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Has the flu ever reached epidemic proportions?

Three times in the twentieth century, influenza caused by a contagious virus reached epidemic (widespread outbreaks) proportions worldwide. In 1918 and 1919, 30,000,000 people died during a two-wave global flu epidemic, 500,000 of them Americans. After the flu weakened their immune systems, many sufferers caught other illnesses, such as pneumonia, which proved to be fatal. After antibiotics (substances that kill bacteria, that is, germs) such as sulfa and penicillin were developed and went on the market in the mid-1940s, fewer people died from secondary infections that were caused by bacteria. Even so, viruses cause flu and antibiotics kill only bacteria, not viruses. Therefore, when the Asian flu erupted in global proportions in 1957 and 1958, it killed 70,000 Americans (figures for the rest of the world are unknown), and when the Hong Kong flu broke out in 1968...

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1. Origins
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   3. What is the Hippocratic Oath?
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   3. What were Sigmund Freud's contributions to the study of human psychology?
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