The influenza, when it had its first outbreak, was very scary
and devastating. No one really knew
exactly what was going on. There was no
cure for it. Everyone was falling ill so
fast and many were even dying. Doctors
and medical researchers could not keep up in order to know what the exact
problem was. The Public Health Service was having trouble recording the amount of
influenza cases in many areas due to the speed that this disease was traveling and due to the
amount of public health workers that were ill themselves. So today we still do not even have exact
numbers as to how many had the flu and how many of those survived. Influenza was not even a reportable disease
until September 27, 1918, when the Public Health Service decided that this
disease was so severe.
Because the
disease was so severe and frightening, many schools and businesses closed. Telephone and telegraph services shut down because
the operators were either sick, or afraid of getting sick. To prevent the spread, many people were
quarantined. Funerals were held outdoors
so that the germs would not spread indoors to the living. At one point, public officials made everyone wear
a gauze mask for protection, but they soon realized that it did not give them
any protection against the virus. Some
states went so far as to make laws against spitting and some doctors said to
drink alcohol to prevent getting infected with the disease.
When the
influenza pandemic hit, it hit in three different waves. The first wave was in the late spring and
summer of 1918. At this point, influenza
was very mild. The second wave was in
the fall of 1918 and it was very severe.
And, finally, the third wave was in the spring of 1919. By the end of these three waves, there were
at least twenty million people dead across the world and 675,000 in the United
States. This number is ten times higher
than the number of people that died in WWI.
The population of the United States before the outbreak of the flu was
105 million, so that was a lot of the population.
The first
cases of the flu that were recorded were in Haskell County, Kansas and Fort
Riley, Kansas. In Haskell County, a few young men were put
in the hospital with flu-like symptoms. The
first outbreak at Fort Riley was on March 4, 1918. In one week, five hundred soldiers were
hospitalized. After about a month or so,
the flu appeared to be gone and to have passed its course. The soldiers were then sent to Europe to
fight in WWI where the disease mutated, making it deadly.
The soldiers
fighting in WWI were an easy target for the flu. A bunch of men all in one place without a way
to get thoroughly cleaned and be healthy.
Because of this, many soldiers got the flu and died. In fact, out of all of the people that died
in the war, more than half were flu victims.
The United States did not have many deaths in the war, only 112,000, but
over half of them were because of the flu.
Five months
after the first outbreak of the flu, it was now in three major port cities:
Freetown, Sierra Leone, Brest, France, and Boston, Massachusetts. In Boston, there were dockworkers that fell
ill with the flu at Commonwealth Pier.
They had fevers as high as 105 degrees and were suffering from severe
joint and muscle pain. The recovery time
for the flu was fairly short, but 5% to 10% of the patients developed pneumonia
and, at this point, it became very fatal.
After a few days of the flu being at the pier, it spread out into the
city of Boston where it then spread throughout the whole United States into
September of 1918.
One year
after the influenza hit the US, the average life expectancy for an individual
lowered by twelve years. After only a
few months, the disease killed more people than any other illness in recorded
history. It is said to be the “most
devastating epidemic in history.”
Stanford compares the flu to the Black Plague, saying, “More people died
in one year from the flu than 4 years of the Black Plague.” That's a lot of deaths. When compared to other epidemics, the flu had
a mortality rate of 2.5%, while others had a mere 0.1%. The death rate of 15-34 year olds was twenty
times higher in 1918 than it had ever been before because of the flu, so to say
this was an awful disease would be a huge understatement.
Links
Primary Sources
This website has all sorts of facts about the flu, including
the outbreak in each state. It has all
kinds of stories from and about people that lived during the outbreak.
This website has all sorts of facts about the flu, including
the outbreak in each state. It has all
kinds of stories from and about people that lived during the outbreak.
This website has all sorts of facts about the flu, including
the outbreak in each state. It has all
kinds of stories from and about people that lived during the outbreak.
This website offers a list of primary sources, including
letters and documents from the time period.
Secondary Sources
This website has all sorts of facts about the flu, including
the outbreak in each state. It has all
kinds of stories from and about people that lived during the outbreak.
Textbook – page 621
This website also has a variety of primary sources and
reliable credentials.
I believe that this source is credible because while looking
at the bibliography, all of the sources used are very good sources.
This website gives interesting, but true facts about the
flu. All of the numbers and facts that I
used are backed up by other sources.
This website is like an encyclopedia, but just for Kansas
and it gives a lot of great facts about how the flu started there.
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