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Left: The healthy took to wearing masks believing they would guard against infection. (They didn’t.) 1918, National Archives. Right: Sign in a naval yard in Philly warns of the epidemic’s effect on war production. 1918, U.S. Naval History & Heritage Command.
No other disease, no war, no natural disaster ever killed so many in so short a time
1918 Spanish Flu wiped out ~3% of the world population
T
he numbers boggle the mind: 20% of the world population infected and at least 40 million dead (as many as 675,000 in this country). A drop of 12 years in average U.S. life expectancy in a single year. It’s unthinkable. Yet, the influenza pandemic of 1918—the deadliest disaster of modern history—has been the world’s most under-reported horror story, even while it was happening.
How come? One would expect that a menace that was taking the lives of tens of thousands in a matter of months would capture the headlines and generate public panic. But a search of The Asbury Park Press for the last three months of 1918 (the height of the epidemic here) shows limited and dispassionate coverage. As the death toll rises (8,477 in the state by the end of the year) and schools, churches, and theaters close for weeks on end, other stories fill the front pages. Even the New York Times commented on the absence of national panic or excitement. Maybe it was the rapid onset and
ebb of the disease—it had played out, for the most part, by summer of 1919. Maybe the carnage and horror of The Great War, which filled the papers, also numbed the senses. Whatever the reasons, the reaction at the time was remarkably subdued and the retelling today, what little there is of it, is largely under the radar.
Fueled by war The origin of the Spanish Flu is still debated. But there is little doubt that it was fueled by the war. The virus was airborne, spread by breathing. Cramped conditions in the trenches, massive troop movements, crowded hospitals, malnourished and displaced populations made war-torn Europe a perfect breeding ground. And the disease traveled from the battlefield to our homefront with a vengeance. (A single case at Ft. Devons, Massachusetts, in September 1918 became more than 6,000 in a single week.)
Defying patterns The influenza pandemic defied expected patterns. Most flus are worst in winter,
this one peaked in the U.S. in fall. Typically, the very young and very old are most vulnerable. But half those who died were between 20 and 40 years old. (One theory suggests that the virus triggered an overreaction of the immune system--strongest in healthy adults.) The disease worked uncharacteristically fast: a patient could go from healthy to dead in the course of a single day.
Perspective We look back on history knowing how it all turned out--seeing the course of events as inevitable. But not so to those who lived it. Maybe it’s time, on the centennial of the Spanish Influenza, to imagine what it was like in the fall of 1918. More than 100,000 Americans were dying in a war that threatened the world order and whose outcome was uncertain. Millions around the globe were succumbing to a killer that seemed to be threatening human survival itself. It’s a chapter of history worthy of a place in our collective consciousness.