Man Flu Quotes

Sudenly a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong black bread. He wus werring a blak robe dat sed 'avril lavigne' on da back. He shotted a spel and Vlodemort ran away. It was...DUMBLYDORE!

The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.

The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle...yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.

Physically it's kind of lassitude, the apathy and tiredness that precedes the flu or some other illness, or death. My legs ache and feel heavy, my skin has become more sensitive to cold and to heat, to the hardness or rigidity of things. Nothing interests me, I feel uncomfortable being still but would feel even more uncomfortable if I moved. I don't know whether speaking is painful or just boring. I sit here, staring straight ahead, with no desires, no needs, hollow. I'm not even sad. I feel only passivity and indifference.

The worst part about being sick is not getting any sympathy from my wife. She says I have the "man-flu." The Urban Dictionary defines "man-flu" as "an illness that causes the male to be completely helpless and sicker than any other family member." In females it is known as a cold.

Cool. Can I come over? Phil’s got the flu and he’s being such a man about it.

This man has never once called me honey. He never even calls me Harry, like our friends do. Once, when I had a terrible flu, he called me baby in such a tender voice, my feverish brain decided it would be a good time to burst into tears.

DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu. The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him on. She saw Ain shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman. - 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain

The ‘Other Half’ is the word. The ‘Other Half’ is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the ‘Other Half’ is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common ‘hallucinations’ of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject’s body at an angle…yes quite an angle it is the ‘Other Half’ worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word. ― William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded. (Grove Press January 12, 1994) Originally published 1962.

A Contagion Abroad by Stewart Stafford Overblown epidemic, Inferno pandemic, Death takes a vacation. Bird flu, Bat stew, Churning, gagging virus brew, Man the panic stations. Contaminate, capitulate, Sickly state, funeral date, A lost generation. Depopulate, inoculate, Virologists thwart fate, The world's rehabilitation. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

Memories are a curious thing: while I always felt fortunate to have a few photographs of my father, they ended up contaminating my memories of him, because I looked at them so much, they gradually replaced the flesh-and-blood man whose body had a smell, whose voice had a timbre, whose hair would ruffle, and whose smile, when he unleashed it, was more contagious than the flu. In

In Ogunquit,” she said, “he was the most insufferable kid you could imagine. A lot of it was compensation for his family situation, I guess… to them it must have seemed like he had hatched from a cowbird egg or something… but after the flu, he seemed to change. At least to me, he did. He seemed to be trying to be, well… a man. Then he changed again. Like all at once. He started to smile all the time. You couldn’t really talk to him anymore. He was… in himself. The way people get when they convert to religion or read—” She stopped suddenly, and her eyes took on a momentary startled look that seemed very like fear. “Read what?” Stu asked. “Something that changes their lives,” she said. “Das Kapital. Mein Kampf. Or maybe just intercepted love letters.

The Oreo cookie invented, the Titanic sinks, Spanish flu, Prohibition, women granted the right to vote, Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic, penicillin invented, stock market crashes, the Depression, Amelia Earhart, the atom is split, Prohibition ends, Golden Gate Bridge is built, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Korean War, Disneyland, Rosa Parks, Laika the dog is shot into space, hula hoops, birth control pill invented, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe dies, JFK killed, MLK has a dream, Vietnam War, Star Trek, MLK killed, RFK killed, Woodstock, the Beatles (George, Ringo, John, and Paul) break up, Watergate, the Vietnam War ends, Nixon resigns, Earth Day, Fiddler on the Roof, Olga Korbut, Patty Hearst, Transcendental Meditation, the ERA, The Six Million Dollar Man. "Bloody hell," I said when she was done. "I know. It must be a lot to take in." "It's unfathomable. A Brit named his son Ringo Starr?" She looked pleasantly surprised: she'd thought I had no sense of humor. "Well, I think his real name was Richard Starkey.

Did you recently take a long flight?” I told her we’d flown from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, then from Los Angeles to Sydney. “Did you sleep a lot of that time?” she continued. “Pretty much the entire time,” I answered. My concern grew. Could it be something terrible and communicable? TB, perhaps? The flu? A terrible strain of airborne malaria? “What’s wrong, Doctor? Give it to me straight; I can take it.” “I believe what you have,” she said, “is an inner ear disturbance--most likely brought on by the long flight and the sleep.” An inner ear disturbance? How boring. How embarrassing. “What would sleeping a lot have to do with it?” I asked. As the daughter of a physician, I needed a little more data. She explained that since I hadn’t been awake much during the flight, I hadn’t yawned or naturally taken other steps to alleviate the ear popping that comes from a change in cabin pressure, and that my ears simply filled with fluid and were causing this current attack of vertigo. Fabulous, I thought. I’m a complete wimp. It was a real high point. “Is there anything she can do to make it better?” Marlboro Man asked, looking for a concrete solution. The doctor prescribed some decongestant and some antinausea medication, and I crawled out of her office in shame.

Today, such studies are illegal. Medical scientists cannot offer inducements like pardons to persuade prisoners to take part in their studies. Although they can award small cash payments to research subjects, they are forbidden from giving anyone so much money or such tempting favors that their compensations might constitute what ethicists term an inappropriate inducement, an irresistible temptation to join the study. Now, more than eighty years after the 1918 flu, people enter studies for several reasons—to get free medical care, to get an experimental drug that, they hope, might cure them of a disease like cancer or AIDS, or to help further scientific knowledge. In theory at least, study participants are supposed to be true volunteers, taking part in research of their own free will. But in 1918, such ethical arguments were rarely considered. Instead, the justification for a risky study with human beings was that it was better to subject a few to a great danger in order to save the many. Prisoners were thought to be the ideal study subjects. They could offer up their bodies for science and, if they survived, their pardons could be justified because they gave something back to society. The Navy inmates were perfect for another reason. Thirty-nine of them had never had influenza, as far as anyone knew. So they might be uniquely susceptible to the disease. If the doctors wanted to deliberately transmit the 1918 flu, what better subjects? Was influenza really so easily transmitted? the doctors asked. Why did some people get it and others not? Why did it kill the young and healthy? Could the wartime disruptions and movements of troops explain the spread of the flu? If it was as contagious as it seemed, how was it being spread? What kind of microorganism was causing the illness? The normal way to try to answer such questions would be to study the spread of the disease in animals. Give the disease to a few cages of laboratory rats, or perhaps to some white rabbits. Isolate whatever was causing the illness. Show how it spread and test ways to protect animals—and people—against the disease. But influenza, it seemed, was a uniquely human disease. No animal was known to be susceptible to it. Medical researchers felt they had no choice but to study influenza in people. Either the Navy doctors were uncommonly persuasive or the enticement of a pardon was overwhelmingly compelling. For whatever reason, the sixty-two men agreed to be subjects in the medical experiment. And so the study began. First the sailors were transferred to a quarantine station on Gallops Island in Boston Harbor. Then the Navy doctors did their best to give the men the flu. Influenza is a respiratory disease—it is spread from person to person, presumably carried on droplets of mucus sprayed in the air when sick people cough or sneeze, or carried on their hands and spread when the sick touch the healthy. Whatever was causing the flu should be present in mucus taken from the ill. The experiments, then, were straightforward. The Navy doctors collected mucus from men who were desperately ill with the flu, gathering thick viscous secretions from their noses and throats. They sprayed mucus from flu patients into the noses and throats of some men, and dropped it into other men’s eyes. In one attempt, they swabbed mucus from the back of the nose of a man with the flu and then directly swabbed that mucus into the back of a volunteer’s nose.

I learned early on in SEAL training the value of teamwork, the need to rely on someone else to help you through the difficult tasks. For those of us who were “tadpoles” hoping to become Navy frogmen, a ten-foot rubber raft was used to teach us this vital lesson. Everywhere we went during the first phase of SEAL training we were required to carry the raft. We placed it on our heads as we ran from the barracks, across the highway, to the chow hall. We carried it in a low-slung position as we ran up and down the Coronado sand dunes. We paddled the boat endlessly from north to south along the coastline and through the pounding surf, seven men, all working together to get the rubber boat to its final destination. But we learned something else on our journey with the raft. Occasionally, one of the boat crew members was sick or injured, unable to give it 100 percent. I often found myself exhausted from the training day, or down with a cold or the flu. On those days, the other members picked up the slack. They paddled harder. They dug deeper. They gave me their rations for extra strength. And when the time came, later in training, I returned the favor. The small rubber boat made us realize that no man could make it through training alone. No SEAL could make it through combat alone and by extension you needed people in your life to help you through the difficult times.

The Lottery by Stewart Stafford It was New York, 1984, The AIDS tsunami roared in, Friends, old overnight, no more, Breathless, I went for a check-up. A freezing winter's dawn, A solitary figure before me, What we called a drag queen, White heels trembled in the cold. "Hi, are you here to get tested?" Gum chewed, brown eyes stared. This was not my type of person, I turned heel and walked away. At month's end, a crippling flu, The grey testing centre called, Two hundred people ahead of me; A waking nightmare all too real. I gave up and turned to leave, But a familiar voice called out: "Hey, you there, come back!" I stopped and turned around. The drag queen stood there in furs, But sicker, I didn't recognise them, "Stand with me in the line, honey." "Nah, I'm fine, I'll come back again." "Support an old broad before she faints?" A voice no longer frail but pin-sharp. I got in line to impatient murmurs: "If anyone has a problem, see me!" Sylvester on boombox, graveyard choir. My pal's stage name was Carol DaRaunch, (After the Ted Bundy female survivor) Their real name was Ernesto Rodriguez. After seeing the doctor, Carol hugged me, Writing down their number on some paper, With their alias not their real name on it: "Is this the number of where you work?" "THAT is my home number to call me on. THAT'S my autograph, for when I'm famous!" "I was wrong about you, Carol," I said. "Baby, it takes time to get to know me!" A hug, shimmy, the threadbare blonde left. A silent chorus of shuffling dead men walking, Spartan results, a young man's death sentence. Real words faded rehearsal, my eyes watered. Two weeks on, I cautiously phoned up Carol. The receiver was picked up, dragging sounds, Like furniture being moved: "Is Carol there?" "That person is dead." They hung up on me. All my life's harsh judgements, dumped on Carol, Who was I to win life's lottery over a guardian angel? I still keep that old phone number forty years on, Crumpled, faded, portable guilt lives on in my wallet. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.

You run ahead and find a pay phone,” I said to Jezza. “Tell your mom we’re having a slumber party or something.” “A slumber p—? What the hell are you on about?” “I love you, man. So don’t take this wrong, but your mom’s an idiot. You’re an idiot. Your whole family is idiots. When Randall OD’d last year and we had to crash at your place, we told her he had the flu. She made him fucking Rice Krispies squares. I don’t give a shit what you tell her, just let her know we’re coming.” Jezza

Frank slept in the chair beside Ollie’s bed, his elbow propped on a table, his hand holding his head somewhat upright. As we entered the room, he leapt to his feet. His confused gaze searched my face, and then his eyes narrowed at the sheriff. “Should she be out of bed?” Gravelly words. “Fever’s broke.” A clipped response. I looked from one man to the other, trying to comprehend the antagonism that crackled the air between them. A shiver swayed me. Each man’s face softened, but I disregarded their concern. I needed to know about Ollie. She looked so tiny in the middle of her parents’ bed. A slick, almost bloodless face. My stomach clutched. Was she dead? Then I realized that no spots shadowed her eyes or her cheeks. Her body shook with a deep cough. I winced, trying to suppress the answering one creeping up my own throat. Frank reached across the bed and felt her face and the back of her neck. He dropped back into the chair. “She’s still fine.” I wavered. Frank jumped up, caught hold of my arm, and kept me upright. He led me to the bed and urged me to lie beside Ollie. As the fog in my head cleared further, fear pounced at me like a threatened bobcat. “Where are the boys? And Janie? Tell me.” I gripped Frank’s shirtsleeves. “They’re fine. They’re at the Crenshaws. Under the weather, but not the flu. Definitely not the flu.” I looked to the sheriff. He nodded. Once. “Truly?” My gaze held Frank’s. He wouldn’t lie to me. He couldn’t. “I promise.

So what would she be like?” “Man, you don’t quit, do you?” Now it was her turn to laugh. “Listen, I’m sitting here, freezing cold in this paper doily, about to be told that I have the flu and shouldn’t have bothered coming in. Do me a solid and get my mind off my reality, will you?” iAm sat back in his chair. “Well, like I said, I haven’t really given it a lot of thought.” “Can I set you up with someone—” “No,” he barked. “Nooooooooo. No, no, no, back right off the edge of that ledge, girlie.” She put out her hands. “Okay, okay. Just, I don’t know, you seem like a good guy.

Failure is like flu. It can happen to anyone. Just as it is difficult to find a person who hasn’t had the flu, it is difficult to find someone who has not been stuck by failure at some time.

I see he gave you a ring,” Rupert remarked, glancing at the twinkling diamond on Lily’s finger. “I’m only wearing it because it won’t come off.” “Why did you put it on in the first place?” Lily sighed. “I didn’t—Caleb did.” “I see. We’ve come full circle, Lily—back to my original question, which you so neatly evaded. Do you love Caleb Halliday?” Lily lowered her head. “Yes,” she answered weakly. “I think about him all the time, and I get cold chills and hot flashes, just like when I had the flu. I even feel a little bit sick to my stomach.” “It’s love, all right,” Rupert said. He sounded very worldly wise for a schoolmaster who had only now gotten around to considering marriage. “And you don’t want to marry him because you think you might be like your mother?” Lily wanted to make her case by explaining how hot-blooded and wanton she was with Caleb, but it wouldn’t be delicate to speak too specifically of such things with a man. “It’s more than that,” she said. “I’ve got my heart set on a place of my own, and on finding my sisters. Caleb wants to leave the army and go back to Pennsylvania to live. Marrying him would change the whole course of my life.” “Love often does that.” Lily

the flu epidemic of 1918. Afterwards, Dan and his brother Don (who went on to become a celebrated scientist),

This would probably be a good time for the operators of the Great Plan to introduce a worldwide flu pandemic…..or worse.

If I were a COVID-19 superhero, I would be ‘Hazmat-Man’.

She read detective stories when she wanted to escape, when she had flu or when she needed to forget some man or other.

Robert Graves, the poet and British Army officer, was in London, too, still shaky from the German metal he had received in his chest and thigh the year before. His mother-in-law contracted influenza, but deceived her physician in order to make the rounds of the latest London plays with her son, Tony, on leave from France. She died July 13: “her chief feeling was one of pleasure that Tony had got his leave prolonged on her account.” On the day she died, Grave’s friend and fellow poet, Sigfried Sassoon, who had been shot through the throat in 1917, was shot through the head while on patrol in No-Man’s-Land. He recovered. Tony was killed two months later.27 Yes, the war was much more engrossing than Spanish flu.

Coronavirus affects not only humans, but also animals as well. That is a fact as seen from around the world both in the wild and in enclosed habitats like zoos. Cats, dogs, minks, tigers, hyenas, hippos, leopards, just to name a few. There also seems to be direct correlation to outbreaks of avian flu, but the so called experts seem to think there is no coincidence between the two. I beg to differ. The avian outbreaks seem to occur within so called coronavirus hot spots. That is a coincidence to big to rule out. Captive birds like chickens have close contact with man, so there may be something there, but wild birds usually shun man. That means there must be another cause. Sewerage outflows can carry the corona virus to low water areas where wild birds drink, bathe and eat. As I have said, it is a too big a coincidence to rule out. Let's hope I'm wrong, but I just have that feeling...

But maybe his father was right. Maybe what had happened in 1918 could never happen again. "U.S. Reveals Detailed Flu Disaster Plans." Cole decided to make this the topic for his research report. Plans for manufacturing and distributing vaccines and other medications. Plans to quarantine the sick and to call up extra doctors and nurses and to replace absent workers with retired workers so that businesses wouldn't have to shut down. Plans to keep public transportation and electricity and telecommunications and other vital services operating and food and water and other necessities from running out. Plans to mobilize troops (for Cole this was the only exciting part) in the event of mass panic or violence. One day he would ask Pastor Wyatt why, despite all these plans, everything had gone so wrong. "Son, that is just the thing. That is what people did not--and still do not--get. There is no way you can count on the government, even if it's a very good government. The government isn't going to save you, it isn't going to save anyone. There's no way you can count on other people in a situation like we had. People afraid of losing their lives--or, Lord knows, even just their toys--they'll panic. Even fine, decent Christian folk--you can never know for sure what they'll do next. So I say, love your neighbor, help your fellow man all you can, but don't ever count on any other human being. Count on God." What Cole didn't know was that most of the plans he read about that night would have been sufficient only for an emergency lasting a few weeks.

When Mom says “bong,” she means her nebulizer. It turns water into vapor, and she huffs it all day like a singer breathing hot mist before a performance. Except Mom’s machine is handheld. I’m surprised she doesn’t carry it in a gun sling. But my mom is not just inhaling water. “Let’s get some colloidal silver in those lungs,” she says. Second to prayer, colloidal silver is Mom’s insurance policy on life. She makes her own, soaking two silver rods in a glass vat of water that sits next to her kitchen sink. I’ll let her explain it. This is from one of her emails telling me how to live forever: “I use distilled water and 99% pure silver rods. The rods are connected to a positive and negative charge (think of a jumper cable for your car) and they are immersed in the distilled water. Some people leave the rods in the water 2–4 hours. I leave mine in for 8–12 hours so my silver water is extra strength and powerful…I drink ¼ cup colloidal silver in a glass of water before bed, and have for years and years. RARELY am I ever sick. I take a bottle of colloidal silver on every trip (especially overseas) in case I pick up a stomach bug or am around anyone who is sick. I use it on wounds, use it for pink eye, ear infections, the flu, and more because it kills over 600 viruses and most bacteria, including MRSA. There are also studies that show the benefits of colloidal silver against cancer.” Every time I’m home, she gives me a bottle of the stuff to take back to Los Angeles. I, like a good millennial, googled its effectiveness. The scientific establishment seems to believe that colloidal silver does approximately nothing good, and in large quantities, some bad. Perhaps you’ve seen the viral meme of the old blue man? He consumed so much colloidal silver that his skin dyed blue from the inside. He looks like a Smurf with a white beard. Well, he looked like a Smurf. He’s dead. Maybe from something common like heart failure, but… When I told my mother this, she wouldn’t hear it. “I know it works. I’ve been using it for years. I don’t care what those articles say. I’ve read hundreds of articles about it.

I sat in front of the TV hour after hour watching the news about how Trump was fucking up the government’s response to the spreading corona virus infection. Why didn’t he invoke the federal government’s power under the Defense Production Act as soon as the virus hit Washington State? All the experts knew how fast-spreading and dangerous this corona virus could be? Instead, he ignores the CDC’s advice and downplays the risk to the nation’s health. Not until mid April, when it’s way too late, does Trump finally use some of the government’s power under the DPA, and even then it’s a half-assed measure. Not enough testing, not enough ventilators, not enough PPE, not enough swabs. The number of infections kept rising. By the end of March the US led the world in infections and deaths caused by the virus. What does Trump do? He refuses to wear a mask. He’s not going to look like a weakling. Testing? Overrated. It increases the number of infections. Why doesn’t the country have enough PPE and ventilators? Obama’s fault. The President is in charge, but if there’s any failure, it’s the fault of governors and mayors. He keeps repeating his mantra, “The situation is under control.” Pence’s team will whip the virus. Or was it Jared’s team? This virus isn’t as bad as the flu. America always wins. Doesn’t matter who or what the enemy is, we always triumph. We’re going to kill that little bug. Those people wearing masks are doing it to spite me, Donald J. Trump, the greatest President in history. “The situation is under control.” But the deaths keep mounting. It surpasses annual deaths from auto accidents, 34,000. It surpasses US deaths in the Vietnam War, 58,000. Next, it’s going to surpass total deaths of US soldiers in World War I, 116,500, and it’s not going to stop there. What the fuck!? This is the United States of America! We’re supposed to have the best healthcare in the world, the best of everything. We’re Number One! Yeah, Trump made America great again. He said with him as President America would win so much we’d get tired of winning. Right on, man! We are Number One – in corona virus infections and deaths! After spending all day switching back and forth among the cable news networks on TV, I’d turn off the television and get on my laptop and rant on Twitter about what an idiot the President was. That was my life during the lockdown. From "Anarchist, Republican... Assassin

When Friedrich died of the Spanish flu, twelve-year-old Fred became the man of the house.

knows exactly how serious this threat could be. Nevertheless, we cannot afford to take a chance with the health of our nation.” With that preamble, Ford announced that he was asking Congress to appropriate $135 million “for the production of sufficient vaccine to inoculate every man, woman, and child in the United States,” for a disease that no one could even prove to exist.

When Friedrich died of the Spanish flu,

I wish I knew. It’s almost like nature is trying to show us that she’s still more powerful than man. No matter how many of each other we kill in war, nature can still kill more of us. No matter how much we think we know about life, she still can make us look impotent.

Are you all right? Can I call someone for you? The priest, perhaps? Your family?” “There is no one, not anymore. I’m Rudy Romanov. You must have heard the news about my parents.” An unholy vision burst in her head. She saw wolves boiling from the forest, red eyes gleaming fiercely, a huge black wolf leading the pack and bearing straight down on Hans Romanov. From the young man’s head, she picked up the memory of his mother, Heidi, lying on her bed, her husband’s fingers around her throat. For one awful moment she couldn’t breathe. What this man had suffered! Both parents taken from him in a matter of hours. His fanatical father had murdered his mother. “I’ve been ill with the flu; this is my first time out in days.” She moved closer to him beneath the outstretched limbs of the trees. She couldn’t very well tell him the truth--that she had been involved in the entire horrendous affair.

Send for the doctor! I need a medicine man who will solder my body and soul together, which splits at every separation. The doctor says it is the flu. He cannot see the body is empty, the fire is gone, I am king without kingdom, and artist without a home, a stranger to luxury, to power, to bigness, to comfort. I lost a world, a small human world of love and friendship. I am not adventurer, I miss my home, familiar streets, those I love and know well.

Perhaps, in some innocent encounter in China between a child and a bird, a new killer flu is on its way. Or perhaps, even now, a young man or a young woman has become infected with two different strains of flu viruses. They are mixing together in the person’s lungs, their genes reassorting. Emerging from that witches’ brew is a new virus, a chimera, that, like the 1918 flu virus, is perfectly suited for destruction.

I think the planet's immune system is trying to get rid of us with AIDS and new strains of flu and tuberculosis, and so on. I think the planet should get rid of us. We're really awful animals.

Perhaps, in some innocent encounter in China between a child and a bird, a new killer flu is on its way. Or perhaps, even now, a young man or a young woman has become infected with two different strains of flu viruses. They are mixing together in the person’s lungs, their genes reassorting. Emerging from that witches’ brew is a new virus, a chimera, that, like the 1918 flu virus, is perfectly suited for destruction. Perhaps, as we grow almost smug about influenza, that most quotidian of infections, a new plague is now gathering deadly force. Except this time we stand armed with a better understanding of the past to better survive the next pandemic.

first outbreak in the States, the human race could have easily faced extinction. In 1918 the feat of traveling from Kansas to Moscow in less than one week was impossible. Yet, today a man can wake up in Chicago and before his day is over he can be in London. And should that same man, asymptomatic in the quiet incubation stage, harbor a deadly airborne virus while on his transcontinental flight, he just started the next pandemic. Needless to say, put all fear

Jack Horner was the last steward of Glastonbury Abbey, and that he was sent to Henry VIII to offer him the deeds to ten manors as a peace offering. The deeds were hidden inside a pie in case of highwaymen, until Jack put in his thumb and pulled out ‘the plumb’ for himself - Mells Manor.