And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Rev.(6:8)
THE LEGACY OF THE SPANISH FLU: IN THE MIDST OF THE CORONAVIRUS
The horrific scale of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is hard
to fathom. The virus infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an
estimated 20 million to 50 million victims— that’s more than all of the
soldiers and civilians killed during World War I combined.
While the global pandemic lasted for two years, the vast
majority of deaths were packed into three especially cruel months in the fall
of 1918. Historians now believe that the fatal severity of the Spanish flu’s
“second wave” was caused by a mutated virus spread by wartime troop movements.
When the Spanish flu first appeared in early March 1918, it
had all the hallmarks of a seasonal flu, albeit a highly contagious and
virulent strain. One of the first registered cases was Albert Gitchell, a U.S.
Army cook at Camp Funston in Kansas, who was hospitalized with a 104-degree
fever. The virus spread quickly through the Army installation, home to 54,000
troops. By the end of the month, 1,100 troops had been hospitalized and 38 had
died after developing pneumonia.
As U.S. troops deployed en masse for the war effort in
Europe, they carried the Spanish flu with them. Throughout April and May of
1918, the virus spread like wildfire through England, France, Spain and Italy.
An estimated three-quarters of the French military was infected in the spring
of 1918 and as many as half of British troops. Luckily, the first wave of the
virus wasn’t particularly deadly, with symptoms like high fever and malaise
usually lasting only three days, and mortality rates were similar to seasonal
flu.
Interestingly, it was during this time that the Spanish flu
earned its misnomer. Spain was neutral during World War I and unlike its
European neighbors, it didn’t impose wartime censorship on its press. In France,
England and the United States, newspapers weren’t allowed to report on anything
that could harm the war effort, including news that a crippling virus was
sweeping through troops. Since Spanish journalists were some of the only ones
reporting on a widespread flu outbreak in the spring of 1918, the pandemic
became known as the “Spanish flu.” (Source:History.com)
