The world is still playing a game of pandemic Mexican roulette. Nature spins the chamber; man pulls the trigger; the gun goes off, but the cartridge misfires. We dodged a H1N1 bullet. The swine flu in spite of fears failed to live up, or kill up, to its billing, at least not yet.

What if it had became 1918 all over again? The great plague of Spanish flu devastated the world to a greater extent than the horrors of all the poison gases, machine guns, and trench warfare of WW1. Some estimates of death from March of 1918 to June 1920 were as high as 100 million victims from a variation of H1N1.

In some places the bodies piled up because too many died and too few were able or willing to care for them. In contrast there are pictures of whole barn-like buildings filled with cots of the sick and nurses and doctors walking among them treating their needs.

Yet there are some modern tales associated with recent plagues that are frightening not only for their connection to dangerous diseases but for their illuminating stories about those supposed to care for others.

In September of 1994, the western Indian city of Surat experienced an outbreak of the bubonic plague in a most deadly form of pneumonic fever. The disease had gone airborne. It eventually killed about 56. In the panic, 300,000 to 500,000 people, 25 percent of the whole population, fled within days. In one report, "The news spread like a fire in the city. First of all, the richest industrialists fled in their cars, followed by private doctor practitioners, chemists (pharmacists) and many high officials."

Another account by a charitable organization: "Fears of the epidemic had caused chaos in the city. Mostly all the plague cases were admitted in the government-run Civil Hospital. However, numerous rumors and fear had resulted in a sudden shortage of hospital staff. (Bold added.)