Wow indeed. The 1957–1958 influenza pandemic, also known as the Asian flu, was a global pandemic of influenza A virus subtype H2N2 that originated in Guizhou, China, and killed at least a million people worldwide.The case fatality rate of Asian flu was approximately 0.67%. The disease was estimated to have a 3% rate of complications and 0.3% mortality; it could cause pneumonia by itself without the presence of secondary bacterial infection. It may have infected as many as or more people than the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but the vaccine, improved health care, and the invention of antibiotics to manage opportunistic bacterial infections contributed to a lower mortality rate.Estimates of the number of deaths worldwide vary, with the UK government estimating between one and four million and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating 1.1 million. China has a lot to answer for!
