So I found this book at some charity used book sale a few years ago and was able to get it for $1. Didn’t read it at the time but I was looking at my bookshelf and thought that this might be the best time to read it.
So, I’m not going to do a full book review but a few items that I learned…
- The US government/military has archived medical samples for over a 100 years. Proper research into the 1918 flu couldn’t happen until the technology matured
- The H’s and N’s stand for two proteins (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase) which characterize various flu strains. Hemagglutinin is used by the virus to hoist itself into a cell, and neuraminidase is used by newly made viruses to burst open a host cell so that the virus can escape and infect new cells.
- The book doesn’t say anything good about Kirsty Duncan the member of parliament for Etobicoke North
- There are a lot of smart people out there, and watching tv news lately it seems that not a lot of them have been contacted for comments about infectious disease
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