It is amazing what you can miss if you bat an eyelid. I've just had a short holiday in Phuket. Thailand, the country of smiles, is always a good place for Hongkongers to escape the hustle and bustle of this urban jungle to unwind.
But I returned from this short holiday to find I had missed an Earth-shattering announcement last week of the breakthrough discovery of a monoclonal antibody that will deactivate 10 of the 16 subtypes of the influenza virus, including the H5N1 bird flu virus.
This is an amazing discovery when you consider that the annually recommended flu vaccine is effective in fighting only a single strain of the influenza virus and that government health organisations around the world have to make a wild guess at what will be the predominant strain in the coming flu season.
With this new antibody there is no longer any guesswork, as it is effective against thousands of strains. This means the end of many strains of influenza viruses, just as we wiped out the smallpox virus. Before the advent of the smallpox vaccine, that disease was a terrible scourge and the source of great dread. It was one of the most deadly diseases in human history. It afflicted mankind for more than 12,000 years and killed an estimated 500 million people.
But after a concerted international effort, the World Health Organisation was able to announce its eradication in 1979.
Amazingly, the smallpox virus is the first and only infectious disease that we humans have managed to eradicate. It was a historic moment, with mankind facing the challenge of nature and winning through luck and ingenuity.