now we would like to highlight programs from the archives that focus on pandemics. in 20001 booknotes, science journalist talked about the history of influenza specifically the 1918 outbreak. here is a portion of that interview. >> i never really thought much

about the flu. it seemed like something that came around every year and people would get sick and then better again. within a few years ago, i a i'ma reporter for "the new york times" and i read an article about a miraculous discovery there was a guy at walter reed medical center and he was reporting in a technical journal of science magazine that he somehow managed to there were fragments of the virus that killed him and when i interviewed this man about his work he told me about the pandemic of 1918 and i was stunned. i had never heard of anything like this. it was the worst infectious disease epidemic in history. it affected us on many people te that have something like that came by today, it would kill more people than the top ten killers got together,

1.5 million, something of that mortality rate. had i just found out by looking at the papers for the centers for disease control that 99% of the people that i did the epidemic were under age 65, so it was an astonishing devastating epidemic and what made the story for me is almost a century later molecular biology have been sent by serendipity involved somebody could actually have lung tissue and ask the question what was this fire. the virus and how could it become such a cover and could it happen again and if so would we recognize it in time. ryan mac a reference there may be as many as 20 to 100 million that died worldwide in 1918. >> guest: it is matching the number upward.

people think 40 million is an underestimate biggert most recently there was a meeting of historians and people interested and if they think that the true number worldwide was closer to 100 million possibly 20 million died on the subcontinent alone. c-span: what is influenza? >> guest: it is in human lungs and while it's there, to take a cell and make it to the virus factory so like every other virus it picks the cell. c-span: what happens to the body? >> guest: there or for hallmarks. one of them is you get a fever and take to your bed. you can have muscle aches and pains, fever, you can have a

called. c-span: have you ever had a fight we? >> guest: i think i had it one. when i did i said this is the flu, five days of torture. i still remember those muscle aches. they couldn't believe that it was something like the flu. there were these rumors that there had been a cloud living over boston harbor it was the most horrible thing that anybody has ever witnessed.

it was shocking that they continue to be the leading doctors in the united states to go out and sa see what is goingn at camp david. one wrote in a memoir i can't even bear to think about this thing. 1918 when the deadliest influenza virus devastated the taking of human life. he said there were memories burned into his brain he would like to remove if he could. then describing what happened when they wanted an autopsy they said there were so many dead that they had to stick over the body is just to get the autopsy room. there were guys that haven't been removed yet. and then when they watched an autopsy take place, the doctor opened up the chest of a young man and there were his lungs

fill with fluid totally useless and a doctor there nothing could shake him turned and said this must be played. >> host: in your book explain what these are in the bottom picture. >> guest: the bottom these are some of the samples of lung tissue of people from 1918. what was this and how would we ever know and what was really miraculous is there is a military warehouse people described as the library of congress of the dead started by abraham lincoln and any time they do an autopsy they are supposed to put the tissue and medical records in the warehouse. at time they took pieces of the

tissue and sent them to the warehouse. c-span: going back to this institute here at walter reed, have you been there? there are 3 million samples? >> guest: they are in boxes and things and it is burning down and if they have box after box after box.

he died very quickly because he did and what the person that had gotten the flu virus and then lingered and meanwhile it had died and so since 1970 had been computerized city could get a printout and he goes over with his letters and folks. c-span: there were samples from back in the civil war. >> guest: right after and then on, yes. it was a brilliant idea because when they started this, who knows what you would use it for.

no one had ever found of the influenza virus so the idea that they would come back and make use of this material was brilliant. c-span: i know i am jumping ahead. >> guest: at this point they hahave samples for those who did in 1918. it's pushing the limits of molecular biology and it takes a long time you describe it as putting together a very detailed mosaic. the first three things there's the flu virus related to the pig viruses that haven't provided

the answer yet to why it was dangerous. c-span: but we ask that this pathology institute. there's only one person that works there? did you get the sense that there's a lot of interest or traffic? how big of a facility as if? >> guest: pretty big. it was a warehouse. ia few miles away in maryland just over the border. c-span: one thing i didn't expect to get out of the buck is the drama, there's personal stories in here that are fairly dramatic. were you surprised a by the competition going on to find this? >> guest: i knew there was a story and i read fiction for fun.

that is what appealed to me. there was competition in their shared all the strengths and weaknesses. c-span: go back to 1918 again was this a more devastating flu than what we hear about? >> guest: as i said earlier, 1.5 million americans have died and in the typical season 20,000 by at most are very old or have a chronic condition that weakens them. here 99% are under age 65. then people between 20 and 40. and then at the end. c-span: i would like to ask you to read page 25 the author's

brother and then where did he write this? >> guest: he was writing and people said if it's the prescription of his mother's death was his brother's real name and a description that wasn't fictionalized but what happened when his brother died of the flu. c-span: can you tell us why you wrote this? >> guest: when i talk about the flu or people that are living today talk about it it is almost impossible to imagine what it was like. i tried as much as i could to put the words of the people that havpeople thathave been there bu have seen it it has an emotion i can't capture and i don't think anyone i've spoken to has been able to capture so the reason i took a description is this one

just really touched me. it almost brought me to tears and you can imagine yourself in that room watching somebody die like this and is one of those moments i can't forget this passage and that's why i put it in a. his brother was lying in the sick room while the family waited for what was inevitable. he saw in that moment of recognition that erupted 26-year-old. he made three quarters of an outline twisted below the cover it seemed not to belong to him and it was somehow distorted and

his face had turned gray. two red flags and fever and his beard was growing. it was somehow horrible. it recalled the vitality of care and then lifted the big constant grimace of torture and strangulation and inch by inch he gasped and the sound of the gasping was unbelievable orchestrating every moment with a final note and the next day. there was the unconsciousness and delirium.

returning to this popular song of wartime he's sentimental and moving and then in the unconsciousness his eyes almost closed with a non- sensibility we lay quietly various trades without signs of pain and with a curious his mouth was firmly shut. they were praying even though he didn't believe in god or prayer. whoever you are, be good to them tonight and show them the way. whoever you are, be good, showing them the way. he heard only the rattle of his

breath and suddenly the certain knowledge he lay still the body appeared before them. then with a last gasp of a long and powerful respiration filled with the terrible one moment without support and then passed into the shades of death. >> we've opened up the archives to look at the programs about pandemics. in 2012, science writers looked at diseases that originated animals but then spread to humans. they call these animals infections that pass to humans zoonoses.

it can be a bacterium, it can be a protozoan like the creatures that cause malaria. it can be a fungus or a worm. it can be something called a prion which causes mad cow disease. they don't always cause disease. it's got a wonderfully gruesome name and you've got to find the light side of where you can find it and with all due respect to the people who suffer and the people who die and there are a lot of deaths in this book.

still, i didn't want this but just to be a painful. i wanted to be it to be a pleae learning experience and a page turner. i wanted it to be moments of suspense and mystery and discovery. it might be the funniest about that you ever read. [laughter] when they pass into humans they are harmless. if it causes mayhem than we call

it a zoonotic disease and 60% of the infectious diseases of humans are zoonotic diseases and the other 40% everything comes from somewhere. it's the disease of humans where does that come from it probably came from the virus that causes the disease when they are pass passed. the 60% that are considered a zoonotic or passing back and forth.

they've done it very recently. all of the influenza, west nile virus, hiv. i talk at some length about the ecological origins of the pandemic. and we now know that the pandemic strain of hiv passed from a single chimpanzee to a single human in a very small corner in central africa. in 1908 or earlier give or take a margin of error. there are some wonderful scientists that have worked on the genetics side that are precursors to hiv and those that are into chimps and monkeys and

the diversity of hiv pandemic strain and of these scientists have managed to locate the spillover effect with a high degree of confidence. there's always a certain provisioncertainprovision but we of competence, they've located the southeast cameroon. one chimpanzee, one human presumably a human but killed the chimpanzee and then can cut himself on the hand, blood to blood contact and in the early part of the 20th century sometime around or before 1908. michael and beatrice are the scientists that have done that work. so, there are these diseases and the spillover.

one of his lengthy technical term i want to familiarize you with his reservoir host that is the kind of animal in which the bug, the virus, whatever it is lives permanently inconspicuously without causing disease, without causing mayhem in that particular creature. why does that live there nondestructively? probably because it has been in that species for millions of years and then an accommodation has evolved but it doesn't replicate cataclysmic lee it is slowly and doesn't generally cause sometimes.

then something happens, humans come in contact with it somehow maybe i will tell you a couple of ways that this can happen it sheds the virus and then becomes a zoonotic disease. as they study the field and focus on the different diseases. a new disease spills over in malaysia. it's killing pigs and pig farmers and villagers and pork sellers. this is a true case that happened in 1998 they named it after a particular village in malaysia then they went looking

for the reservoir host. they found it in large fruit bats of the kind of flying foxes in asia. how did this occur? it finally tracked it through the route and here is what happened. people were cutting down forests for development, agriculture, timber itself, cutting down the forests destroyed fruit bat habitat. they were displaced and had to go looking for food and nectar somewhere else. they started going closer to the settlements. some of those planted by humans were on pig farm was the second stream of income for those that

ran these factories in northern and central malaysia. some of them even planted mango trees close to their pigsty's and in some cases even shading their pigsty's. they come to the trees planted and drop the pope into the pigsty and they drop the virus. the pigs pick it up and get sick and get a very infectious respiratory disease. the pigs are coughing and passing on the virus from one to the other. they are mostly not buying however. it isn't killing that many but they become a is agricultural problem. and then it starts getting into the humans in that kills 109 people. it causes the government of

malaysia to call preventively 1.1 million pigs, required the killing of all of those that came from infected farms. some of the forms people were so scared by the disease but they were abandoning their own farms and coming away from their own pig farms and at one point they were running loose through the villages into some cases abandoned and it's like a nightmare scenario but it really happened running through the countryside. one fellow called it the one-mile barking cough because you could hear these sick pigs coming and you knew that yours would be next. real story. encephalitis is the disease in humans. so, this is what the scientists do. they try to solve the ecology

and evolutionary biology of these diseases. where does it live, what is the host, how did humans come in contact, what are they doing in many cases it's that kind of ecological disruption that causes the spillover and gets into an intermediate and there is the case they are referred to as the amplifier host the virus reproduces abundantly in them and then it gets into people. the case in australia is after a suburb of brisbane in a racing suburb 1994 horses suddenly

started to die. he went into the hospital and the veterinarian never got sick. the trainer died. they isolated the virus from him, his organ and from the horses and found a new virus and named after the suburb. then they did the disease protection. where did the virus come from? a fellow who was the chief detective on the case, a veterinarian but doing a phd in psychology sampled animals, kangaroos, wombats, rats, mice, insects. he didn't find the virus.

finally he sampled fruit bats and found the virus that matched would have told the horses and the trainer and gave it the name hendra. it doesn't pass from human to human but it is a knock on the door a reminder to us of where these things come from, how they emerge and spillover and the fact they are not all independent cases and it reflects things we are doing on the planet and then they get into humans and in some cases cause a local outbreak that is easily controlled or comes to the end on its own and other cases they cause widespread suffering and death.

>> professor john berry discusses his book the great influenza, which provides a history of the 1918 influenza outbreak. here is a portion of the talk from 2004. now you have the enemy. the enemy of course is the virus. now, all influenza viruses are bird viruses. ..

>> there is no single virus just like a swarm of hornets they are all moving around like the adams kind of virus. when the influenza virus infects a sell it about six hours that single cell explodes in between 100,001,000,000 new virus particles escape from the cell and everyone is different. most of them are so different they cannot affect another cell only 1 percent between 1,010,000 viruses from one cell. are able to in fact a new cell but that mutation rate allows

it to jump species. 1918 in any stretch but they are not all legal but those pandemics in 1957 and 1958 and while they killed considerably more people the normal for influenza 36000 people per year with 57 and 68 there were double about three or four times the normal but compared to 1918 it was just a severe epidemic season. >> now the story really begins when the virus jumps to people

nobody knows exactly for certain with that happened. most pandemics have begun in asia however there was some overlooked epidemiology logical evidence that i managed to trip over that suggests this jumps species in kansas going from rural kansas which is in the far southwest corner of the state and to what is now fort riley and that had 56000 troops closely packed in the barracks and they were being trained to kill very far more effective at killing than anyone could

imagine. as i say it was a war waged by nature against man hitting full force it took about six months for the virus to jump species. it wasn't efficient at infecting men the had to adapt the new environment and that took a while before it came at home in humans and became an efficient to invade humans but about six months after the jump, it became very lethal and simultaneously it exploded. one of the first places a hit the second frame was just

outside of boston and from that position to another describing what was going on this starts what appears to be an ordinary attack of influenza and come to the hospital to rapidly develop the most vicious type of pneumonia that has ever been seen then they had the mahogany spots than two hours later you could see the cyanosis when you start to turn blue because of lack of oxygen that extends from their ears all over their face until it is hard to distinguish the colored men from the white that is how dark people were turning you cannot distinguish black from white.

only a matter of a few hours until death comes. to see one or two were 20 men die but they were dropping like flies averaging 100 deaths per day in all cases it would mean death we lost not we just number of doctors and nurses it took special trains to carry away the dead for some of those the bodies piled up something fierce they would say god be with you till we meet again. now come as this virus spread across the world and throughout the united states , it put extreme pressures on the political system.

in fact it's a very good case study that is relevant unfortunately to relevant to talk about bioterrorism not to mention the possibility of another influence outbreak and it demonstrated the political system was not prepared to handle it. chiefly because the politicians were so focused on the war and the unfortunate irony is that this hit when we were literally only for five weeks away from the end of the war so every enemy country we were fighting except germany itself had stopped.

they had already sent out feelers for peace. but wilson and the entire administration were so focused that they did not do anything for public health that word in any way jeopardize the 100 percent the war effort that ruthless brutality to have the american spirit with. and as a result not only federal officials, but other mayors and governors all over the united states eventually lied. first they told people this was only ordinary influenza. the mitchell people fear kills more people land the disease. in philadelphia where they were actually planning a huge

liberty rally hundreds of thousands of people were about to be in the streets very early of the outbreak so the general public was not aware there was a problem privately one doctor was warning the public health commissioner the rally would create a ready-made inflammable mask trying to get every newspaper to print warning so they all refuse the public health commissioner refused there were many other physician said the same thing. they held the rally with hundreds of thousands of people and 72 hours later philadelphia influenza exploded to the point that not only did they run out of coffins that happened in almost every city of the united states, but they actually used steam shovels to build mass graves where they

would wrap the bodies and sheets and priests literally drove horse-drawn carriages down the street calling on people to bring out their dead. very reminiscent of the black death. the same thing is happening all over the country and very rapidly society began to disintegrate because people very soon were getting a great disconnect they could see the spouse was dying in 24 hours. in the body lies there. you cannot get the body out. nobody takes out the body. down the street somebody else dies within a few days the emergency hospitals were created all over the place and

at the same time the only thing you read in the newspaper is fear kills more than the disease. don't worry can you can keep yourself safe. so this ridiculous reassurance they were getting was so conflicted destroyed their trust and all authority and ultimately society is built on trust. and without it it began to disintegrate. >> the first pandemic caused in 1817 and spread into russia

only exactly what's happening today. we are invading wildlife habitats or distracting them either way we allow animals and people to come into novel and intimate forms of contact and when that happens then it jumps over into our bodies and becomes pathogenic so from bats we have ebola and a number of other viruses camels are giving us respiratory distress syndrome monkeys malaria and hiv and influenza. this is how they are emerging. and people were walking for the new factory jobs there

wasn't a lot of room to sprawl back then to take action of outlying areas so places like new york city had 77000 people per square kilometer this meant they were breathing on each other more and touching each other more the waste was contaminating food and water there is no sewage system in new york they had our houses. there wasn't a rule you had to empty it out so they just wanted to sit and be composed but that wouldn't happen before the waste actually ran into this streets into their wells and contaminated the groundwater. colorado enters like that and

spread through contaminated waste and explodes. so where it started in the 19th century so this was just a few years ago that the majority of us would be by 2030. but not cities like washington dc or san francisco more like free tell and mumbai and monroe via ad hoc infrastructure and chaotic 2 billion people will live in slums. that is the prediction so taking advantage of this right now import parts of the world in particular e-bullet is a good example. we had ebola outbreak since the 1970s but it never

infected in a place of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants before 2013 then when it came out within a few weeks of that it had infected three capital cities with a combined population of nearly 3 million. there is an important reason why. arguably seek a virus - - zika is taking advantage of urbanization we have had it but it was an equatorial forest in asia and africa and carried by the horse mosquito it bit animals but not people that much so people didn't really get it. but now in america zika is carried by the mosquito that specializes in living and human habitations it can

actually breed in a drop of water in a bottle cap so to go into the urban areas that is a perfect environment so as soon as it got into those mosquitoes it has expanded rapidly urban areas especially in the tropics. and then we disseminate them to take steamships across the atlantic with all of the navigable rivers with all of those waterways to use steam engines to build canals so 1825 erie canal opens just in time for colorado to come over from london and paris and into

the entire interior of north america and that happened again and again. we are much better today with our flight network but hundreds of airports and tens of thousands of connections between all the airports in fact this is the map i have in the book you can make a map of all the cities in the world connected by direct flights if you run a flu pandemic on a map like that like a pebble dropped into the sea expanding out words. by measuring the directive flights between infected and uninfected cities that is how influential the flight network is on the way epidemic spread today.

the modern life increases to drive pathogens into human population so is what we do about it. there's all kinds of things we could do to fight back and in what that symbolizes in the book to the sect that outbreak in particular but cholera came to canada and the governor of new york said will put doctors to do reconnaissance. and the map appears in the book there are cases all around the erie canal and

hudson river you could see it coming down headed straight for new york city. it turned new york city into the premier port of the country but nobody wanted to close the waterway. and that's it they should've done to protect the city. that it could look like cholera on the waterways it looks like it is contagious but actually in those diseases like cholera is spread through bad smell or stinky air.

and they wanted to blame that on the poor and the immigrants especially the irish in 1832. with a cholera epidemic of the h century so now i lost my train of thought i was going with this. i'm having a senior moment one - - moment. [laughter] oh my god. the doctors. yes. it's funny that's where my mind quit because this is my

favorite part of the story. they didn't want to quarantine the waterways. and in fact there were companies at the time distributing cholera contaminated water. if you have ever seen the gangs of new york. and that is where the worst parts of the cholera epidemic and that was built with the only source of fresh water on manhattan. the pond was filled with garbage over the centuries and then was a garbage filled landfill. so the ground underneath was low-lying and unstable unlike the rest of manhattan which is lined with bedrock.

so the groundwater was easily contaminated. so the state of new york when a to deliver drinking water instead of tapping the upstream sources of water and it would taste better for sure. that would cost too much money so it was like what happened in flint michigan they decided not to tap the good water. they decided instead to sink the well in the middle of the swamp and distributed that water to one third of the people of new york. this is the repeated cholera epidemics. this is the good part. the person who maneuvered all of this was a member. alexander hamilton's emesis

and murderer. [laughter] on top of that, the company that did this call the manhattan company who wanted to save all the money because they wanted to start a bank which they did. the bank of the manhattan company and that bank still exist to this day. do you know who it is? j.p. morgan chase. the biggest bank of america. that is the early history. [laughter] and that from the 16 hundreds to the mid- 19 hundreds and we got rid of it before we had solid biomedical solutions by changing the land use policy

we built a dam but then engineers and all of these were on the board to make sure we built the dams we would not extend the mosquito habitat. we changed housing practices with screens on their windows and doors. keeping people out of poverty in the rural areas to give mechanization and electricity. we built that out. this is well before ddt or any drugs to deal with malaria. and with the ddt that creates a whole biomedical establishment and with

outbreaks of contagious disease and people get sick and then we hope we can throw sufficient vaccine and drugs at it to make it go away. and it is insufficient we don't have those pathogens or the drugs it can spread exponentially with that untreatable disease so with the outbreak in florida in 2009 with dengue centered in

key west and south florida and hasn't been in 70 years so with this biomedical problem to attack the virus but of course florida had been present for a long time. florida was surrounded by countries. that's not new and those that need to be attacked with a chemical onslaught. and that happened in 2008 we had the foreclosure crisis. with a lot of abandoned homes and in florida that means empty swimming pools. so when the rains came they filled up with water and became giant mosquito

hatcheries there was no mosquito inspectors now one year later the unprecedented outbreak of mosquito borne dengue virus in florida. so i don't know if addressing the housing crisis would have helped contain the dengue outbreak because nobody tried that. but what i do know obviously is the biomedical model failed continuing to have dengue outbreaks as a permanent part of the landscape there. as great as the biomedical solutions are and prevent pandemics and those root causes that are political and social not a question of waiting for the perfect here. one - - cure.

>> we play a role to keep them from becoming epidemics and pandemics. the good example of the recent outbreak of ebola in west africa. it has been going on since 1976 and the science of it since then and i had the opportunity to help support that science in the mid- 19 nineties when there was the ebola outbreak in zaire. you get infected. if you are in the bush you die 85 percent die unfortunately may be a family member or two but you are in the middle of the bush and you are done. so if you change that dynamic

and you seek health care in a hospital, unfortunately that doesn't have infection control. when you are infected with ebola that you are a virus factory. that the immune system does not kick in you increase the amount of virus until you die. when you have the most hostile virus in your body? what you die. you don't have more than when you die. we can give you ten with a lot of big numbers hundreds of millions of billions for you are six and one - - sick and dying in the hospital not washington's going patient to patient what happens? and to have the reservoir

somebody sick at home with the family member to take care of them you are at risk. and then they die than you wash the buddy kiss the body and hug the body and then to wash the body and then to take on the attributes this is not a good idea. [laughter] let's admit that. but that is the science. and the 76. and then those disease outbreaks all the time.

and they don't need international teams any more. and then to distinguish those out quickly. nobody had seen the disease before. for those large metropolitan urban areas. and then the oval outbreak will go away. what happens that is not what happened each and every death was need this with the inadequate response local and global. politics in the public health system play the biggest role if it goes from a handful of cases but what we had was the

epidemic across west africa including the united states. and with that social and political factor that we didn't have in the 18 hundreds. i would ask because the answer is yes around the world in 80 days. how quaint. eighty days to get around the world. [laughter] for 22 years i were public health uniform. there was an anchor. it was very much looks like nav uniform we started 200 years ago to provide care to the merchant marines. one of the's services when the ship came into port but if it

will take you 80 days to go from point a to point b by the time you show up in the port of new york city we knew if you had smallpox or yellow fever because the incubation period the time it takes to be infected to manifest symptoms was always shorter than the time it would take to go from point a to point b. now we have that upside down. you could go to your mother's funeral in liberia, engage in the usual ask you would around the funeral you are distraught and then the next day you get on a plane to amsterdam to new york city. now we have 18 or 24 hours incubation period of five or seven days now three days after you show back up to new

york now i have a headache and a fever and i don't feel well. the good hospital number one would be malaria. and if it's not and they missed it then it's very easy to see how you get hospitalized and then spread within the community we saw that in texas that same scenario somebody showed up and infected to local nurses and i have spent a lot of time across the world that our healthcare system is not better than toronto that you saw with the sars outbreak or hong kong or singapore. and with that excellent health care system. so travel has played a big

role how they emerge currently. so now i give you a sense of what we can try to do to make things better around the social and political aspects. i did want to spend a couple of minutes to talk about the carnegie council and the observation which i recognize my whole life if you think of hiv it is often a marginalized population but as i started to write the book it dawned on me how almost every chapter comes out the marginalized population with the increase rest so this is the disease that occurs in the southwestern united states.

and in the young navajo kids and then because you come from the southwest you could be potentially infected they didn't pose any threats and that marginalized populations and i have already talked about and e-bola but today we talk about zika with a marginalized population marginalized women in brazil they have 1 million cases because now with a calculate with the zika virus and all the women infected and their babies have gotten congenital

zika syndrome they have small brains and other disabilities including hearing loss and vision problems and what we have learned is zika is a laserguided missile for neurons. and it kills your neuron cells. it isn't just true and babies. those that would get sick they get fever and a little headache and itching and red eyes and it became clear for pregnant women but now we know even for adults because of this laserlike focus we have this disease called julie on barre syndrome that causes weakness even healthy people

zika can cause brain inflammation with the coverings. even what we think of normal healthy adults this is a problem. this virus should not be a problem. okay it is spread by a certain type of mosquito. it is not new to us the exact same mosquito that spreads yellow fever but causes 30000 deaths per year the exact same mosquito that if we have this conversation five years ago about the large dengue outbreak occurring in south america and it causes 30000 deaths per year and the same exact virus on - - mosquito that causes chicken goodie of virus but because of the

failure since the seventies to keep up with the efforts and not paying attention to people dying from yellow fever and now all of a sudden we are up in arms and then to be infecting pregnant women the lack of action over the last 40 or 50 years against a known threat in the current position now zika is not just move throughout the americas now it cape verde a is knocking on the door of africa to say you are next. with africa and the risk to pregnant women there.

>> one of the lessons from the 1918 pandemic? >> perhaps the most important is understanding what it was that was killing people in 1918. just to remind everybody they have not yet discovered viruses.

killing between 50 and 100 million people worldwide are 675,000 in the us and that those would be 3 million and they didn't know what was killing them they thought it was influence the stars and planets that was killing them because they were misaligned. so to me that is the most important lesson that came out of 1918. was a sign of the communities. that that had publish the full genome. and those two outbreaks and it

still is today. >> publishing in january are you surprised or not surprised where we are today in early april? >> to be honest, i am surprised there are reports of novel viruses it is not unusual. we have had several over the last few decades in china or hong kong and those have gone away and watch them with curiosity and concern but i will be honest the way this pandemic spread surprised me and others as well. >>host: from the book in 2018

just one century is all that separates us from a global health crisis to kill more people than any other illness in recorded history. we learn in the interim it's enough to motivate us but maybe not enough to stop another pandemic from happening because of the mystery and the ability to mutate and spread it is one of mankind's most dangerous foe foes. >> that's right and coronavirus is a winter virus it has a seasonality just like the flu. we have a flu season fall through early spring. and coronavirus as a family of viruses many people listening to the will of had a coronavirus infection at some point in their life because

they have cold symptoms over the winter and that is very common and usually goes away but what is different in 1918 but it went away in the spring after causing devastation and came back in the fall but just reared up again because of the seasonality to the virus and cause tremendous devastation through the early winter of 1919. so will covid-19 act like a regular coronavirus that doesn't like warm or humid weather? will it disappear? we hope so and we hope it will continue to act like a winter virus but then what will happen in the fall? will it disappear or come back with a vengeance just like influenza did in the pandemic

and that remains to be seen. but in partnership with the american medical association on what happened in 1957 and that responsibility for preparing the united states for the impending battle with asian influenza surgeon general of the united states public health service. doctor come i imagine you and your staff are gathering a tremendous amount of material on the asian flu. everybody i know has talked about influenza but nobody really knows. >> one of the upper respiratory infections if they get a cold what we have been

having the past few years that this strain began in hong kong and then spread to the rest of the united states. >> every year influenza is a problem so why are we so concerned about it now? >> that is a good question because even with the outbreaks we have had so far the attack rate is 15 or 20 percent of the population and this is between four and six weeks so in pittsburgh with 1 million people if we had this you word have 200,000 people between the four and a six week span and that would

be a tremendous impact. >> that is within conjunction of westinghouse broadcasting but the most recent figures indicate 16000 americans died from the standard influenza. why does it remain such a mystery? >> the challenge of influenza come i would phrase it slightly differently is not a mystery but a challenge. the biggest challenge that we have when we talk about influenza is vaccine we don't have to re-create and in the difference of that like mumps and measles and rubella and then you are immune for the rest of your life but the

virus is a clever shape shifter and while be can become immune to a strain of the virus and that in fact us word not be recognized. and then to find a vaccine that is universal. and through all strains of the flu. and then year after year after year. it's not so much a mystery as a medical challenge in the way science approached it that part of the flu virus that doesn't direct the immune system with that unchanging piece of the virus it sounds easy to do but it sounds very challenging but with covid-19

and there will be different challenges to figure out if it will be a vaccine year after year or if there are different strains of covid-19 or coronavirus scientists are quickly trying to work out to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible. >> growing up in london the 100 year hunt, influenza ohio good morning. >>caller: good morning. my question and comment has to do with all of this but i haven't had anybody asking yet. i woke up this morning to mike murdock ministries.

asking for money again. all of these evangelical leaders have millions of dollars in private planes and multiple homes what are they doing? are they giving up any of their money like the sports franchise owners have done to help get the ppe? if anything would that be the best way for them to show god's love and so the seeds back to the people that gave them all that? why is nobody looking at that? why does nobody ask that the congregations are endangering people's health and nobody brings this up i just believe that alone is anti-christian and anti- god.

>>host: we will leave your comments there that's really not your area of expertise but i do want to ask you about social distancing did they understand that in 1918? >> they certainly did it was understood the quarantine has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years we know during the great plague starting around 1357 we get this idea 40 days quarantine actually coming from the biblical idea of moses on the mountain for 40 days to be magical and mysterious so social distancing and quarantine have been known for many centuries and also a practice with the very foundations of this country back in the 16 twenties coming

over from england there was a devastating smallpox pandemic between 80 and 90 percent of indigenous people of the country and even back then there was the notion or suggestion we should distance ourselves and those economies to require quarantine and separation even though we had no idea what was killing us or a notion of viruses there was certainly social distancing as we have known about this in the 1918's it was widely practiced and something that has been around for hundreds of years. >> ralph good morning. >>caller: good morning.

the doctor that was speaking from pittsburgh pennsylvania that was 70 miles due north from where i am located in morgantown but earlier in the show talking about what have we done wrong up to this point? so to have more than two times the number of cases in the world. it appears with the modeling we will have way more deaths than any other country in the world. and that second wave coming in the fall or in the winter. i don't believe it is monday morning quarterbacking. what should have been done that should've been done differently because it appears that once the weather gets warm, this will not go away.

as the president initially said that it would. it is very discouraging i don't want to get political especially at a time like this. i don't think we have to worry how the horse got in the ditch but after that we have to take a look without complete lack of preparedness that we have had that has been a direct contribution to all of the numbers of cases. and that is a vast number than what we have experienced. >> i think your points are very important aspect to figure out what we could have done better once this is all behind us but as you point out we have to limit the infection and to make sure each of us is doing our part to prevent the spread but you are right.

when this is done we will ask some very important questions of how we allocate resources for scientific research and allocate resources for preparedness and not surprising the pandemic preparedness is put to the side is more pressing ways but we have all learned that when these events strike they are catastrophic and we certainly will need to think as a community and the nation and what we need to do to be better prepared with the outbreak in great britain and in boston in the 18 nineties the united kingdom that led to important changes the way things were done but with many months away and as you said we

have a different priority it is just a medical priority. bookstores around the country continue to provide remote services for customers through virtual author events.

sourcebooks has closed and stored but selling online although 49 staff members have been rehired to assist with online sales. bay area book sales are providing a series of author events. also according to npd book stands book sales did 13 percent in march over the year prior and they continue to make changes to publication schedules and many have announced layoffs with distribution centers. spring book festivals and conferences have been canceled san antonio and annapolis have opted not to reschedule the american library association announced the cancellation of the annual conference in chicago this june and the l.a. times festival of books originally set to take place in april has decided to hold the 25th annual in october. but tv will continue to bring new programs in publishing news but you can watch all archived programs anytime at

book tv.org. and his newest book scott adams say people's political and social beliefs are superseding reality and here is a portion of his talk from the commonwealth club in san francisco. >> which is the ability to measure with precision what people are clicking on. once that was the case people click on this or that with the things that they want to click on are the crazy stuff. i want to hear about the budget i want to hear about impeachment or a plot to overthrow the government. so we are all elevated in our opinions because that model forces us to more provocative

stuff. before there is my news now it has replaced entertainment to a large extent. how many of you watch the no one - - watch the news like entertainment for the laugh? >> so many liars in everybody's hands it should be up. [laughter] so once you could measure stuff there is no way stockholders could do anything. there's no way you could ignore that. so we have to get to this point of a small technological change and that caused us to bifurcate into almost two civilizations and we don't see what is happening in the bubble because it looks crazy or insane or stupid and we

can't quite tell. there's nothing wrong with the bubble but it doesn't make sense and we cannot make any sense of it and largely because people have become bifurcated in their news consumption. . . . .