The impasse lasted until August 1, when a swine flu scare spurred Congress to act. At an American Legion convention in a Philadelphia hotel a group of people fell ill and twenty-six died of a mysterious disease. It seemed to be a respiratory disease. It looked, in fact, like the flu, and some doctors said publicly that the men might have died from swine flu. For four days, while television stations showed funerals of the Legionnaires and the new disease made headlines, it seemed that the predicted flu epidemic had begun.
