The Great Flu Pandemic of 1918,Holy Cow! This years flu season is quite a doosy! It seems like every

The Great Flu Pandemic of 1918,Holy Cow! This years flu season is quite a doosy! It seems like everybody has the flu and most times I leave work I’m totally exhausted. So I find it fitting to do a post on the worst flu pandemic in history, the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918.The Great Flu Pandemic began in 1918, the final year of World War I. It’s a cruel irony that the world deadliest pandemic began at the end of what was then the worlds bloodiest conflict. Between 1918 and 1920 the flu swept across the world infecting around 500 million people and killing between 50-100 million. In 4 years of fighting World War I resulted in the deaths of around 20 million people, both military personnel and civilians. In that same era, the Great Flu Pandemic resulted in 50-100 million deaths in two years. World War I is of course inexorably linked with the pandemic as the movement of millions of people from their homelands to various battlefields and war zones across the world helped spread the disease. Poor hygiene, combat stress, and undernourishment may have also played a role in the spread of the disease (although the pandemic killed the healthiest as I shall detail later). At the time the Pandemic was referred to as the “Spanish flu”, not because the epidemic began in Spain or because the flu was particularly bad in Spain, but because war time censorship covered up or downplayed reports of flu outbreaks and deaths. Spain was neutral during the war, thus news reports flowed freely without interference from the Spanish government.Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the particular strain of flu that caused the Pandemic was that it struck the most healthiest segments of the population. Typically, those most vulnerable to influenza are the very young and the very old; infants, children, and the elderly. However the Spanish flu seemed  deadliest to adults in the prime of their lives. 99% of deaths were people under the age of 60, 50% of deaths were people between the ages of 20 and 40. One reason for this may have been because the particular strain of flu (recovered from frozen corpses in the Arctic) that resulted in the Pandemic was a mutated strain that caused a massive overreaction of the immune system (cytokine release), which ravaged the body eventually causing the immune system to shut down. Most deaths from the Pandemic were not from the flu itself, but from secondary infections such as pneumonia. Thus, people of healthy age were at most risk because they have stronger immune systems. Another class of people particularly at risk were pregnant women, as pregnancy causes the body to boost the immune system to protect the baby. One study conducted by historian John. M. Barry found that pregnant women hospitalized with the flu had a 23%-78% fatality rate depending on region. Finally, native tribal peoples were most vulnerable, having little or no prior conduct with outside diseases. In the Pacific, Arctic, and in tribal parts of Africa entire villages were wiped out.The result of the Pandemic was one of the worst public health catastrophes in history. Public health services were overwhelmed by the sick and mortuary services were overwhelmed by the dead. Large public buildings such as schools, convention centers, theaters, stadiums, factories, and military installations were converted into large makeshift hospitals were hundreds or thousands of sick were treated at a time. Many localities were so overwhelmed by the large numbers of corpses resulting from the pandemic that they dug mass graves.In many localities public services closed down entirely. People quarantined themselves at home while businesses sold goods by special order, setting the merchandise out on the street for customers to pick up.The Pandemic continued throughout 1918 and slowed by the summer of 1919. By 1920 the Pandemic came to end.  Around ¼th to 1/3rd of the world population had been infected, resulting in a 3 - 6% decrease in the world population. I guess this years flu season isn’t that bad after all.Fun Fact: During World War I the American Expeditionary Force suffered around 117,000 dead while overseas. Half were from combat. The rest were from the flu. -- source link

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