In the US the Spanish flu was first observed in January 1918 in Kansas. The 1918 flu pandemic virus kills an estimated 195000 Americans during October alone.
Mapping The Spanish Flu Pandemic Earth Org Past Present Future
The flu outbreak that came from China boomeranged back to North America and then across the Pacific Ocean.
Spanish flu where did it start. France China and Britain have all been suggested as the potential birthplace of the. Influenza pandemic of 191819. Spanish flu struck in waves.
In fall of 1918 the United States experiences a severe shortages of professional nurses because of the deployment of large numbers of nurses to military camps in the United States and abroad and the failure to use trained African American nurses. The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain BMJ10191918 where it allegedly killed 8 million in May BMJ 7131918. Scientists still do not know for sure where the Spanish Flu originated though theories point to France China Britain or the United States where the first known case was reported at Camp.
There is also no way of being certain where Spanish Flu originated although the trenches of World War I where poor sanitation and disease was rife are an often-cited contender. Albert Gitchell was reported sick on March 4 1918 at Fort Riley. By the time the second wave had started in the United States France and Sierra Leone in August the H1N1 Influenza-virus had mutated.
The truth hasnt been established but there is some disturbing evidence that it wasnt in Spain. The virus began on the windswept Kansas prairie where dirt-poor farm families struggled to do daily chores slopping pigs feeding cattle horses and chickens living. Influenza pandemic of 191819 also called Spanish influenza pandemic or Spanish flu the most severe influenza outbreak of the 20th century and in terms of total numbers of deaths among the most devastating pandemics in human history.
How the deadly virus changed. The first hit the United States in the spring of 1918 but was mild and went almost unnoticed. But where did it start.
Soon after over 100 of his fellow soldiers had reported similar symptoms marking what are believed to be the first cases in the historic influenza pandemic of 1918 later known as Spanish flu. While its unlikely that the Spanish Flu originated in Spain scientists are still unsure of its source. This strain was so infectious that by the end of October it had spread from coast to coast and had a morbidity rate of about 28 percent.
The Spanish flu reached its height in autumn 1918 but raged until 1920 initially gaining its nickname from wartime censorship rules that allowed for reporting on the diseases ravages in neutral. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. It was given the name by journalists when the Spanish king Alfonso XIII fell seriously ill with a form of influenza in May that year.
The filthy rat-infested conditions undoubtedly affected the soldiers immune systems making them more vulnerable to illness. The pandemic that broke out nearly 30 years later will always be known as the Spanish flu though it didnt start in Spain. Called inappropriately the Spanish flu some theorize that the actual.
The 1918 flu pandemic became known as the Spanish flu because wartime censors minimized reports of the illness while the Spanish press. It washed over the world in three waves which in the northern hemisphere corresponded to a mild wave in the spring of 1918 a lethal wave the following autumn and a reprisal in the early months of 1919 that was intermediate in virulence between the other two. Within few days over 522 men at Fort Riley reported ill.
A second wave hit in the summer starting in late August in Boston. The 1918 influenza pandemic was commonly referred to as the Spanish flu but it did not originate in Spain. Why Spanish flu was so fatal especially to people in the prime of their lives is what scientists are striving to understand as TIME reported in the wake of Hong Kongs 1997 avian flu.
However a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. And it was here in Kansas.
