From the editor: Going viral

H1N1 doesn’t do this year’s diabolical flu strain justice—two letters plucked from the alphabet and a single digit to describe a ton of lead slamming your helpless body repeatedly to the couch, nightmarish days without rest, the debilitating nights

I probably didn’t take it seriously enough.

After all, at least three decades had elapsed since I last engaged in battle with the dreaded flu virus. I was quite a bit younger back then—some 30 years, in fact—therefore presumably more able to fend off its advances. And that instance, if I recall, was a relatively minor tussle with a weak strain.

On C...