The real Y2K bug this winter is the Sydney strain of the flu which has hit millions of people and burdened hospitals all over Europe and North America.
The Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 is the ultimate flu baseline. Somewhere between 20 million and 100 million people died; it was the single biggest disaster in human history and its origins are still a mystery.
New York Times Science reporter Gina Kolata has written an account of the 1918 flu epidemic and profiled a group of flu hunters who have traced the last sources of the virus to tissue samples from a woman buried under the permafrost in Alaska and two soldiers who died in World War I Army camps.
They're determined to solve the puzzle of the Spanish flu in part because they say it could strike again. The flu is on this hour of the Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Gina Kolata, New York Times science correspondent and author of "Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search fo the Virus that Caused It," and Dr. Edwin Kilbourne, professor of microbiology and immunology at New York Medical College.
