3.7.1: The “Spanish” Flu
The incorrectly named Spanish Flu is believed to have originated in the United States in 1918. The influenza virus is endemic to the world, and each year there are different mutations in the virus from the previous year - this mutation is called “antigenic shift”. Enough of the right mutations can cause a virus that can overwhelm the immune system, making that virus particularly contagious and/or deadly. In the case of the Spanish Flu, infection was so quick that a person could die within hours or days, and unlike other flu strains, healthy adults were hit the hardest. Soldiers sent to fight in WWI were likely to have brought the Spanish Flu to Europe, and the warring countries suppressed information about how many soldiers were ill or dying from it - with the exception of Spain. This propagated the moniker of Spanish Flu, even though the virus originated in the U.S. and spread around the world (Francis Fujimura, 2003).
In the first year the Spanish Flu killed more Americans than both World Wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The subsequent death toll is somewhere around 50 million people worldwide (Francis Fujimura, 2003), (The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.). Eventually it subsided as most of those remaining had developed immunity from previous infection, as researchers could not work fast enough to develop a vaccine. In 1933 a vaccine was developed for the Spanish Flu, but it was soon discovered that it did not protect against multiple variants that had subsequently evolved. Since then, extensive public health surveillance (tracking and monitoring) of influenza has contributed to the modern techniques used to create modern flu vaccines. These annual vaccines target the predicted influenza variants of the coming flu season (World Health Organization, 2022).
Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas. Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons