Descendants of the 1918 H1N1 virus make up the influenza viruses we’re fighting today. “The 1918 flu is still with us, in that sense,” said Ann Reid, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education who successfully sequenced the genetic makeup of the 1918 influenza virus in the 1990s. AD“All those pandemics that have happened since — 1957, 1968, 2009 — all those pandemics are derivatives of the 1918 flu,” Taubenberger told The Post. ADThe novel coronavirus is not moving on the same time frame as the 1918 influenza, Greene told The Post. The million-dollar question is: What can the 1918 influenza outbreak tell us about how our current pandemic may end?

Source: Washington Post September 01, 2020 16:01 UTC