Migrating wild birds are literally spreading this disease throughout the world. Swains and chickens are most susceptible to the virulent flu strain. Human cases are uncommon but the death rate for those infected is high - approximately 50%. Fears are that the virus could mutate into an easily transmittable human-to-human disease, sparking the next worldwide pandemic. All it takes is the avian flu in chickens, for instance, to infect pigs? sick with the human flu; the resulting hybrid virus would be a flu that humans could easily catch. The strain that spread from Mexico to the U.S. and Europe in the spring of 2009 is unusual since the flu is a fall and winter disease. This strain of swine flu has all the makings of becoming a world pandemic.

A Russian historian and later professor of medicine, A.L. Tchijewsky, spent his life collecting, recording, and comparing wars, revolutions, migrations, and other momentous events in history from 500 B.C. to 1900 A.D. Tchijewsky was most interested in any relation between historical events and sunspot activity. One of his most celebrated discoveries concerned the ebb and tide of worldwide epidemics.