If a pandemic ripped across the world, how bad would it really get?
An adventuring Swedish doctor takes on a decades-long medical mystery: What exactly was the 1918 flu?
Ask any expert in infectious diseases and they’ll tell you that when it comes to pandemics, it’s not a question of if we’ll have another one. It’s a question of when.
Medical historian Dr. Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, shares lessons learned from 1918 and Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong shares 102-year-old letters from her aunt’s family.
Students learn the different ways that influenza virus can mutate and what impact that has on how rapidly and widely the virus spreads.