Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

by Gina Kolata

Back in England, observed John Oxford, the British virologist, hospitals had put “pandemic plans” in place. Anyone who arrived in Heathrow Airport from Hong Kong with a respiratory infection was quarantined, just in case. The H5N1 scare, he said, “was a dress rehearsal.”