In-Flew-Enza

There is some real need for concern over the avian flu that is spreading (currently very slowly) in parts of Asia. It kills more than 50% of those who contract it. Afterall what's the point of being frugal if you and all your loved ones get wiped out in an epidemic?

You can track its spread on a very useful website www.who.int - this is the world health organization. It wasn't that long ago that another wicked flu hit the planet. Here is a snippet from the WHO site on the Spanish flu of 1918:

U.S. AT WAR. MYSTERY VIRUS LEAPS AROUND THE GLOBE KILLING SCORES IN ITS PATH. SCIENTISTS RACE TO FIND A CURE.
Not headlines from March 2003, but from 85 years earlier. In 1918, hundreds of thousands of American troops headed to Europe for the closing offensives of World War I. Estimates of the number of deaths from the pandemic range from 21 million to 50 million worldwide.
Meanwhile back home, schoolgirls jumped rope to a new chant:
I had a little bird, And its name was Enza, I opened the window, And in-flew-Enza
Influenza—more specifically the Spanish flu—left its devastating mark in both world and American history that year. The microscopic killer circled the entire globe in four months, claiming the lives of more than 21 million people. The United States lost 675,000 people to the Spanish flu in 1918—more casualties than World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. Pharmaceutical companies worked around the clock to come up with a vaccine to fight the Spanish flu, but they were too late. The virus disappeared before they could even isolate it.
Read more here: http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/Number18_article5.htm

Scrooge