What Exactly is the Flu?
The Influenza virus, commonly known as the Flu, is caused by an RNA virus and affects birds and mammals. The flu is often swift and deadly, killing hundreds of thousands in non-pandemic years, but fortunately there has not been a major outbreak of the virus in humans for 40 years.
Influenza virons magnified 100,000 times
In 1918 the Spanish flu outbreak was devasting, claiming more than an estimated 50 million lives. This strain of the virus, H1N1 was highly infectious. For comparison, the AIDS virus killed approximately 25 million people in its first 25 years, the Spanish flu is estimated to have killed 25 million in merely 25 weeks.
In fact, the flu has a variety of strains and has evolved many times in human history. While all strains are of the same RNA virus of the family Orthomyxoviridae, they strains have their unique attributes. It was H1N1 which caused the Spanish Flu, and it is H5N1 that is more commonly known as the Avian Flu. Influenza also has three different genuses: A, B, and C. While all are similar, Influenza B almost exclusively infects humans, and Influenza C causes disease in pigs.
Today vaccines exist to prevent contraction of the flu, but there do not exist effective treatments against some strains, such as H5N1. Prevention comes at a cost. Currently, the US alone spends over $10 billion annually on flu vaccines and treatments, and in the event of a world-wide pandemic, that number is expected to balloon.