The so-called Spanish flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1 influenza virus, is recognised as the most severe in human history. The US Center for Disease Control estimates that 500 million people were infected across the globe. Ten percent of them
would die.
More people perished from it between 1918 and 1919 than those who were killed in World War I (1914-1918) or the four years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague (1347-1351).
As a researcher noted, the Spanish flu killed more people across the world in 24 weeks than HIV and Aids did in 24 years.
Spreading along shipping and rail lines, the pandemic affected North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific, aided by wartime troop movements.
It was the second wave of the pandemic which was the big killer, after a much milder first wave which produced the label “Spanish” as there was no press censorship in neutral Spain.
Many in Allied countries believed the virus was the product of German biological warfare; an evolution of the mustard gases and the “smoke and fumes” of
the war.
There was no vaccine against it nor antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections, forcing governments to encourage isolation and quarantine, to limit public gatherings, and to urge good personal hygiene and the use of sanitisers, but this was not applied uniformly.
There were no tests for people with mild symptoms and no mechanism to do contact tracing because the virus was transmitted so quickly. There was no officially sanctioned safety equipment for doctors and health workers.
India is estimated to have lost up to 17 million people. Japan suffered 23 million infections and 390 000 reported deaths; Indonesia is assumed to have lost 1.5 million people, while Western Samoa lost 22% of its population in two months.
Three-hundred thousand people died in Brazil, including the president, 250 000 in Britain, more than 400 000 in France. Russia, in the grip of a civil war, is estimated to have lost as many as 2.7 million of
its citizens.
It is estimated that more than a quarter of the US was infected, with up to 675 000 people perishing.
Native American communities were particularly hard hit, with entire Inuit and Alaskan native village communities being wiped out. Life expectancy in the US slumped from 51 in 1917 to 39 in 1918, before bouncing back the following year.
In Africa, Gold Coast (today Ghana) lost 100 000 people. The future Haile Selassie, emperor-to-be of Ethiopia, survived but many of his subjects did not. In Addis Ababa, the capital,
10 000 residents perished. South Africa lost some 350 000 of its population, including, possibly, its first prime minister, Louis Botha. The isolated island of St Helena on the other hand did not record a single infection.
Yet, despite all the human carnage, the outbreak was largely under-reported, attributed by many experts to wartime censorship and the fact that most of the deaths occurred far from Europe and North America.
A highly infectious disease, initially its symptoms were confusing, causing doctors to misdiagnose it as dengue, cholera or typhoid. Most deaths were caused by bacterial pneumonia, which was a common secondary infection, or bleeding in the lungs or massive fluid build-up.
A descendant of that deadly H1N1 virus would come back in 2009 as Swine Flu, fortunately without the same prodigious level of infectiveness.