(WWJ) -- The coronavirus is spreading throughout Michigan, impacting most facets of everyday life.
Schools are temporarily closed, businesses are ordering many employees to work from home, and public gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited.
This week on In Depth from WWJ, host Rob St. Mary takes a look at the first few days of the coronavirus pandemic in Michigan, while looking at how history could help guide us when it comes to dealing with pandemics.
>>> Coronavirus In Michigan: What You Need To Know Tuesday, March 17
On the show is John Barry, author of "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History" (2004) - a nonfiction book that examines the 1918 flu which is considered the worst pandemic in human history.
"The new virus comes in, people's immune systems have not seen it before and it spreads very rapidly, very widely and in this case (in 1918), it was very deadly. It killed 50-100 million people -- which if you adjust for population, that would equal 225-400 million people today," Barry told WWJ. "People's immune systems eventually adjusted to it, the virus itself changes rapidly, which is why you need a different vaccination every year."
Barry notes that coronavirus is very different from influenza, which has an incubation period of about two days, compared to an estimated two weeks for COVID-19.
"That cycle of re-infection is a lot slower in coronavirus than it would be with influenza," Barry said.
St. Mary says the rapidly evolving coronavirus situation has changed many people's plans for the coming weeks.
"In my 19 years as a journalist, this is one of those stories that I don't know where it's going to go. There's a lot of unanswered questions. There's a lot of people that we look to and we seek information from in order to help us sort out what is going on," he said.
Listen to more of Rob St. Mary's WWJ In Depth podcasts here.