Spanish flu: the deadliest infectious disease in history

In 1918, a wave of influenza called the Spanish flu caused an epidemic in the world, which spread rapidly and killed everyone.... Old, young, sick and healthy people were all infected with this disease and at least 10% of the patients died.

Statistics on deaths from this disease vary, but it is believed that a third of the world's population was infected with the disease and at least fifty million people died, making the Spanish flu the deadliest infectious disease of the modern era... Although it was called the Spanish flu at the time, it is unlikely that the virus originated in Spain.

What was the cause of the Spanish flu?

In the summer of 1918, as the battalion returned home for leave, they brought home and town the unknown virus that had caused their illness. The virus spread throughout the towns and villages of the country where the soldiers lived. The recovery process for many of the infected, both soldiers and civilians, was not quick. Spain was neutral during the war and did not impose strict censorship on the press, so it could freely publish the first symptoms of the disease... As a result, people mistakenly thought that the disease was specific to Spain, hence the name "Spanish flu".

Even according to Henry Davies' book The Spanish Influenza, in the late spring of 1918, the Spanish News Service informed the Reuters office in London that "a strange type of disease bearing the characteristics of a contagious virus has been observed in Madrid.... The epidemic rate is mild and no deaths have been reported".

The term "Spanish flu" quickly became popular in London.... According to Niall Johnson's book "Britain and the Contagious Influenza 1918-1919", the English press blamed the Spanish climate for the flu outbreak: "The dry and windy climate of Spain in the spring was unpleasant and unpleasant (the germ was dispersed by strong winds in Spain, that is, the humid climate of Britain) caused the flu to spread in this The country prevents.

What were the symptoms of the flu?

Among the initial symptoms of the disease were headache and fatigue with dry and short cough, loss of appetite, digestive problems and then on the second day profuse sweating.... Then the disease affects the respiratory organs and may develop into pneumonia.... Humphreys explains that often pneumonia or other respiratory complications are the main cause, the main cause of which is death.... It was often something other than the flu.

By the summer of 1918, the virus was spreading rapidly throughout the rest of continental Europe...Vienna, Budapest, and Hungary were overrun by the virus, and parts of Germany and France were also affected....There were reports of children being sick and absent from many German schools, and the illness of munitions factory workers reduced production.

On June 25, 1918, the influenza that was raging in Spain reached Britain.... The epidemic affected the London cloth trade in July to such an extent that, according to the book "The Spanish Influenza of 1918-1919: A New Perspective"; 80 workers out of 400 workers in a factory fell ill in just one day.... This report includes 25 to 50 percent of the workforce due to the absence of civil servants in London due to influenza.

How many people died?

In the spring of 1919, the death toll from the Spanish flu was declining... As medical professionals were unable to prevent the spread of the disease, countries were devastated by the outbreak.... This situation was similar to the situation 500 years ago when the Black Death (Plague) caused chaos around the world.

Nancy Bristow, in her book, American Infectious Disease: Worlds Lost in the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, explains that the virus affected 500 million people worldwide....At the time, that number was one-third of the world's population....50 million people died from the virus, but the true number is said to be even higher.

Bristow estimates that about 25% of the US population contracted the virus, and that number rose to 40% among the US Navy due to the conditions of service at sea. By the end of October 1918, the flu had claimed the lives of 200,000 Americans, and Bristow claims that a total of 6,75,00 Americans contracted the disease.. During 1918, It was reduced to 12 years.

So many bodies were piled up that the cemeteries were overflowing and families had to dig their own graves for their relatives... Farmers' deaths affected the late summer harvest..

More info: Internist

This disease reached Asia, Africa, South America and the South Pacific Ocean... In India, fifty people out of every 1000 people died, which is a shocking statistic.

How does this disease compare to seasonal flu?

The Spanish flu is by far the deadliest infectious flu in history, killing approximately 1-3% of the world's population.

The most recent flu that can be compared to the Spanish flu occurred in 2009-2010 after a new strain of H1N1 flu emerged....This disease was called "swine flu" because the virus that causes it is similar to the virus found in pigs (not because pigs are the cause of the disease).

Swine flu caused a respiratory illness that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killed 151,700 to 575,400 people worldwide in one year. That's roughly 0.001 to 0.007 percent of the world's population.. Swine flu deaths occurred in people younger than 65 years of age, which was unusual... 70 to 90 percent of seasonal flu deaths typically occur in people over 65 years of age.

Today, the swine flu vaccine is one of the annual anti-influenza vaccines. Of course, a number of people still die from the flu every year, but the average death rate is much lower than that of the swine flu or the Spanish flu, and 290,000 to 650,000 people die.

Similarities between the Spanish Flu and the Corona Virus

First, both diseases appear to have originated in animals....Research on the H1N1 virus gene in the Spanish flu suggests that the deadliest wave of the disease came from a bird, but no one knows for sure what type or exact origin it was.

Similarly, health experts suspect that an animal was the host before the Covid-19 virus was transmitted to humans, but the type of animal has not yet been determined.

This brings us to another comparison....the Spanish flu became more dangerous after an apparent mutation....coronavirus strains also mutate relatively easily and quickly.

In fact, according to an article edited by MedicineNet Editor-in-Chief Dr. Charles Patrick Davis, Dr. Charles Patrick Davis, this incident has already happened twice: "Past mutations led to the emergence of SARS in 2002-2003, when a virus associated with civet cats mutated and was transmitted to humans. In 2012, a novel coronavirus in the Arabian Peninsula that originated in camels led to the emergence of the disease and our emergence. It was.. MERS."

Death rate of the Spanish flu against the Corona virus (Covid-19)

According to Dr. Tubenberger, the death toll from the Spanish flu was much higher than the seasonal flu. The mortality rate was estimated to be over 2.5%. It is difficult to compare statistics because there is new information about Covid-19 that is collected by different organizations and governments in different ways.

Difference between Spanish Flu and Corona Virus

But the Spanish flu is different from the corona virus in important ways... According to the National Geographic news agency, the Spanish flu killed people so quickly that, according to reports, many people woke up feeling sick one morning and died on their way to work.

But perhaps the most important difference between these two infectious diseases is related to the time of their occurrence... The Spanish flu was parallel to the First World War, which helped the rapid spread of the disease by moving from one place to another... Instead, many countries have imposed travel restrictions to prevent the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

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