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“Teenage crush is like flu. If you find a remedy for it, it lasts for a couple of days. If you don't, it still lasts for a couple of days.”
― Raheel Farooq

“Her mother, an unshapely, chubby-cheeked creature from the rural gentry of Styria, permanently lost her hair at the age of forty after being treated for influenza by her husband, and prematurely withdrew from society. She and her husband were able to live in the Gentzgasse thanks to her mother's fortune, which derived from the family estates in Styria and then devolved upon her. She provided for everything, since her husband earned nothing as a doctor. He was a socialite, what is known as a beau, who went to all the big Viennese balls during the carnival season and throughout his life was able to conceal his stupidity behind a pleasingly slim exterior. Throughout her life Auersberger's mother-in-law had a raw deal from her husband, but was content to accept her modest social station, not that of a member of the nobility, but one that was thoroughly petit bourgeois. Her son-in-law, as I suddenly recalled, sitting in the wing chair, made a point of hiding her wig from time to time--whenever the mood took him--both in the Gentzgasse and at the Maria Zaal in Styria, so that the poor woman was unable to leave the house. It used to amuse him, after he had hidden her wig, to drive his mother-in-law up the wall, as they say. Even when he was going on forty he used to hide her wigs--by that time she has provided herself with several--which was a symptom of his sickness and infantility. I often witnessed this game of hide-and-seek at Maria Zaal and in the Gentzgasse, and I honestly have to say that I was amused by it and did not feel in the least bit ashamed of myself. His mother-in-law would be forced to stay at home because her son-in-law had hidden her wigs, and this was especially likely to happen on public holidays. In the end he would throw the wig in her face. He needed his mother-in-law's humiliation, I reflected, sitting in the wing chair and observing him in the background of the music room, just as he needed the triumph that this diabolical behavior brought him.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Woodcutters

“Shut your eyes,�� said Miss Tanner.
“Oh no,�� said Miranda, “for then I see worse things��”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider

“Aveva abbandonato ogni piano d'azione; l'amore è la cosa migliore.”
― E. M. Forster, Howards End

“فيروس الزكام من السهل إلتقاطه لكن من الصعب العثور عليه !”
― أنيس منصور, زى الفل أو أحزان هذا الكاتب

“Bells Screamed all off key, wrangling together as they collided in midair, horns and whistles mingled shrilly with cries of human distress; sulphur-colored light ex-ploded through the black windowpane and flashed away in darkness. Miranda waking from a dreamless sleep asked without expecting an answer, “What is happening?�� for there was a bustle of voices and footsteps in the corridor, and a sharpness in the air; the far clamour went on, a furious exasperated shrieking like a mob in revolt.

The light came on, and Miss Tanner said in a furry voice, “Hear that? They’re celebrating . It’s the Armistice. The war is over, my dear.�� Her hands trembled. She rattled a spoon in a cup, stopped to listen, held the cup out to Miranda. From the ward for old bedridden women down the hall floated a ragged chorus of cracked voices singing, “My country, ’tis of thee…��

Sweet land�� oh terrible land of this bitter world where the sound of rejoicing was a clamour of pain, where ragged tuneless old women, sitting up waiting for their evening bowl of cocoa, were singing, “Sweet land of Liberty-��

“Oh, say, can you see?�� their hopeless voices were asking next, the hammer strokes of metal tongues drowning them out. “The war is over,�� said Miss Tanner, her underlap held firmly, her eyes blurred. Miranda said, “Please open the window, please, I smell death in here.”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider

“JACK: Apoplexy will do perfectly well, Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite suddenly, don't they?
ALGERNON: Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow. It's a sort of thing that runs in families.
JACK: Good heavens! Then I certainly won't choose that. What can I say?
ALGERNON: Oh! Say influenza.
JACK Oh, no! that wouldn't sound probable at all. Far too many people have had it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“All rather humbling, she added ruefully. Here we are in the golden age of medicine - making such great strides against rabies, typhoid fever, diphtheria - and a common or garden influenza is beating us hollow.”
― Emma Donoghue, The Pull of the Stars

“Isolation is my COVID-19 insurance policy.”
― Steven Magee

“The researchers looked deeper into these observations, in hopes of gaining insight into the mechanisms underlying the high evolutionary rate and extraordinary immunologic plasticity of influenza HA. They probed in more detail the precise codons that are used by the virus to encode the influenza HA1 protein. The discriminated between codons on the basis of volatility. Each three-nucleotide codon is related by a single nucleotide change to nine 'mutational neighbours.' Of those nine mutations, some proportion change the codon to a synonymous codon and some change it to a nonsynonymous one, which directs the incorporation of a different amino acid into the protein. More volatile codons are those for which a larger proportion of those nine mutational neighbours encode an amino acid change. The use of particular codons in a gene at a frequency that is disproportionate to their random selection for encoding a chosen amino acid is termed codon bias. Such bias is common and is influenced by many factors, but here the collaborators found strong evidence for codon bias that was particular for and restricted to the amino acids making up the HA1 epitopes. Remarkably, they observed that influenza employs a disproportionate number of volatile codons in its epitope-coding sequences. There was a bias for the use of codons that had the fewest synonymous mutational neighbours. In other words, influenza HA1 appears to have optimized the speed with which it can change amino acids in its epitopes. Amino acid changes can arise from fewer mutational events. The antibody combining regions are optimized to use codons that have a greater likelihood to undergo nonsynonymous single nucleotide substitutions : they are optimized for rapid evolution.”
― Michael G Cordingley, Viruses: Agents of Evolutionary Invention

“. . . the two families were about to be impacted in a major way as Philadelphia and the rest of the world were slammed with a pandemic so catastrophic that it killed more people than World War I.”
― J.D. Crighton, Detective in the White City: The Real Story of Frank Geyer

“If you want to avoid COVID-19, you avoid doctors.”
― Steven Magee

“Don’t panic! Just have rational fear of COVID-19.”
― Steven Magee

“COVID-19 is influenza on steroids!”
― Steven Magee

“Man might defined as "modern" largely to the extent that he attempts to control, as opposed to adjust himself to, nature.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“Nature chose to rage in 1918, and it chose the form of the influenza virus in which to do it. This meant that nature first crept upon the world in familiar, almost comic, form. It came in masquerade. Then it pulled down its mask and showed its fleshleass bone.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“Smart people buy cheap and Chinese before the 2020-21 influenza season combines with COVID-19 to slow down production.”
― Steven Magee

“Hang on tight, as we are going into the first full influenza season with COVID-19!”
― Steven Magee

“It is almost certain that the 2020-21 influenza season in conjunction with COVID-19 will slow production from China.”
― Steven Magee

“People with common sense buy what they need prior to the anticipated rise in COVID-19 during China’s 2020-21 influenza season.”
― Steven Magee

“Fall and winter 2020-21 may be COVID-19 brutal!”
― Steven Magee

“The environment is changing and so are the viruses.”
― Steven Magee

“Being a germaphobe is a trait I share with Nikola Tesla.”
― Steven Magee

“The elderly, normally the group most susceptible to influenza, not only survived attacks of the disease but were attacked far less often. This resistance of the elderly was a worldwide phenomenon. The most likely explanation is that an earlier pandemic , so mild as to not attract attention, resembled the 1918 virus closely enough that it provided protection. (p. 408 paperback edition)”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“It seems the government was marketing Coronavirus as the Flu for decades!”
― Steven Magee

“Covid hasn't finished with us yet, because it's only just getting started.”
― Anthony T. Hincks