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Well Said: The 1918 flu

In this week’s podcast, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health professor Ralph Baric discusses the impact of the 1918 flu and the developments we’ve seen in the past 100 years to respond to the next outbreak. He also explains why this has been a particularly bad flu season.

A century ago, the 1918 influenza outbreak wreaked havoc in Chapel Hill, across North Carolina and around the world.

There were as many as 50 million deaths — about 3 percent of the world’s population at that time.

In this week’s episode, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health professor Ralph Baric discusses the impact of the 1918 flu and the developments we’ve seen in the past 100 years to respond to the next outbreak. He also explains why this has been a particularly bad flu season.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 flu – and to assess the threat that an outbreak of this scale poses today – the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and its partners will host an interdisciplinary symposium from April 4-6 titled “Going Viral: Impact and Implications of the 1918 Influenza Flu Pandemic.”

Read a transcript of this episode.