europe, stepping first in France. France got affected. France recruited 140,000 Chinese troops – they too got affected and slowly all other people; As soldiers during the world war moved back and forth from barracks to home, even civilians got caught with the Flu. But countries affected by flu made it a policy not to report influenza death cases as many already were dying in war already every day. Only Spain, which stayed neutral in the war reported the deaths. So, it came to be believed that Flu originated in Spain. The 1918 Virus was one of the deadliest virus strains in recorded history - 50 million to 100 million died world over, 20 million died in India, 6,75,000 died in the U.S.
The book states some of the facts – Influenza of 1918 came in 2 waves – the first wave was less harmful while the second wave where the virus underwent mutation proved deadly – It talks on how Influenza can overtake people like destroying lungs in a few hours and taking over the heart muscles immediately. It mentions of the treatment techniques in the early 20th century like giving Aspirin, bloodletting (letting bad blood drain out of the body by intervention), Enemas and Whiskey etc. Majority of the times an over-dose of Aspirin to treat flu patients in turn killed more numbers; the book gives info on the difference b/w virus and bacteria (for people like me who don’t know) – It says virus 1/20th of the size of bacteria is an envelope containing a bundle of genes that tries to make copies of themselves; That they do not target cells expressly in order to kill them, but to to hijack a cell and use it as a copying machine; Once it copies it then finds new host to colonize. Unlike bacteria, Influenza changes its protein on its surface so that our immune system finds it difficult to recognize and activate a fight response system. The 1918 Flu is also called Novel virus because the virus crossed over between multiple animal hosts and infected humans while swapping and sharing the genes of the different hosts making it deadly.
The book mentions of three types of influenza viruses—Type A, B, and C. The A and B strains cause significant disease in humans, and it is the A strain that is responsible for the 1918 pandemic flu. These kinds of flus happen when the virus strains of birds’ swap and share their genes and invade humans.
It talks of some interesting information like efforts made by some researchers after the flu to rebuild the 1918 strain of flu by getting infected lung tissue cubes of dead people buried under the Arctic Perma frost. This is so because the disease spread to as far as Alaska in the U.S which is Arctic zone. If one laid hand on such people buried in permafrost the virus can still be found in the bodies of those dead, there. A Swedish researcher from the university of IOWA made 2 attempts and finally could get the infected tissue cubes from those bodies and sent it to University Maryland where a research was going on to build the genetic building blocks of 1918 flu by a scientist named Jeff Taubenberger. He took many years to resurrect the 1918 virus which had 8 genes. This 8 gene strain was deadly compared to other lesser gene combinations like say a 5 gene virus composition entity, which was also coming up time to time.
Another interesting fact was that there were a few dozens of doctor and nurse volunteers in Japan who were willing to take the great sacrifice of becoming Guinea pigs to let themselves injected with the virus and let other doctors understand the nature of the virus.
The book also talks of on-ground difficulties to predict influenza into the future–Like the data collected form clinics, labs, doctors, pharmacies was incoherent and inconsistent. Difficult also because several other diseases had similar symptoms for ex: non-flu ILI, Gastroenteritis etc. Even volunteer citizens tried to create blogs to record infection numbers on websites like flu trackers. Nothing worked.
It also explores the reasons why flu shows up markedly in seasons – Winter and rainy – It examines answers like less of sunlight (people in higher latitudes), low vitamin D, humidity as some of the reasons but is not conclusive. It talks of research in the US to find the perfect vaccination and in the process creating new strains of virus for experimentation purposes which also is a reason for public outcry.
It also talks of how the US Public health dept stockpiles emergency medicines including that of influenza as a public health emergency response – Medicines include Neuraminidase inhibitors such as Peramivir and Tamiflu. By pointing out to various studies this book concludes that these Neuraminidase inhibitors are no good in the treatment of Influenza. It says Still the US government continues to stock them due to lack of alternative medicine and due to the millions of dollars of kickbacks they get form health care companies to influence govt policy. So, citizens get flu shots every year. Drug companies even hire consultants to whip up fears of pandemic in the public so that they buy more medicines.
It also talks of the effort of health care companies trying to improve these drugs every year. The motto is to produce better drugs in the current year than the previous year by attempting to handle recently found strains. for ex: one vaccine could handle Influenza strain A, another A & B, another A, B & C and so on – So this way monovalent, bivalent, trivalent, quadrivalent etc. keep getting produced. But till date the virus is smart enough to evolve into new strain and so it is elusive to vaccine. Sometimes the drug works because the medicine matches the strains in circulation, while sometimes it doesn’t.
Finally the author concludes a repeat of 1918 flu is less likely as the world war like conditions which increased the impact 25 times then, will not happen in the world so easily, medicines have improved to take care of secondary infection deaths due to bacteria, such deadly gene Swaps and mutations are difficult to happen, media help can be used for timely response etc., I did not find the conclusion so convincing but the book is informative and relevant in the current times as another deadly virus in the form of Carona is amongst us

This was written literally just months before the pandemic and was very prophetic. People just don't listen or learn. The world did not want to listen to reason and it collapsed. I know that the SARS-COV-2 is not an influenza virus but the parallels and lack of unity to attempt to combat it are undeniable. These books warned the world, but no one wanted to listen.

Unlike most history books that look through the binoculars of hindsight, this book looked through the binoculars of foresight.
— Review written 05/06/2020 while social-distancing and staying
home because of the CoVid-19 Pandemic. 102 years after the
Spanish Influenza catastrophe of 1918/1919.

An absolute must read for factual insightful virus mechanisms and the myths of immunity propagated during the COVID vaccine force mejeure today.

I highly recommend this book for all those suffering from the COVID vaccine modalities.

Timely and well presented. Dr. Brown is an ER doctor who has done his homework on every aspect of the influenza virus and our struggles with it.

A really good overview of the 1918 Influenza pandemic and the more recent years localized epidemics. It's also a good example of just how much the government and pharmaceutical industry relies on fear of the possible to make people lose touch with reality.

In Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History, Dr jeremy Brown looks at influenza from many different angles - history and why the 1918 flu was so deadly, the likelihood of another similar pandemic, market responses from the Pharmaceutical companies and their efficacy, government responses including warehousing stockpiles of anti-influenza medications, and the value of the flu vaccine and who, if anyone, should get it. The book is fairly short but it is interesting, well-written, well-documented, and in language that makes it accessible to people like myself with no medical background in the subject. Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

"Flu is certainly not the “emperor of all maladies” as cancer was described by the oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, but it is the malady of all empires."This short but informative novel about influenza encompasses everything from its history and its impact to the role pharmaceutical companies and the government have played in the pursuit to find an effective vaccine or cure. I found this fascinating. Dr. Brown writes so that layman can understand but also doesn’t shy away from using medical vernacular when necessary.I particularly found the portion on tamiflu interesting as I worked in a doctor’s office years ago and during flu season every patient would beg for this (and research shows that it has very little affect on the flu). Also, the impact the flu has on an economy (both positive and negative) surprised me as I never thought about that before, but it made sense.I highly recommend this for science buffs, history lovers, and anyone interested in learning about something we've all experienced.I received an advanced copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review.

investigation, medical, historical-research, historical-places-events, historical-figures, pandemic I'm not certain who will benefit most from this book. The very beginning could be quite off putting to the general public while paramedicals like me are entranced. Lots of it is easily comprehensible to most, while some sections might make some folks glassy eyed. Yet you ask why I recommend it to everyone. Simple. Historians, research minded, descendants, patients, and those in paramedical fields will benefit from the research and perspectives laid out in this book. Whether you want to know how influenza traveled, why this particular strain is not freely active, how vaccines are developed, what treatments were used throughout history for the illness and if/when some were finally discarded, and just why the grandmothers were right about dosing with chicken soup, you will find your answers here. I had the grandest time reading this one, and I have read a number of others, because of the logical way that sections are organized as well as some areas having a slightly different perspective than some others. I hope that many others will at least learn a lot from it. I requested and received a free ebook copy from Touchstone/Simon and Schuster Publishing via NetGalley. Thank you!