The Surfer (Flu Epidemics Have Their High Points Too)

I really enjoyed the story because I have a thing for stories that involve some kind of global disaster or peril. What I would call the disaster in this story is a global flu epidemic that isn't so much of the kind with the swine flu, if that could even remotely be called an epidemic, but a flu that actually kills a high percentage of the people infected with it. Also, we find out in this story that America has become almost a disgrace in the minds of the rest of the world with a crippling national debt, wars raging in the middle east, and faltering health and education systems (almost sounds eerily familiar...). What I found most interesting is that unlike most stories that involve some sort of quarantine situation, the people put in quarantine just accept it as normal and don't disintegrate into a group of raving lunatics hell-bent on escaping. The aliens' arrival at the end left me wanting to know what future waited for that world, but alas, I guess it's just up to the imagination.