1918 flu pandemic

The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish Flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the virus. Most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. The flu pandemic has also been implicated in the sudden outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.

The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 million people were killed worldwide. An estimated 500 million people, one third of the world's population (approximately 1.6 billion at the time), became infected.

Scientists have used tissue samples from frozen victims to reproduce the virus for study. Given the strain's extreme virulence there has been controversy regarding the wisdom of such research. Among the conclusions of this research is that the virus kills via a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system) which explains its unusually severe nature and the concentrated age profile of its victims. The strong immune systems of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults caused fewer deaths.

Mortality

The difference between the influenza mortality age-distributions of the 1918 epidemic and normal epidemics. Deaths per 100,000 persons in each age group, United States, for the interpandemic years 1911–1917 (dashed line) and the pandemic year 1918 (solid line).

Three pandemic waves: weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919

The global mortality rate from the 1918-1919 pandemic is not known, but it is estimated that 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means that 3% to 6% of the entire global population died. Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people while current estimates say 50—100 million people worldwide were killed. This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death.

As many as 17 million died in India, about 5% of India's population at the time. In Japan, 23 million people were affected, and 390,000 died. In the U.S., about 28% of the population suffered, and 500,000 to 675,000 died. In Britain as many as 250,000 died; in France more than 400,000.[18] In Canada approximately 50,000 died. Entire villages perished in Alaska and southern Africa.[which?] Ras Tafari (the future Haile Selassie) was one of the first Ethiopians who contracted influenza but survived, although many of his subjects did not; estimates for the fatalities in the capital city, Addis Ababa, range from 5,000 to 10,000, with some experts opining that the number was even higher, while in British Somaliland one official there estimated that 7% of the native population died from influenza. In Australia an estimated 12,000 people died and in the Fiji Islands, 14% of the population died during only two weeks, and in Western Samoa 22%.

This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms. Indeed, symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred." The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.

The unusually severe disease killed between 2 and 20% of those infected, as opposed to the more usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%. Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old.[24] This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70), and may have been due to partial protection caused by exposure to a previous Russian flu pandemic of 1889.

Origins of name

Although the first cases of the disease were registered in the continental U.S, and the rest of Europe long before getting to Spain, the 1918 Flu received its nickname "Spanish flu" because Spain, a neutral country in WWI, had no special censorship for news against the disease and its consequences. Hence the most reliable news on the disease came from Spain, giving the false impression that Spain was the most—if not the only—affected zone.

[edit] History

While World War I did not cause the flu, the close troop quarters and massive troop movements hastened the pandemic and probably increased transmission, augmented mutation and may have increased the lethality of the virus. Some researchers speculate that the soldiers' immune systems were weakened by malnourishment as well as the stresses of combat and chemical attacks, increasing their susceptibility to the disease.[27] Price-Smith has made the controversial argument that the virus helped tip the balance of power in the latter days of the war towards the Allied cause. Specifically, he provides data that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before they hit the Allied powers, and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France.[28]

A large factor of worldwide flu occurrence was increased travel. Modern transportation systems made it easier for soldiers, sailors, and civilian travelers to spread the disease quickly to communities worldwide.

Geographic sources

Some scholars have theorized that the flu probably originated in the Far East.[29] Dr. C. Hannoun, leading expert of the 1918 flu for the Institut Pasteur, theorized that the former virus was likely to have come from China, mutated in the United States near Boston, and spread to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, Europe, and the world using Allied soldiers and sailors as main spreaders.[30] Hannoun considered several other theories of origin, such as Spain, Kansas, and Brest, as being possible but not likely.

Historian Alfred W. Crosby observed that the flu seems to have originated in Kansas. Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting that the influenza had earlier origins, beginning in Austria in the spring of 1917. Popular writer John Barry echoed Crosby in describing Haskell County, Kansas as the likely point of origin. In the United States the disease was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas, on March 4, 1918, and Queens, New York, on March 11, 1918. In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the U.S. at Boston, Massachusetts. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.

Investigative work by a British team, led by virologist John Oxford of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London Hospital, has suggested that a principal British troop staging camp in Étaples, France was at the center of the 1918 flu pandemic, or was the location of a significant precursor virus.

Patterns of fatality

The influenza strain was unusual in that this pandemic killed many young adults and otherwise healthy victims; typical influenzas kill mostly weak individuals, such as infants (aged 0–2 years), the elderly, and the immunocompromised. Older adults may have had some immunity from the earlier Russian flu pandemic of 1889. Another oddity was that the outbreak was widespread in the summer and autumn (in the Northern Hemisphere); influenza is usually worse in winter.

In fast-progressing cases, mortality was primarily from pneumonia, by virus-induced pulmonary consolidation. Slower-progressing cases featured secondary bacterial pneumonias, and there may have been neural involvement that led to mental disorders in some cases. Some deaths resulted from malnourishment and even animal attacks in overwhelmed communities.

[edit] Deadly second wave

The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much deadlier than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. But in August, when the second wave began in France, Sierra Leone and the United States,[40] the virus had mutated to a much more deadly form. This has been attributed to the circumstances of the First World War. In civilian life evolutionary pressures favour a mild strain: those who get really sick stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, go to work and go shopping, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches the evolutionary pressures were reversed: soldiers with a mild strain remained where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus. So the second wave began and flu quickly spread around the world again. It was the same flu, in that most of those who recovered from first-wave infections were immune, but it was now far more deadly, and the most vulnerable people were those who were like the soldiers in the trenches—young, otherwise healthy adults. Consequently, during modern pandemics, health officials pay attention when the virus reaches places with social upheaval, looking for deadlier strains of the virus.

Devastated communities

Chart of deaths in major cities

Even in areas where mortality was low, so many people were incapacitated that much of everyday life stopped. Some communities closed all stores or required customers to leave their orders outside. There were many reports of places where the health-care workers could not tend the sick nor the grave-diggers bury the dead because they too were ill. Mass graves were dug by steam shovel and bodies buried without coffins in many places. Several Pacific island territories were particularly hard-hit. The pandemic reached them from New Zealand, which was too slow to implement measures to prevent ships carrying the flu from leaving its ports. From New Zealand the flu reached Tonga (killing 8% of the population), Nauru (16%) and Fiji (5%, 9,000 people). Worst affected was Western Samoa, a territory then under New Zealand military administration. A crippling 90% of the population was infected; 30% of adult men, 22% of adult women and 10% of children were killed. By contrast, the flu was kept away from American Samoa by a commander who imposed a blockade.[45] In New Zealand itself 8,573 deaths were attributed to the 1918 pandemic influenza, resulting in a total population fatality rate of 7.4 per thousand (0.74%) .[46]

[edit] Less affected areas

In Japan, 257,363 deaths were attributed to influenza by July 1919, giving an estimated 0.425% mortality rate, much lower than nearly all other Asian countries for which data are available. The Japanese government severely restricted maritime travel to and from the home islands when the pandemic struck.

In the Pacific, American Samoa[47] and the French colony of New Caledonia[48] also succeeded in preventing even a single death from influenza through effective quarantines. In Australia, nearly 12,000 perished.[49]

[edit] End of the pandemic

After the lethal second wave struck in the autumn of 1918, the disease died down abruptly. New cases almost dropped to nothing after the peak in the second wave.[9] In Philadelphia for example, 4,597 people died in the week ending October 16, but by November 11 influenza had almost disappeared from the city. One explanation for the rapid decline of the lethality of the disease is that doctors simply got better at preventing and treating the pneumonia which developed after the victims had contracted the virus, although John Barry states in his book that researchers have found no evidence to support this. Another theory holds that the 1918 virus mutated extremely rapidly to a less lethal strain. This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a general tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal as time goes by, providing more living hosts. According to this theory, this happened very quickly for the 1918 virus.

Cultural impact

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American Red Cross nurses tend to flu patients in temporary wards set up inside Oakland Municipal Auditorium, 1918

In the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, despite the relatively high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the epidemic in 1918–1919, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness over the decades until the arrival of news about bird flu and other pandemics in the 1990s and 2000s.[50] This has led some historians to label the Spanish flu a "forgotten pandemic".[31] One of the few major works of American literature written after 1918 that deals directly with the Spanish flu is Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider. In 1935 John O'Hara wrote a long short story, "The Doctor's Son", about the experience of his fictional alter ego during the flu epidemic in a Pennsylvania coal mining town. In 1937 American novelist William Keepers Maxwell, Jr. wrote They Came Like Swallows, a fictional reconstruction of the events surrounding his mother's death from the flu. Mary McCarthy, the American novelist and essayist, wrote about her parents' deaths in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. Bodie and Brock Thoene's "Shiloh Legacy" series led off with an account of the Spanish flu in New York and Arkansas in their novel In My Father's House (1992). In 1997 David Morrell's short story "If I Die Before I Wake"—dealing with a small American town during the second wave—was published in the anthology Revelations, which was framed by Clive Barker. In 2006 Thomas Mullen published a novel called The Last Town on Earth about the impact of the Spanish flu on a fictional mill town in Washington.

Several theories have been offered as to why the Spanish flu may have been "forgotten" by historians and the public over so many years. These include the rapid pace of the pandemic (it killed most of its victims in the United States, for example, within a period of less than nine months), previous familiarity with pandemic disease in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the distraction of the First World War.[51]

Another explanation involves the age group affected by the disease. The majority of fatalities, from both the war and the epidemic, were among young adults. The deaths caused by the flu may have been overlooked due to the large numbers of deaths of young men in the war or as a result of injuries. When people read the obituaries of the era, they saw the war or post-war deaths and the deaths from the influenza side by side. Particularly in Europe, where the war's toll was extremely high, the flu may not have had a great, separate, psychological impact, or may have seemed a mere "extension" of the war's tragedies.[52] The duration of the pandemic and the war could have also played a role: the disease would usually only affect a certain area for a month before leaving, while the war, which most expected to end quickly, had lasted for four years by the time the pandemic struck. This left little time for the disease to have a significant impact on the economy. During this time period pandemic outbreaks were not uncommon: typhoid, yellow fever, diphtheria, and cholera all occurred near the same time period. These outbreaks probably lessened the significance of the influenza pandemic for the public.[53]

[edit] Spanish flu research

Main article: Spanish flu research

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Terrence Tumpey examining a reconstructed version of the 1918 flu.

One theory is that the virus strain originated at Fort Riley, Kansas, by two genetic mechanisms – genetic drift and antigenic shift – in viruses in poultry and swine which the fort bred for food; the soldiers were then sent from Fort Riley to different places around the world, where they spread the disease. However, evidence from a recent reconstruction of the virus suggests that it jumped directly from birds to humans, without traveling through swine.[54][55] This suggestion is slightly controversial,[56] and other research suggests that the strain originated in a mammalian species.[57]

An effort to recreate the 1918 flu strain (a subtype of avian strain H1N1) was a collaboration among the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City; the effort resulted in the announcement (on October 5, 2005) that the group had successfully determined the virus's genetic sequence, using historic tissue samples recovered by pathologist Johan Hultin from a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost and samples preserved from American soldiers.[58]

On January 18, 2007, Kobasa et al. reported that monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) infected with the recreated strain exhibited classic symptoms of the 1918 pandemic and died from a cytokine storm[59]—an overreaction of the immune system. This may explain why the 1918 flu had its surprising effect on younger, healthier people, as a person with a stronger immune system would potentially have a stronger overreaction.[60]

On September 16, 2008, the body of Yorkshireman Sir Mark Sykes was exhumed to study the RNA of the Spanish flu virus in efforts to understand the genetic structure of modern H5N1 bird flu. Sykes had been buried in 1919 in a lead coffin which scientists hope will have helped preserve the virus.[61]

In December 2008, research by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin linked the presence of three specific genes (termed PA, PB1, and PB2) and a nucleoprotein derived from 1918 flu samples to the ability of the flu virus to invade the lungs and cause pneumonia. The combination triggered similar symptoms in animal testing.[62]

The original date of appearance of this virus is not clear. An estimated date for its appearance in mammalian hosts has been put at the period 1882–1913.[63] This ancestor virus diverged about 1913–1915 into two clades which gave rise to the classical swine and human H1N1 influenza lineages. The last common ancestor of human strains dates to between February 1917 and April 1918. Because pigs are more readily infected with avian influenza viruses than are humans, it is likely that they were the original recipient of the virus. This in turn suggests that the virus was introduced into humans sometime between 1913 and 1918.

[edit] Victims

Influenza ward at Walter Reed Hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919.

Albertan farmers wearing masks to protect themselves from the flu.

Notable Fatalities

* Admiral Dot (1864–1918), circus performer under P. T. Barnum[64]

* Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, Portuguese painter, (October 25, 1918)

* Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves, Brazilian re-elected president, (January 16, 1919)[65]

* Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet (November 9, 1918)

* Felix Arndt, American pianist (October 16, 1918)

* Louis Botha, first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, (August 27, 1919)[66]

* Randolph Bourne, American progressive writer and public intellectual, (December 22, 1918)[67]

* Dudley John Beaumont, husband of the Dame of Sark (November 24, 1918) [68]

* Larry Chappell, American baseball player, (November 8, 1918)

* Angus Douglas, Scottish international footballer, (December 14, 1918)

* Harry Elionsky, American champion long-distance swimmer[66]

* George Freeth, father of modern surfing and lifeguard (April 7, 1919)

* Sophie Halberstadt-Freud, daughter of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, (1920)

* Irma Cody Garlow, daughter of Buffalo Bill Cody[64]

* Harold Gilman, British painter (February 12, 1919)

* Henry G. Ginaca, American engineer, inventor of the Ginaca machine (October 19, 1918)

* Myrtle Gonzalez, American film actress (October 22, 1918)[67]

* Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, namesake of Chicago's famous Goodman Theatre

* Charles Tomlinson Griffes, American composer (April 8, 1920)

* Joe Hall, Montreal Canadiens defenceman, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame (April 6, 1919)

* Phoebe Hearst, mother of William Randolph Hearst, (April 13, 1919)

* Bohumil Kubišta, Czech painter, (November 27, 1918)

* Hans E. Lau, Danish astronomer, (October 16, 1918)[67]

* Julian L'Estrange stage and screen actor, husband of actress Constance Collier (October 22, 1918)

* Harold Lockwood, American silent film star, (October 19, 1918)[64]

* Francisco Marto, Fátima child (April 4, 1919)

* Jacinta Marto, Fátima child (February 20, 1920)

* Alan Arnett McLeod, Victoria Cross recipient, (6 November, 1918)

* Dan McMichael, manager of Scottish association football club Hibernian (1919)

* Leon Morane, French aircraft company founder and pre-WW1 aviator (October 20, 1918)

* William Francis Murray, Postmaster of Boston and former U.S. Representative (September 21, 1918)

* Sir Hubert Parry, British composer, (October 7, 1918)

* Henry Ragas, pianist of the Original Dixieland Jass Band

* William Leefe Robinson, Victoria Cross winner, (December 31, 1918)

* Edmond Rostand, French dramatist, best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac, (December 2, 1918)

* Egon Schiele, Austrian painter (October 31, 1918, Vienna). His wife Edith, who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease only three days before.[69]

* Reggie Schwarz, South African cricketer and rugby player (November 18, 1918)[67]

* Yakov Sverdlov, Bolshevik party leader and official of pre-USSR Russia (March 16, 1919)

* Mark Sykes, British politician and diplomat, body exhumed 2008 for scientific research (February 16, 1919)

* Frederick Trump, Grandfather of businessman Donald Trump, (March 30, 1918)

* Max Weber, German political economist and sociologist (June 14, 1920)

* Prince Erik, Duke of Västmanland (Erik Gustav Ludvig Albert Bernadotte), Prince of Sweden, Duke of Västmanland (September 20, 1918)

* Vera Kholodnaya, Russian actress (February 16, 1919)

* Dark Cloud (actor), aka Elijah Tahamont, American Indian actor, in Los Angeles (1918).

* Franz Karl Salvator (1893–1918), son of Archduchess Marie Valerie of Austria and Archduke Franz Salvator, grandson of Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria and Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, died unmarried and childless.

* Anaseini Takipō, Queen of Tonga from 1909, consort of King George Tupou II of Tonga, survived by one daughter, (November 26, 1918)

* King Watzke, American violinist and bandleader, (1920)[67]

* Bill Yawkey, Major League Baseball executive and owner of the Detroit Tigers, in Augusta, Georgia (March 5, 1919)

Notable Survivors

* Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1879–1952), Queen of Denmark[39]

* Walter Benjamin, (1892-1940) German-Jewish philosopher and Marxist literary critic.[70]

* Walt Disney (1901–1966), cartoonist.[39]

* Peter Fraser (1884–1950), New Zealand prime minister.[39]

* David Lloyd George (1863–1945), British prime minister.[39]

* Lillian Gish (1893–1993), early motion picture star.[71]

* Joseph Joffre (1852–1931), French World War I general, victor of the Marne.[39]

* Prince Maximilian of Baden (1867–1929), Chancellor of Germany during the armistice.[39]

* William Keepers Maxwell, Jr. (August 16, 1908–July 31, 2000) American novelist and editor

* Edward Munch, (1863–1944) Norwegian painter.[72]

* Georgia O'Keeffe, (1887-1986) American modernist painter.[73]

* John J. Pershing (1860–1948) American general.[39]

* Mary Pickford (1892–1979), early motion picture star.[39]

* Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980), Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer[39]

* Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), American president[39]

* Haile Selassie (1892–1975), Emperor of Ethiopia.[21]

* Leo Szilard (1898–1964), nuclear physicist, discoverer of the nuclear chain reaction.[74]

* Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941)[39]

* Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American president.