In one of my first immunology classes at university, we played a game called Pandemic.

We were each given two sterile Petri dishes filled with a standard agar growth medium, and a sterile and very sticky piece of toffee. We washed our hands thoroughly and then, in one hand, squeezed the toffee until our hands were gooey.

Each person then, one by one, shook hands with one other person. After the first round of hand-shaking, we swabbed our sticky hand and plated it onto the first agarose gel. Then we did a second round of hand-shaking, and plated again.

One toffee, out of the whole class, had been covered in a marker bacterium. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate how rapidly, through simple interpersonal contact, a disease could spread.

The next day we got to see the results of our experiment. On the first agar plate, after the first round of hand-shakes, only about 1% of the class were “infected”. After the second round fully 10% of the class had picked up the bacterium.

It’s a scary game and shows just how quickly a disease can spread between unrelated, healthy people.

After the First World War, when millions of decommissioned soldiers returned home, they took a virus with them that killed between 50 and 100 million people. The pandemic, which came to be known as the Spanish Flu, had a very specific attack. Recent research has concluded that the virus killed via a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system) which explains its unusually severe nature and the concentrated age profile of its victims. The strong immune systems of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults caused fewer deaths.

Chillingly, the virus was an H1N1 strain. In other words, it is a variety of swine flu. Some researchers even believe that it made its way into humans from birds and via pigs. The Spanish Flu could well have been a precursor to the Swine Flu pandemic currently worrying health-workers around the world.

Since the latest strain of H1N1 was first identified in Mexico in March this year, the disease has spread to 121 countries around the world. More than 75,000 people have been confirmed as being infected, but US health authorities believe that as many as 1 million Americans may already have been infected.

So far, the number of deaths is relatively small at 359. This must be kept in perspective with regular seasonal flu which infects around 15% of the world’s population annually and kills some 250,000 people a year.

However, this strain is presenting very similar permutations to the 1918 flu, and that virus too started with a mild strain that mutated severely after a few months. The US government has commissioned 600 million doses of vaccine, but most of this may only be available towards the end of the year.

The real concern, though, is not in the developed parts of the world. Good public health and generally healthier populations are likely to throw off such a flu relatively easily. In the emerging world, with limited health infrastructure and widespread malnourishment, such an outbreak would be brutal.

There are differences from 1918, of course. Mostly as regards global monitoring and cooperation in combating these outbreaks. The World Health Organisation acts to coordinate global activities and rapid identification of the virus allows for even more rapid creation of vaccines.

In 1918, governments were powerless to stop the disease and scientists had none of the tools they have today to isolate the virus and study its genetic structure.

That isn’t to say that we are in no danger, but it does mean that far more can be done to ameliorate such illnesses than at any time in the past.

Global pandemics are not yet beaten, but they have devolved to the point where numerous journalists at major publications now feel quite comfortable mocking global efforts to combat these diseases.

Dan Pashman, writing in the Huffington Post, says, “cable news anchors and Americans riding their fear buzz will have to prepare themselves for their worst case scenario: a stillborn pandemic.”

For the sake of millions of people, let’s hope he’s right.