Learn Spanish Travel Spanish Blog

As you probably know, there is a very serious swine-bird-human flu outbreak in Mexico - and in the U. S. as well (though at this writing no deaths have been reported in the  U.S.   as there have been in Mexico).  I won’t go into the details of what’s happening because 1) they’re changing day by day, 2) you probably already know most of the details, and 3) you may not be reading this on the day it’s posted, so the facts will surely be different.

What I am writing about is another flu that turned very serious - one that not many of us learned about in school.  I’m always surprised that so few people seem to know about it, since it was so devastating and had such an impact on the world.  I’m talking about the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and 1919.  The current “novel” strain of flu bears some remarkably similar traits.  It was sometimes referred to as the “Spanish” flu, although there is debate about where it actually started.

But first let me share how serious the 1918 Pandemic was for the world.  A pandemic is  an epidemic except on a global scale.  This pandemic happened during WWI and was responsible for more deaths than the war.  In fact, half of all U.S. soldiers who died in the war died of influenza.  And altogether, more than 10 times more  U. S. citizens died of influenza than died in the war.  It killed more people in just one year than died during the entire episode known in Europe as the “Black Death”, which was a bubonic plague and lasted about 4 years. A fifth of the world’s population was infected.  One in five people over the entire world.  That alone shut down much of the globe, since even those that didn’t die were very sick and couldn’t work.

In the spring, when the influenza first appeared, it didn’t seem too serious.  But it had one very strange twist:  whereas most flus killed infants and the elderly, this flu strain killed mostly young adults.  When it returned that fall, it had evolved with a vengeance.   In fact, once it was over, the largest death toll was for people aged 20 to 40, who died in huge numbers.  That accounts for the high death rate among soldiers.  At one point, there were so many soldiers ill, and so many resources tied up with ill soldiers, the war actually ground to a halt for a few months because the armies were all too ill to fight.  And remember that this is the age group that contained young parents as well, so the high death toll only tells a small part of the suffering this Pandemic caused.

The “Great War” was in fact largely responsible for how quickly the disease spead and how widespread it was.  Very large groups of men were marching through the world.  They fought under horrific conditions, lived in crowded, often unsanitary conditions (think trench warfare) and left a trail of death and devastation (with it’s own associated diseases).   It isn’t difficult to imagine how quickly a mobile army could spread a disease.  And when you consider armies on the move, on every continent, as well as wounded and dead soldiers being returned home… well, you get the idea.

The life expectancy in 1919  in the U.S. was 10 years lower than in 1910.  People who died, died quickly.  Often overnight.  Struggling to breathe, coughing up blood.

I’m including some links for information on the 1918 Pandemic.  I’m writing this not to discourage travel to Mexico (I’ll let the CDC do that, which they haven’t at this writing).  We love Mexico.  AND it’s in the U.S. too, so ….    I am concerned with two aspects of this virus.  One is the time of year we’re experiencing this.   April is a little late in the year for a flu outbreak.  This is the same pattern the pandemic had.  Two is that many of those infected with this strain of flu are in their prime and in good health.  That’s very worrisome to me and is exactly how the Pandemic acted.   I also have concerns about the “swine” connection (and how we raise pigs and using pig parts to replace human parts  and crossing animal genes with plant genes and yada yada yada).  But this is not the forum for that.

I hope you’ve found this informative.

The links are:

http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no01/05-0979.htm

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/4219884.html?series=31

http://www.ninthday.com/spanish_flu.htm

http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=flu+pandemic+1918&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&scoring=t&ei=koD0SZH-DKqxtgfOi82_Dw&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&resnum=17&ct=title

Tags:   influenza · Mexico · swine-bird-fluNo Comments