wallydownundy

In my years in an office, I’ve never witnessed such a fast-acting and widespread contagion as has attacked our office this week. In a team of 16 there were seven sick. What was surprising was the speed and ferocity of the illness. Within a day I went from fully functional to flat on my back. This must be the contagion that scared the World Health Organisation. While we’ve not had tests to confirm, if it looks like a pig and acts like a pig, then this must be swine flu.

One hundred years ago the world was hit by a deadly virus.

The Spanish flu pandemic hit a world ill-equipped to handle maladies. Doctors were trained to Victorian era standards. Pharmaceuticals were nowhere near today’s grade. Masses of young men were barracked together in preparation for deployment to World War One. Add to that mix a fast moving flu and you have deadly consequences. Between 50 and 100 million died, and those most targeted were young and healthy. Today scientists are still trying to calculate the death toll.

Just 101 years later the World Health Organisation issued its strongest advisory possible for H1N1 - also known as Swine Flu. This fast traveling flu mutated from a fresh source - meaning any antibodies developed to previous flus were worthless. And just as in 1908 our office lost its young and healthy workers. While we were fine and working one day the next we were home racked with coughs, fever and lethargy.

Thankfully the strain hitting Sydney is nowhere near as lethal as 100 years ago, because if it was, I’d be dead.