new areas, despite similar importations of the virus into those areas. Epidemics did eventually develop during the winter months, but these were often mild (especially when compared to the US experience). In some countries (such as the UK and Japan), it was not until the following winter of 1969–1970 that truly severe epidemics developed. At the time of the outbreak, the Hong Kong flu was also known as the "Mao flu" or "Mao Tse-tung flu". The name "Hong Kong flu" was not used within the colony, where the press dubbed it the "killer flu" after the first several deaths. Before the end of July, the South China Morning Post predicted that "Fingers of scorn" would be directed at Hong Kong in the coming weeks and stated that the colony had "acted, unwillingly, in our old role as an entrepot for a sneeze". (An outbreak of influenza in Hong Kong had been the first one to occur outside of mainland China during the 1957–1958 pandemic and had been what alerted the rest of the world to the developing situation, when international press began to report on it.) A city councillor later decried the widespread adoption of the name "Hong Kong flu", claiming that it was "giving Hong Kong a bad name". He asked why foreign press and health authorities did not refer to it by its "proper name—China flu". China certainly did not escape associations with the new virus, however, as the name "Mao flu" suggests. It was speculated even at the time that the virus had originated from "Red China". These differing names for the flu resulted in some confusion: In January 1969, a British member of parliament asked David Ennals, the Secretary of State for Social Services, "in what way the characteristics of Mao flu can be distinguished from those of Hong Kong flu". In addition to these names, the virus was also often referred to as "Asian flu" or "Asiatic flu", as it was not yet considered an entirely different subtype from the previously circulating influenza A. Worldwide deaths from the virus peaked in December 1968 and January 1969, when public health warnings and virus descriptions had been widely issued in the scientific and medical journals. Isolated countries like Albania reported the first cases of the flu in December 1969, reaching a peak in infections in the first months of the year 1970. In Berlin, the excessive number