The Catholic Church: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I'm proud to be a Catholic.  While Protestants were busy reading the Bible, addressing each other as "Goody", building barns, and milking cows, my religious ancestors were hunting down witches and heretics and setting them on fire, writing books about damning people to Hell and following through by actually damning them to hell, devising complex codes and secret societies to keep losers at bay, invading an entire region of the globe in search for a magic cup, building labyrinths, burning surviving classical texts, improving torture techniques, trying to keep a dead language alive, and otherwise founding Western civilization.  But to really appreciate how cool Catholicism is when compared to Protestantism, one need only compare Gregorian Chant to Creed.

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The Billion-Year War

There were good reasons for this sense of priority and urgency. First, influenza viruses mutate constantly and are notoriously unpredictable. Second, influenza was known to cause both seasonal epidemics of disease, and on occasion, much larger global outbreaks of disease, known as pandemics. Influenza pandemics occur when a new influenza virus appears and spreads around the world in populations which previously have not been exposed to the virus. History has shown that influenza pandemics can range enormously in their impact but that it is impossible to accurately predict the eventual impact at the beginning. What is seen early may be very different from what has been experienced by the end. The 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, started with relatively mild waves of illness and then evolved into the most severe influenza pandemic in history.

- Dr. Keiji Fukuda on behalf of WHO at the January 26, 2010 Council of Europe hearing on pandemic (H1N1) 2009

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Myths and Facts about Pandemic H1N1/09 Influenza

The H1N1 influenza virus first occupied center stage in the years following World War I, when it was called "The Spanish Flu."  That particular strain of H1N1 went on to kill between 50 and 100 million people (3 - 6% of the global population), compared to 15 million killed in WWI.  The Spanish Flu was particularly virulent and killed young and middle-aged people disproportionately because it caused the body's own immune system to attack the body: those with stronger immune systems faced stronger symptoms and died at higher rates.  In contrast, seasonal flu outbreaks (sometimes H1N1), which kill 250,000 to 500,000 people every year, tend to disproportionately affect young children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems.  The recent strain of H1N1/09 influenza shares more in common with the latter, but, due to the possibility for sudden mutation, its high rate of infection, and conflicting media reports in the early days of the epidemic, it's important to separate myth from fact as we head into the winter flu season. 

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