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The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation

A century after the world’s worst flu epidemic, rapid spread of misinformation is undermining trust in vaccines crucial to public health, warns Heidi Larson.
  1. Heidi J. Larson

    1. Heidi J. Larson is professor of anthropology, risk and decision science at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

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A hundred years ago this month, the death rate from the 1918 influenza was at its peak. An estimated 500 million people were infected over the course of the pandemic; between 50 million and 100 million died, around 3% of the global population at the time.

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Nature 562, 309 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07034-4

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