Influenza pandemics are global epidemics that result from new variants of the influenza virus emerging in global populations. For this to happen, the virus must be easily transmitted from person to person and cause serious illness in the human body. Serious pandemic epidemics have been recorded for over a hundred years. Advancing medical knowledge has helped doctors and scientists understand how these epidemics occur and develop plans to prevent and treat the virus. Before current knowledge about influenza there was nothing people could do to control epidemics. When we compare strategies implemented during an epidemic prior to modern medical developments to a more recent pandemic, the evidence supports that we were better prepared to handle the 2009 H1N1 pandemic than the 1918 influenza pandemic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Over the course of two years during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, more than 50 million people died. The virus arrived in two waves, the first much less lethal than the second. Scientists are still unable to pinpoint the specific strain of influenza A that was infecting the population at the time, so it is difficult to understand why it was so lethal. When the flu first appeared, the United States was ill-equipped to deal with a health crisis. Doctors, nurses and supplies were sent overseas because World War I was still ongoing at the time of the initial outbreak. The country was well equipped to fight in Europe, but was not prepared to fight the disease on the home front. It was up to local governments to decide how to contain outbreaks, and many communities initiated different types of containment plans. Some cities had plans in place, but most did not have the resources available to carry them out effectively. Many cities have decided to close public places and force homes with infected people to be quarantined until they recover. This was ineffective because it was almost impossible to enforce. Gauze masks have been distributed and sanitation laws have been put in place in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus from person to person. Scientists tried to take preventative measures by creating vaccines, but the vaccines proved ineffective because they were not made with the actual virus. In 1918 there was not much understanding of how to produce effective vaccines. Additionally, antiviral drugs had not yet been formulated at the time, so there wasn't much doctors could do for a patient once they were infected (Oct 803-810). Current epidemics are nowhere near as lethal as those of the early 1900s. In early 2009, a new influenza A (H1N1) virus emerged in the human population. This virus spread rapidly through direct human-to-human contact, resulting in a virus pandemic. There have been 18,449 laboratory-confirmed deaths recorded as a direct result of the outbreak. This is significantly fewer than the 50 million deaths that occurred during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Each country developed slightly different, but effective, control strategies when the epidemic hit in early 2009. Scientists are We were able to develop vaccines significantly faster than ever to target the specific strain of the virus. Countries that have initiated mass vaccination as a control strategy have seen significant results in the number of recorded infections. Most developed countries had strategies in place before the initial outbreak,.