A century ago the Spanish flu killed 50 million—and then we forgot about it... Here's what we can learn.

Pedro_P

▼ The Spanish influenza was unusual in more ways than one. There’s its universality: Between 1918 and 1919, the particularly aggressive H1N1 virus infected 1 in 3 people on planet Earth. Its severity: The flu killed approximately 50 million. And its invisibility: Today, historians often describe it as a “forgotten” pandemic.
In some ways, they’re right. There are no monuments to the victims. There are no classic works of literature inspired by the disease’s rapid advance. In other ways, though, they’re wrong. How forgotten can a pandemic be if there is an entire PBS documentary about it?
After reading countless contagious articles, visiting virulent museum exhibits, and attending infectious disease lectures, a simpler, and much more compelling theory, emerged: The Spanish influenza is not “forgotten,” so much as no flu, no matter its impact, is ever really remembered.

Hospitals struggled to respond to the sheer number of sick patients.
Wikimedia
Under an electron microscope, the chaos of any pandemic is reduced to a single strand of pathogenic RNA. Flu viruses are mixed from two key ingredients: hemagglutinin, a substance that causes red blood cells to clump together, and neuraminidase, an enzyme that breaks down specific acids. Scientists have identified 18 “H”s and 11 “N”s swirling in an earth-sized ether of bird feathers, pig stys, human snot, and bat guano. When one H meets one N, the resulting crossover hit sounds like a Dewey decimal number, but is in fact a deadly union.
In the case of the Spanish influenza, every victim was felled by an unusually lethal combination of hemagglutinin-1 and neuraminidase-1, or H1N1for short. It didn’t knock off the usual suspects back in 1919. The very young and very old—typically the first to fall in such an outbreak—were not immune, but the Spanish flu had an unusual thirst for the blood of ostensibly healthy adults. Half its victims were between 20 and 40 years old, whose healthy immune systems ultimately worked against them. They died gruesome deaths: bleeding from their mouth and eyes, bodies blackened by a lack of oxygen.
Several theories have been posited as to why the Spanish flu just didn’t stick as a historical moment. That it charged across the continents while World War I was underway couldn’t have helped. Wartime censorship gave the flu its name; the Spanish press were one of the few free to document the disease’s spread. But it also stifled early understanding, and limited people’s opportunity to prepare. Perhaps forced silence, when coupled with quarantines, school closures, and bans on public gatherings, meant the true extent of the devastation did not make itself felt. Or maybe survivors felt the Spanish influenza so acutely few wanted to discuss it again. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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KH_Hirsch

There's no doubt the real "influenza" caused more death than any other ailment before even exceeding the death tool of the plague. So, get your shots and hopefully they help.

harpreetsembhi

And as a society, we are still so ill-prepared for such a devastating event!!