The population back then was significantly less. I was watching one of the PBS HD channels earlier. Apparently, the American Troops brought the flu to the Germans who were defending some tunnel in the north of France. The German Troops took the flu back to the homeland, and the virus killed people there as well.
The 1917 edition of the Lancet medical Journal described a Prulent Bronchitis that had several characteristics similar to the 1918 flu, but it occurred in 1916, in England--at a army camp with 100,000 men at any day. Maybe that was the precursor to the 1918 virus. I'm glad that we aren't yet experiencing anything along that scale of virulence.
On the show, there were accounts of there not being enough people to work in many industries. That there was a shortage of coffins.
Probably, war had something to do with it, but who knows for sure.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 6
The flu in 1916 - 18 was almost the same as the current bird flu and if this becomes the same problem then the flu might just wipe out billions.
But as they say, not to worry, for it isn't a problem yet.
http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9911/flu/index.html
(snip)
How many became ill? More than 25 percent of the U.S. population.
What about servicemen, the very young and healthy who were the virus's favorite targets? The Navy said that 40 percent of its members got the flu in 1918. The Army estimated that about 36 percent of its members were stricken.
How many died worldwide? Estimates range from 20 million to more than 100 million, but the true number can never be known. Many places that were bludgeoned by the flu did not keep mortality statistics, and even in countries such as the United States, efforts at tabulating flu deaths were complicated by the fact that there was no definitive test in those days to show that a person actually had the flu. But still, the low end of the mortality estimates is stunning. In comparison, AIDS had killed 11.7 million people through 1997. World War I was responsible for 9.2 million combat deaths and around 15 million total deaths. World War II for 15.9 combat deaths. Historian Crosby remarks that whatever the exact number felled by the 1918 flu, one thing is indisputable: the virus "killed more humans than any other disease in a period of similar duration in the history of the world."
How lethal was it? It was twenty-five times more deadly than ordinary influenzas. This flu killed 2.5 percent of its victims. Normally, just one-tenth of 1 percent of people who get the flu die. And since a fifth of the world's population got the flu that year, including 28 percent of Americans, the number of deaths was stunning. So many died, in fact, that the average life span in the United States fell by twelve years in 1918. If such a plague came today, killing a similar fraction of the U.S. population, 1.5 million Americans would die, which is more than the number felled in a single year by heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS, and Alzheimer's disease combined.
(snip)
There are records noting that at the Ford Motor Company more than 1,000 workers called in sick with the flu in March. In San Quentin prison, 500 of 1,900 prisoners became ill in April and May. On March 4, the flu came to Camp Funston (now Fort Riley) in Kansas, a training camp for 20,000 recruits. That month and the next, it also arrived at more than a dozen other Army camps, but no eyebrows were raised. After all, colds and flu were to be expected in training camps where thousands of men were brought together, mingling and passing viruses among themselves.
(snip)
we are dangerous, sneaky, smart organisms so we find ways to cheat.
Read this article posted in the NY Times yesterday for more information. Several of my family had died in this epidemic and they bring it back. What were they thinking, really?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/health/18flu.html?ref=health