Eventually, the government reported that a total of about fifty-five million Americans had become infected with H1N1 in 2009—about one sixth of the U.S. population rather than one half—and 11,000 had died from it.43 Rather than being an unusually severe strain of the virus, H1N1 had in fact been exceptionally mild, with a fatality rate of just 0.02 percent. Indeed, there were slightly fewer deaths from the flu in 2009–10 than in a typical season.44 It hadn’t quite been the epic embarrassment of 1976, but there had been failures of prediction from start to finish. There are no guarantees that
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