Spanish Flu of 1918

Do you know that "rain on wet"? Well, that is what the flu epidemic of 1918 was, in the middle of the final stretch of the Great War (World War I), which caused between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide.

The call "Spanish flu”Was a global pandemic caused by a mutation of the influenza virus, which acted with great virulence in 1918 and 1919.

It is still curious that the name "Spanish flu" does not refer to where it was detected for the first time or where it came from, but because of a simple fact: as Spain is not one of the belligerent countries in the war, the press was not subject to censorship, so it reported more openly about the pandemic than the press of the countries that took part in it. the conflict.

It was not the first time that humanity had faced a pandemic, not even a flu epidemic, but this was presented in a world that was beginning to be globalized and, therefore, with ample possibilities to travel and spread more quickly.

It was originally detected in the United States, and was transmitted to Europe through troops leaving the country to go to the front lines. From France it went to Spain, where - as I have said before - the press began to report the pandemic, which took its name from there.

While spreading throughout the United States and Europe, it also reached Africa (first outbreaks detected in Sierra Leone, then a French colony). It is not only that Asia was also affected, it is that this flu epidemic reached every corner of the world, from South Africa to the Arctic, from Siberia to California.

It wiped out entire communities around the world, killing between 3% and 6% of all population world at the time. A real hecatomb.

Why was this mortality so high? according to recent studies it was due to various factors that came together to offer the worst possible scenario for humanity.

The first of these was an especially virulent mutation of the virus - the flu virus constantly mutates - which could have mutated in animals, and which resisted existing treatments.

Second, the overcrowding and poor hygienic conditions in hospitals multiplied in several factors the propagation rate of the disease. To the bad conditions of healthiness From the hospitals for the poor people were added the overcrowding and the same poor (or worse) conditions of the military and field hospitals for the war. The cities, to which a good part of the rural population, were also a source of spread.

The war, with the limitations of all kinds that it imposed on the populations (food, for example), contributed significantly to the worsening of the body's defenses of people, facilitating the penetration of the virus and its action.

And, finally, the scant advance in medical techniques, which would make an important qualitative leap in the Second World War and after this, but that at the time were still more anchored to the past than to the future, made an effective fight against the virus.

The Spanish flu disappeared on its own as quickly as it arrived.

The causes are unknown, but specialists speculate that the virus's rapid mutation caused its lethal potential to decline as well.

Recently, scientists have "revived" the virus in controlled environments to study it, understand its causes and mechanisms, and better prepare for possible future pandemics.

The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and its circumstances should serve as a serious warning for the future, of the dangers at the level of health facing our highly globalized society, and to take action on the matter in order to prevent something similar from repeat.

Currently, travel has lost its aura of yesteryear, and moving from a continent to another it is no longer a matter of days or weeks, but of hours. People move in large numbers around the globe, and it is no longer uncommon to find foreigners even in the most remote places.

Is globalization, which by itself is not bad, can contribute to the rapid spread of a new epidemic, which would be a thousand times more devastating than the one in 1918.

Photo: Fotolia - Jonathan Stutz

Issues in Spanish Flu of 1918