Here the post-war flu pandemic is less a national calamity than an opportunity to bump off awkward characters.With its healthy respect for silliness, "Downton Abbey" is the more successful of the two toffologues: it will be broadcast in many countries, picked up a Golden Globe in America and has helped to rejuvenate ITV.
So it's necessary for Downton to reflect the reality of life, be it the First World War, Spanish flu or the ravages of the workhouse.
Starting in the early part of the 20th century, the West experienced one awful event after another, including a world war, a flu pandemic and a major depression.
WE HAVE a story this week on Mexico's surprisingly buoyant tourism industry, which seems to be shrugging off a drug war, swine flu and all other obstacles remarkably well.
Almost everyone in town has a favorite encounter — perhaps the Clintons' appearance at High Holy Day services at Temple Beth El one year, or Mr. Clinton's impromptu tutorial on World War I flu deaths at an earlier Memorial Day Parade.
Although it caused a great deal of battlefield illness and likely sped the end of the Great War, the flu seems to have affected all sides relatively equally; hence, it probably did not affect the outcome.
He thinks such a swing toward virulence explains the terrible influenza pandemic of 1919, which killed more people than World War I. Normally, flu, like any other disease transmitted through the air, requires a more-or-less ambulatory host.
Pfeffer has played a fireman's role for the paper, covering the Mumbai terror attacks, the Russian-Georgian war, and swine flu in Mexico.
"Over the last 10 years there have been only three government statements on a Friday; on the Iraq war, on swine flu and on Libya.
It's ironic that the specter of a swine-flu pandemic coincides with the health-care reform debate in the U.S. President Obama and his party want to win the war against swine flu, cancer and Alzheimer's but they also want price controls on the products devised by drug-company scientists.
