In 1999 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a
report on what might happen if a pandemic virus – similar to the
relatively mild virus of 1968 – struck the United States. It
estimated that between 89,000 and 207,000 people in the U.S.
would die. Why so many? John Barry responds in The Great
Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
(Penguin, 2005): “The reason for this high toll is the same
reason that the CDC has concluded that, despite medical
advances, more Americans are now dying from ordinary, endemic
influenza than in the past: in 1918, 1957, and even 1968
relatively few people alive had impaired immune systems. Today a
large and growing number of people do – primarily the elderly,
but also cancer survivors who have undergone chemotherapy or
radiation, transplant recipients, those infected with HIV, and
others.” The figures in the first paragraph appear in Barry’s
fine book, and his endnotes give their source as “Modeling the
Economic Impact of Pandemic Influenza in th