And there is no time like the millennium. With the globalization of travel and trade, immigration, communication, and industrialization, we have a smaller world with porous borders. We now have the power to push infectious diseases off the world stage but only if governments, world health organizations, the private sector, scientists, and researchers work together with a global strategy. The first lesson is that we must assume it could happen again. Influenza pandemics have regularly swept the world every 10 to 40 years, and it has been 30 years since the last influenza pandemic, Hong Kong flu, killed 700,000.
Nature is creative, and the flu has great potential for mutating.
If a strain changes dramatically, we could suddenly have a virus for which we may have no immunity, no vaccine, and no cure. The advent of antibiotics in the 1940s was one of the chief reasons we began to defeat infectious disease. However, almost as soon as antibiotics were available, microbes mutated and developed resistance. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming more common in hospitals and among patients with depressed immune systems. If it wins full approval, it will be the first drug in a new arsenal of weapons.