Chapter 215 - A dark cloud upon humanity (1/2)

On this dry wintry day, Tong Lili was finally able to return home and rest under her own blanket after working for more than 30 hours in a row without sleep. Although she felt all sorts of dissatisfaction and unwillingness, her eyes would no longer open after becoming red and swollen from crying. She was far too tired.

Zhang Fan was also really tired. The 24-hour work shift plus having to concentrate for several more hours afterwards to perform surgery also made him feel rather dizzy. He closed the curtains in his apartment and took a hot shower. Thanks to the heating system, he didn’t feel cold in his apartment at all. The chilly air outside didn’t penetrate his apartment.

Winters in the border province were truly freezing. Currently, it was below -30 degrees Celsius. Any water particles in the air would instantly freeze into frost. The dry and cold temperature was also the best type of environment for viruses to grow in.

Whenever it was really dry, problems would often occur with the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract. The skin and mucous membrane were the first defense lines that human bodies had against illnesses. The dry and cold weather would cause viruses to run rampant.

The flu sounded rather weak in comparison to HIV, hepatis B, and so on. The flu might seem just like their weakly cousin who wasn’t threatening at all.

However, influenza had always accompanied humanity, and evolved together with humans. An astronomical number of humans had died because of the flu over the years. The strongest influenza pandemic of all time occurred in 1918. More than 100,000,000 people died, ravaging much of Europe.

The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, would attack all people indiscriminately. For most diseases, it would only be the young and the elderly who were at risk, or maybe men or women would be more likely to be affected, but that wasn’t the case with Spanish flu. No matter your age, how rich you were, or whether you were male or female, it would infect anyone. Although science was developing rapidly, the flu was also evolving. Even though humanity was now capable of standing on the moon, humanity had yet to discover a method to completely eradicate the flu.

Many people might look down on traditional Chinese medicine in modern times. However, it was precisely because of traditional Chinese medicine that the flu wasn’t so virulent in China. But in modern society, life had become more quick-paced, and nobody was now willing to patiently wait for a slow treatment.

With pressure from life and society, ordinary people now felt that they should be able to be cured on the second day right after becoming ill. They no longer accepted the idea that a common cold would require treatment for an entire month. In many jobs, every day of not working would represent not having income. Many ordinary people wouldn’t be able to afford this.

The beginning of flu symptoms wouldn’t be much different from the symptoms of an ordinary cold. The true differences would appear two to three days after the onset of symptoms. Only then would the flu show off its true might. Typically, this would start with a high fever of more than 39 degrees Celsius.

After that, you would start feeling all sorts of discomfort, such as feeling cold, headache, lack of energy, sore muscles, sore throat, and so on. If this was an ordinary flu virus, it would usually take approximately one week for your body to defeat the virus by itself. Only then would the flu symptoms slowly go away. And if your body couldn’t defeat the flu virus, then a secondary infection or bacterial pneumonia would likely soon occur. If you didn’t control the illness effectively then, only death would await. Not only that, you would become just like a living biological weapon as you were also a source of infection.

The main way by which the flu would spread would be through the air as well as saliva. The flu virus was capable of spreading as you talked, coughed, sneezed, and so on, flying out together with secretions from your respiratory tract. The scariest part about the flu virus was that it was capable of staying in the air for approximately 30 minutes.

Anywhere that many people gathered, a single sneeze from someone infected with the flu might infect everyone else within a radius of several dozen meters. This was no joke or laughing matter. Older Chinese people would probably all remember the SARS epidemic that had made all of China so tense. Back then, no matter big or small, all windows were constantly open. This was because only by having excellent ventilation would it be possible to reduce the amount of infection, especially in enclosed areas.

The flu felt quite simple. It was only a virus. But actually, the flu was incredibly complex and powerful. The flu was strong to the point where China even established a monitoring system for the flu. This was the only common illness that China focused so seriously on, even reaching the point where the entire medical system of China was being used to monitor this illness.