It is at once a horror story, a cautionary tale and a scientific thriller, told in a language that is both compelling and easy to grasp. And the writer told me that there had been other attempts to retrieve the virus' DNA sequence, including a top-secret government expedition to Alaska in the 1950s. To me, the story wasn't just about getting pieces of tissue, it was a terrifying story of something as familiar as the flu, sweeping around the world and killing large chunks of the population. From there, Kolata went on a fascinating paper expedition to unearth the facts of that tragedy, looking at the social and personal effects, as well as they way the scientific community has worked to prevent it from ever happening again.
People have traumatic personal stories.
But it was also sort of downplayed in its own time. Once World War I was over, and the Roaring Twenties began, it was a time to forget misery and leave it behind you. And forgotten it is, to the point that people don't realize that if a strain as powerful as the flu of 1918 hit today, it would kill more Americans in a single year than heart disease, cancer, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS and Alzheimer's combined. Now we can fight that off with antibacterials, but people can't rely too heavily on drugs like Relenza. And vaccines are really effective.