Historical disease detectives are solving the mysteries of the 1918 flu

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• The 1918 influenza pandemic killed between 1 and 2% of the world's population.
• Recent studies have discovered patterns in the effects of the virus — it affected communities in waves, and fatality was at its highest among adults in their late 20s.
• This suggests that a person's susceptibility to infection is determined by prior exposure to the virus.

One hundred years ago, a novel pandemic influenza virus spread rapidly around the world. It killed about 1% to 2% of the human population, primarily young and often healthy adults.

The centennial of the 1918 pandemic is a good time to take stock of how far the world has come since this historic health disaster — and to face the sobering fact that several key mysteries have yet to be resolved.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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