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HISTORY
Instead Of Learning From The 1918 Pandemic, We’re Repeating The Same Mistakes
Looking back at the past can help us to understand the present.
The 1918 influenza pandemic, often referred to as the “Spanish Flu”, killed an unprecedented 50 to 100 million people worldwide. It was the worst global pandemic since the Black Death and frequently killed young people, often within a few days of their first symptoms.
What is perhaps more surprising about the 1918 influenza flu is that it never really went away. The H1N1 strain that caused the Flu pandemic dissipated into the background after infecting approximately 500 million people around the globe (a third of the world population) during 1918 and 1919.
But every so often, in conjunction with bird flu or swine flu, direct descendants of the 1918 flu produce new influenza strains, which is precisely what happened in 1957, 1968, and 2009. Those later outbreaks of flu, all partially caused by the 1918 virus, killed millions of people, decades after the 1918 influenza pandemic ended.
How The Spanish Flu Became So Deadly.
It had all the characteristics of the seasonal flu when the Spanish flu first appeared in early March 1918. However, it was…
