The Evolution of the 1918 Virus

The 1918 virus may certainly be related to its unusual virulence and killing so many people, but we can't actually yet also prove that hypothesis. Even though we have the complete sequence in front of us, we still cannot answer the very fundamental questions about why the 1918 virus killed so many people. But it gives us the tools now to very carefully examine those two questions and experimental models. Hopefully this will shed light on how pandemics form and the age five before another pandemic does start. Jeff Talbenberger from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in the US talking to us about what could be happening out there in Asia or Eastern Europe today.