The 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic

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Influenza is defined as an acute, commonly epidemic disease, occurring in several forms, caused by numerous rapidly mutating viral strains and characterized by respiratory symptoms and general prostration. Spanish flu was more than just a normal epidemic, it was a pandemic. Epidemics affect many people at the same time in areas where the disease doesn’t normally occur. A pandemic is an epidemic on a national, international, or global scale. The Spanish flu was different from the seasonal flu in one especially frightening way, there was an unusually high death rate among healthy adults aged 15 to 34 and lowered the life expectancy by more than ten years. Such a high death rate has not occurred in this age group in and epidemic prior to or since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. (Tumpey, 2005)
The disease gets its name not from the country where it first appeared but from the country where it was first widely reported. The Spanish were not involved in World War One. They were not censoring their newsprint as heavily as those in countries involved in the war. When Spain was hit hard by the disease it became associated with the “Spanish flu”. The Spanish king himself contracted the flu. (History 2013) There are conflicting reports about where the disease originated. One commonly held belief is that it originated in a military camp in Kansas where soldiers were trained before being sent around the world to fight. The second wave commenced in three port cities in three countries; this second wave was a deadly evolution of the first wave and began the deadly phase of the pandemic. (The Great Pandemic)
The Spanish Influenza has not been seen since the last pandemic ended in 1919. In 1918 the federal government required stat...

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...om http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/index.html
Influenza Encyclopedia. (n.d.). The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A Digital Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 27, 2013, from http://www.influenzaarchive.org/
Jensenius;, J. C. (2006). Vaccine Against Spanish Flu. Science, 311(5767), 1552b-1552b. Retrieved October 27, 2013, from http://www.sciencemag.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/content/311/5767/1552.2
Reid, A. (1999). Origin and evolution of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus hemagglutinin gene. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 96, 1651-1656.
Steenhuysen, J. (2011, January 10). Swine flu survivors developed super flu antibodies. Reuters. Retrieved October 27, 2013, from http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/10/us-flu-vaccine-idUSTRE70938S20110110
Tumpey, T. M. (2005). Characterization Of The Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus. Science, 310(5745), 77-80.

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