Fatal Flu

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In Seattle, the police wore masks during the great 1918–19 flu pandemic, which killed 1,600 here, 600,000–700,000 in the U.S., and 20 million worldwide.

Details

More on Flu:

UPDATED King County's approach to pandemic flu preparedness.

The best resource for breaking news about the spread of avian flu is avianflu.typepad.com/avianflu.

The World Health Organization's main avian flu site is designed mostly for professionals, but there's a great deal of information there for concerned lay people as well.

For a quick overview of pandemic influenza as it affected Seattle in 1918, see HistoryLink.

A more extended treatment, with sidelights on today's threat, is to be found in William Dietrich's 2004 cover story for the Pacific Northwest magazine of The Seattle Times.

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Winter 2005–06 might turn out to be a normal flu season, with familiar strains emerging as temperatures fall in temperate climes and people begin to huddle together inside for comfort. If so—and if the World Health Organization's experts have guessed right about which flu strains will predominate this year, and if there's no repeat of the vaccine-production foul-up that left millions of vulnerable Americans unprotected last winter—we can look forward to "only" about 20,000 deaths or so nationwide. But if there's anything certain in an uncertain world, it's a sure thing that whether we're ready or not, deadly flu will soon once again sweep the planet. The geese are already flying.

rdowney@seattleweekly.com