Pandemic 1918 facts
While investigating facts about Pandemic 1918, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The 1918 flu pandemic is often called the Spanish flu because Spain didn't fake and minimise the data about the dead like Germany, Britain, France and the USA.
During the 1918 flu pandemic the Governor of American Samoa John Martin Poyer quarantined the territory. American Samoa was one of the few places in the world to not suffer any flu deaths.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 31 of the best facts about Pandemic 1918 I managed to collect.
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During the 1918 flu pandemic, 62 Boston prisoners volunteered to be injected with infected tissue and sprayed with infectious aerosols with a promise of release if they survived. All of the prisoners lived, but the ward doctor died soon after.
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Maintain morale, WWI wartime censors blocked early reports of the 1918 Influenza epidemic in their countries. However, papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit—thus the pandemic's nickname, the Spanish flu.
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The 1918 flu was recreated from a victim found in the Alaskan permafrost. Monkeys infected with the flu strain had classic symptoms of the 1918 pandemic, and died from a cytokine storm - an overreaction of the immune system. This helps to understand why healthy individuals died from the flu.
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In 1918, during WW1, there was a flu pandemic that killed 50 to 100 million people, all across the world. To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States.
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The 1918 Influenza Pandemic killed more people than all the battles in WWI combined
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The 1918 flu pandemic is said to have "killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century."
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De-extinction is scientifically possible. Several viruses have already been brought back, including the 1918 flu pandemic virus
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Influenza virus A (H1N1) was the type responsible for the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 (between 50 and 100 million people died) and the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009 (as many as 579,000 people died).
What is true about pandemic 1918?
You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.
Contrary to usual outbreaks the 1918 Flu Pandemic predominantly killed young adults. This was due to an overreaction of the body's immune system known as a cytokine storm.
Pandemics occur when the outbreak is widely spread and results in the deaths of many people. The most deadly outbreak in recent history was the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak that killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people around the world. Most of the deaths occurred because of bacterial pneumonia, a complication of the Spanish flu, although many also died directly from the flu.
In 2005 scientists were able to reconstruct the virus that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic which killed 20-50 million people worldwide. They used preserved lung tissue samples taken from two soldiers and an Alaskan person buried in permafrost who all died from influenza in 1918. - source
The huge spike in deaths during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 has been attributed to Aspirin poisoning, in part because the Surgeon General at the time recommended an abnormally high dose to treat flu symptoms.
During the 1918 flu pandemic, the 12th governor of American Samoa John Martin Poyer quarantined the territory. Because of his actions, American Samoa was one of the few places in the world where no flu-related deaths occurred. - source
The 1918 flu Pandemic killed mostly young adults--the opposite of normal flu viruses--because both the old and the young has been exposed to a biochemically similar flu virus, but young adults hadn't.
The Flu Pandemic of 1918 hit Africa the hardest because the first wave mostly missed Africa so it was more susceptible to the stronger second wave, killing 2.2M people in sub Saharan Africa. This created 10-12M orphans and also lead to planting of cassava over yams due to labor shortages.
The deadliness of the 1918 Flu Pandemic may have been due to aspirin poisoning
Spanish influenza or flu pandemic outbreak of 1918 to 1919 is known as one of the deadliest epidemics which infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 50 to 100 million of them in three waves.
about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Gave me the chills because of similarities of what's happening today.
