A Brief History of Pandemics - THE SPANISH FLU OF 1918-1919

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EPIDEMICS

THE SPANISH FLU OF 1918-1919

This pandemic was the single worst in terms of deaths in a short period of time, the bubonic plague at its peak claimed only 2 million victims a year, this modern day global disaster claimed between 20-40 million people in one year. "La Grippe" as it was known killed more people than the Great War (WW1) which lasted from 1914 to 1918 and killed 9 million men in those four years. The influenza pandemic claimed more victims in the USA than all of their armed conflicts of the 20th century and America was one of the least devastated countries on the planet with approximately 850,000 deaths from 20,000,000 cases. Of the US soldiers who died in Europe half fell to the disease. The cause of this disease is unknown but is believed to have been a mutated swine virus from China, brought about by a rare genetic shift leading to the recombination of surface proteins which led to a lack of immunity among the world population. The virus infected A fifth of the world's population and was most deadly for people aged 20-40, a change from normal influenza, which is mainly a killer of the elderly and young children. The mortality rate was 2.5% compared with 0.1% normally. The killer was not the influenza itself but the pneumonia accompanying the infection. As with the bubonic plagues of earlier centuries the disease was spread by human carriers along trade routes and shipping lines. The mass movements of the troops to and from the war aided the rapid diffusion of the disease and the conditions the men were exposed to even before they reached the front line made the job of the virus all the easier.


The name "Spanish Flu" came from the large early mortalities in Spain allegedly killing 8 million people in May 1918. However the disease first struck in a Military camp in Kansas, USA: Camp Funston. It was the morning of March 11, 1918, company cook Albert Mitchell reported to the infirmary with flu-like symptoms and was recommended bed rest. 107 soldiers were sick by noon. 522 were sick within two days, many with severe pneumonia. The disease was then reported to be breaking out in other military bases around the country. Sailors docked off the East Coast were sick in their thousands and isolated places like Alcatraz were also infected, the disease had to be airborne. Within seven days every state was affected. It then spread with the soldiers across the Atlantic infecting French troops and civilians, by mid-April China and Japan had the disease as well. The only plus point of the disease was that it peaked within two to three weeks of appearing in a city and left as quickly as it arrived. Unfortunately for the US the war brought the disease they had begun back to them, arriving in the port of Boston in September 1918. Men across the country were mobilising for the war, when they came together they brought the virus with them to infect thousands more. 200,000 people died in October 1918 alone, mainly soldiers. The Armistice Day celebrations of November 1918 were a public health disaster. Thousands of people came to watch parades and join in large parties and became infected by the sick soldiers returning from the front line where many were to weak to fight and where the disease had killed more people than their weapons could.

Hospitals the world over had their resources stretched to breaking point as many of the doctors were at the front line treating the soldiers and some of the doctors jobs at home were filled by third and fourth year medical students who hadn't joined up to the armed forces. Eighteen months after the disease struck, it disappeared never to show up again. No one knew what had happened until recently. In 1997, the lungs of an eighteen-year-old soldier killed by the disease in September 1918 were used to obtain the genetic code of the disease. Only seven percent was actually recovered but it was enough to show that the disease started as a virus passed from birds to pigs, instead of remaining stable in the bird. The pig immune system forced the virus to mutate in order to survive, and it infected humans. This kind of virus is the worst kind as there is no immunity to it in the human body.

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