2018 marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of a flu pandemic that killed 50 to 100 million people and infected hundreds of millions around the world. Host Frank Stasio talks to James Leloudis, a history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, about why the 1918 influenza was so deadly, and what impact it had on public health.
Epidemiologist Ralph Baric joins the conversation to share the science behind the influenza vaccine and what the next big flu epidemic could be like. Baric is a professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Leloudis and Baric will both be speaking at the symposium “Going Viral: Impact and Implications of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic” at UNC Chapel Hill. The symposium runs Wednesday, April 4 to Friday, April 6.