In his monumental book The Great Influenza John M Barry recounts the story of the flu epidemic Barry reveals how health officials rather than being caught off guard anticipated a massive outbreak They feared that World War I with hundreds of thousands of troops crammed into trenches and moving across borders would unleash new viruses But this knowledge was useless to stop the devastation Powerful leaders beating the drums of war rushed toward violence And epidemiologists estimate that million people died in the epidemic adding to the roughly million killed in the war rsquo s carnage We rsquo ve proven [... more]