From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Amanda Aronchick.

Who reports on health for WNYC sitting in for Brooke this week to focus on infection.

The level of alarm is extremely high.

New concerns this morning after the first measles death in this country in more than a decade.

We have news tonight about the explosion of the West Nile virus. So far in the U.S., there are more

than 30 cases detected in 11 states in the District of Columbia.

41 people have died, and infections are multiplying at four times the usual rate.

This is the deadliest outbreak on record.

While political rhetoric focuses on phony threats from asylum seekers and undocumented workers,

at any moment our security is genuinely vulnerable to other outsiders,

namely pathogens, microorganisms that cause deadly infectious diseases.

Some threats to the American public are overblown, as we shall see, for instance,

the Ebola outbreak that ravaged pockets of West Africa and set off a panic when it crossed our borders,

claimed only a few victims here.

On the other hand, sometimes the alarm is all too justified. We are now marking the 100th anniversary of the 1918 flu

pandemic, which was a global catastrophe claiming between 50 million and 100 million lives.

Scientists are unequivocal. Like a hundred-year storm, another pandemic is inevitable.

And so, in the centenary of the 1918 flu,

this week we look at our vulnerability,

which depends not only on vaccines and antibiotics and other scientific knowledge,

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