Spanish flu facts
Updated on 05 October 2005
Some fast facts about the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918.
- The Spanish Flu Pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza Pandemic, the 1918 Flu Epidemic, and La Grippe, killed between 25 million to 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919.
- It is thought to have been one of the most deadly pandemics so far in human history.
- The nations of the Allied side of World War I frequently called it the "Spanish Flu." This was mainly because the pandemic received greater press attention in Spain than in the rest of the world, because Spain was not involved in the war and there was no wartime censorship. In Spain it was called "The French Flu".
- Spain did have one of the worst early outbreaks of the disease, with some 8 million people infected in May 1918. It was also known as "only the flu" or "the grippe" by public health officials seeking to prevent panic.
- Spanish flu killed more in 25 weeks than Aids did in its first 25 years.
- The Spanish Flu vanished within 18 months, and the actual cause was not determined at the time. It appears to have been an H1 virus type. (The outbreaks of bird flu in Hong Kong in 1997 and other parts of Asia since then are an H5 type.)
- The influenza virus was not understood by medical science at the time, and most contemporary effort was spent in an unsuccessful quest to find a vaccine to the supposed bacterial cause of the disease
- It has been suggested that the stresses of combat in World War 1, possibly combined with the effects of chemical warfare, may have weakened soldiers' immune systems thereby increasing their vulnerability to the disease and accelerating its spread.
- It infected 28% of all Americans.
- An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war.
- Of the US soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy.
- Even President Woodrow Wilson suffered from the flu in early 1919 while negotiating the crucial treaty of Versailles to end the World War.
