Spanish+Flu

Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918:



In 1918 there was a new and deadly string of the flu that began to spread across the world. This new type of flu was said to have originted from either Spain or China, and was dubbed as the "Spanish Flu". The Spanish Flu was one of the most deadly pandemics since the Black Plauge, killing three percent of the worlds population, infecting a third, and decreasing the life expectancy of the human race by about ten years. The Spanish Flu killed people by causing a cytokine storm in the body, or an over reaction of the immune system of the infected person. Due to this nature, young and middled aged adults with strong immune systems were the most prone to die from the flu, rather than the older people and children with the weaker immune systems. While the Spanish Flu epidemic was lethal, it wouldn't have spread as far as it had if it hadn't been for World War I. The troops who fought in the forign countries where the flu was most rampant often would catch the illness and bring it back to their home countries where it would spread and begin to mutate into an even deadlier version of the disease. The close quartering of the troops also ensured that many of the troops became infected with the disease in a short amount of time and further quickened the spread of the deadly flu. When soldigers form the war began to return with the flu, they began to suspect that the flu was some type of biological weapon used against them by the Germans, and scientists began to study the flu further. While the studies of the new strain of flu disproved it to be a biological weapon of sorts, it did prove it to be almost 250% more deadly than than the normal flu, having a 2.5% death rate rather than the 0.1% of the influenza that most Americans were used to. After the Spanish Flu began to kill many people, there began to be religious movements that dubbed the epidemic as the rain of brimstone that many scripural texts prophecied of. These preachers proclaimed that the Spanish Flu had come about because of the "sinful state" America had fallen to, and they called for the people to turn away from their sins so that the deadly flu would pass them by.