Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
essays on the spanish flu of 1918
essays on the spanish flu of 1918
spanish flu pandemic of 1918 economic impact
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: essays on the spanish flu of 1918
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...
... middle of paper ...
...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.
Kent, Susan Kingsley. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
From the Chelsea Naval Hospital, overlooking the Boston Bay, I sip on a cup of Joe and browse over the Sports Section of the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this month, three Bostonians dropped dead from influenza. In examining the extent of the epidemic, Surgeon-General Blue commented to the Times , "People are stricken on the streets, while at work in factories, shipyards, offices or elsewhere. First there is a chill, then fever with temperature from 101 to 103, headache, backache, reddening and running of the eyes, pains and aches all over the body, and general prostration." I gaze out my window, the sun seems brighter than usual and the town more radiant. It must be the victory, for the threat of death due to influenza is pervasive. Outside, children jump rope. With every skip of the jump rope they chant. "I had a little bird." Skip. "Its name was Enza." Skip. "I opened up the window." Skip. "And in-flu-enza."
The Influenza of 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989. Print Use: I will use this as an extra source to supplement The Great Influenza and get more detailed information about Philadelphia, as well as Sans Francisco if I feel it would be useful. Secondary Furman, Bess. A Profile of the United States Public Health Service 1798-1948.
Nancy K. Bristow, American Pandemic, The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 193
However due to globalization, import and export viruses is more easily transmitted. Over the past century the global community especially Asian has been affected with new strains of the influenza virus. The changes in the virus can occur in two ways “antigenic drift” which are gradual changes in the virus over time. This change produces new strains that the antibody may not recognize. “Antigenic shift” On the other is a sudden change in the influenza virus which ‘’ results in a new influenza A subtype or a virus with a hemagglutinin or a hemagglutinin and neuraminidase combination that has emerged from an animal population,” as seen with H5N1 virus. This change leaves people defenseless against this new virus. (CDC, 2013) Currently there is no vaccine to combat all strains therefore “Planning and preparedness for implementing mitigation strategies during a pandemic requires participation by all levels o...
"Pandemic Flu History." Home. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d. Web. 23 Mar.
The life-threatening, smallpox-causing, flu-epidemic-causing, and poorly understood particulates found in our daily lives - viruses - have such a negative connotation. All viruses are not bad, though. Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) is one such virus. It cannot even infect humans, and yet it is so vital to our understanding of viruses that do have human hosts. The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965 pits TMV as the primary model organism for the entire field of early molecular biology (and thus biochemistry) and plant-based virology. Angela N. H. Creager manages to achieve this lofty goal through examples, biographies, and communications between scientists of the time period
The influenza or flu pandemic of 1918 to 1919, the deadliest in modern history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide–about one-third of the planet’s population at the time–and estimates place the number of victims anywhere from 25 to 100 million. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic. The 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, the U.S. and parts of Asia before swiftly spreading around the world. Surprisingly, many flu victims were young, otherwise healthy adults. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain or prevent its spread. In the U.S., citizens were ordered to wear masks, and schools, theaters and other public
--------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Essen, G. A., "The Socio-Economic Impact of Influenza". http://www.eswi.org/Bulletin_October_1997.cfm [2] Frayha, Husn. " Influenza Vaccination: A Call for Action" http://www.kfshrc.edu.sa/annals/176/97-248R.html [3] "Influenza". http://www.caw.ca/whatwedo/health&safety/factsheet/hsfssubstanceno37.asp
Thousands become ill, become hospitalized and some even die from complications of the flu. In the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic, 20 to 50 million people died across America and Europe.
The flu appeared in china in the late 1918 and spread to the United States (“The Influenza Epidemic of 1918”). It killed 675,000 Americans (“The 1918 Influenza Pandemic”). Which is 25% of the US population (“The Influenza Epidemic of 1918”). Half of all the US soldiers in Europe in ww1 died from the disease then from combat (“The 1918 Influenza Pandemic”). Back in the United States government officials ordered all citizens to wear masks and ordered the shutdown of all public places like schools and theaters (“1918 Flu Pandemic”).
In order to decide whether or not the swine flu vaccine is completely necessary, one must first gain a better understanding of the topic. It is a scientifically known fact that the swine flu is a result of a virus. A virus is a capsule of genetic material that causes infection in the body. The infectious particles are made up of nucleic acid enclosed in a protein shell, called a capsid. It cannot be considered a living organism like the disease causing agent of bacteria, because it does not carry out all the characteristics of life. Specifically, it cannot reproduce on its own.
In the United States alone over 700,000 people died, which is greater than the total number of American deaths in both World Wars, The Korean War, and Vietnam, combined. One of the major takeaways from studying the flu epidemic is that it offers a real-life example of what impact population shocks have on economies. Major plaques such as the black plaque lack the data required to arrive at a conclusive analysis, while economic theory is too ambiguous to accurately model the situation. In the case of the 1918 flu epidemic, known commonly as the Spanish Flu, records exist which allow economists to draw conclusions on the impact of population shocks on the world economy. With every pandemic, the initial result is the death of a substantial portion of the population of the impacted area.
The influenza vaccine, also known as flu shot, is an annual vaccination using a vaccine that is specific for a given year to protect against the highly variable influenza virus. Each seasonal influenza vaccine contains antigens representing three or four influenza virus strains: one influenza type A subtype H1N1 virus strain, one influenza type A subtype H3N2 virus strain, and either one or two influenza type B virus strains. Influenza vaccines may be administered as an injection or as a nasal spray.
This disease was first diagnosed in 1918 and it was referred to as the “Spanish Flu” or “La Grippe.” To this day it is thought to of been the same strain as the swine influenza however it is still unclear. For this particular outbreak it’s not exactly know whether humans contracted the virus from pigs or vice versa. Either way between 20-40 million people died from it. The first confirmed case of H1N1 in the U.S. was diagnosed on April 15th, 2009. The CDC quickly began developing a vaccine due to the fact that it was declared a public health emergency about a week later by the government. It tu...