A deadly box of chemicals

Do you remember the swine flu panic a decade ago? Jeremy Brown, the author of this book, describes it here. In March 2009, 60 people died in Mexico. The cause: a flu-type virus. The Mexican government ‘closed schools, banned public gatherings, and ordered troops to hand out face masks at subway stations’. This flu crossed the border into the United States. The media monitored the outbreak with grim enthusiasm. Soon, people in 74 countries were infected. The WHO ‘declared it a pandemic’.

Or perhaps you don’t remember the swine flu panic of 2009. Not many people do. The main reason I do is that I met an epidemiologist on a train in March of that year; he was having the most intense week of his life. People really thought this swine flu virus, a variant of the H1N1 strain, with components from pig flu, bird flu and human flu, might be the big one.