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Source: Covid-19 and the Spanish Influenza | World War 1 Live
As a distraction from the current Covid-19 unpleasantness, readers may be interested in casting their mind back to a hundred years ago, when another respiratory disease swept the world. The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 famously killed more people than the First World War, reaching parts of the globe barely touched by that conflict. It acquired its name because in neutral Spain the press was more free to report on the disease’s ravages than in the countries at war, leading people to think that it was exacting a particularly heavy toll there. In fact it was no worse in Spain than anywhere else. The disease certainly did not originate in there, though its exact origins are mysterious, with some suggesting a US army camp in Kansas, others the British training base of Étaples on the French coast, with others again naming China.
The Spanish Influenza has certain similarities with Covid-19. Both seem to largely spare children from their attentions (the director of New York’s Board of Health deliberately kept schools open to as a vehicle for transmitting public health information to children’s families, causing some disquiet on the social media of the day). Advice on how to avoid the two diseases is similar: shunning crowds and adherence to basic hygiene. And both pandemics saw reliable information battle with rumour, hearsay and outright nonsense. But the diseases are different. The Spanish Influenza disproportionately struck down young adults and left the old relatively untouched, while Covid-19 appears to have a particular fondness for the old. My pessimistic suspicion is also that mortality rates and the lasting effect of Covid-19 will dwarf the Spanish Influenza’s, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Should readers want to look back on how the Spanish Influenza influenced and was influenced by the First World War, then I refer them to relevant posts on my now concluded live blog of the Great War.
image sources:
Influenza patients from Fort Riley, Kansas, being treated at Camp Funston, 1918
Save Yourself From Influenza (The Crozet Gazette: 1918: War and Influenza—Battling on the Home Front)
DAVE DOES HISTORY 
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