In 1918, the world was rocked by pandemic flu. A virulent strain of influenza, H1N1 influenza swept across the whole planet. A fifth of the world’s population was infected, and 20-40 million people died. It killed more people than World War One.

We haven’t seen pandemic influenza on that scale since then, but it’s been because of luck, not skill. Our globalized world is actually at a greater risk for pandemic than we were in 1918. Thanks to air travel, people travel farther, faster, and more often than they did a century ago. In just the last decade, we’ve seen Ebola cross borders, Zika infect a new continent, and a 2009 H1N1 pandemic that had a thankfully…