during the Spanish influenza pandemic, circa 1918.
The first strain of the Spanish flu wasn’t particularly deadly.
Then it came back in the fall with a vengeance.
Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly?
The horrific scale of the 1918 influenza pandemic—known as the “Spanish flu”—is hard to fathom.
The virus infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims— that’s more than all of the soldiers and civilians killed during World War I combined.
While the global pandemic lasted for two years, the vast majority of deaths were packed into three
especially cruel months in the fall of 1918. Historians now believe that the fatal severity
of the Spanish flu’s “second wave” was caused by a mutated virus spread by wartime troop movements.
READ MORE: Pandemics that Changed History
When the Spanish flu first appeared in early March 1918, it had all the hallmarks of a seasonal flu, albeit
a highly contagious and virulent strain. One of the first registered cases was Albert Gitchell, a U.S. Army cook
at Camp Funston in Kansas, who was hospitalized with a 104-degree fever. The virus spread quickly through the Army installation, home to 54,000 troops. By the end of the month, 1,100 troops had been hospitalized
and 38 had died after developing pneumonia.
HISTORY This Week podcast: The Deadliest Pandemic in Modern History
As U.S. troops deployed en masse for the war effort in Europe, they carried the 1918 Spanish flu
with them. Throughout April and May of 1918, the virus spread like wildfire through England, France, Spain and Italy. An estimated three-quarters of the French military was infected in the spring of 1918 and as many
as half of British troops. Luckily, the first wave of the virus wasn’t particularly deadly, with symptoms like high fever and malaise usually lasting only three days, and mortality rates were similar to seasonal flu.
How the Spanish Flu Got Its Name.
Interestingly, it was during this time that the Spanish flu earned its misnomer.
Spain was neutral during World War I and unlike its European neighbors, it didn’t impose wartime censorship on its press. In France, England and the United States, newspapers weren’t allowed to report on anything that could harm the war effort, including news that a crippling virus was sweeping through troops. Since Spanish journalists were some of the only ones reporting on a widespread flu outbreak in the spring of 1918,
the pandemic became known as the “Spanish flu.”
Reported cases of Spanish flu dropped off over the summer of 1918, and there was hope at the beginning of August that the virus had run its course. In retrospect, it was only the calm before the storm. Somewhere in Europe, a mutated strain of the Spanish flu virus had emerged that had the power to kill a perfectly healthy young man or woman within 24 hours of showing the first signs of infection.
In late August 1918, military ships departed the English port city of Plymouth carrying troops unknowingly infected with this new, far deadlier strain of Spanish flu. As these ships arrived in cities like Brest in France, Boston in the United States and Freetown in west Africa, the second wave of the global pandemic began.
“The rapid movement of soldiers around the globe was a major spreader of the disease,” says James Harris,
a historian at Ohio State University who studies both infectious disease and World War I. “The entire military industrial complex of moving lots of men and material in crowded conditions was certainly a huge contributing factor in the ways the pandemic spread.”
Virus Killed the Young, Old and In-Between.
From September through November of 1918, the death rate from the Spanish flu skyrocketed. In the United States alone, 195,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu in just the month of October. And unlike a normal seasonal flu, which mostly claims victims among the very young and very old, the second wave of the Spanish flu exhibited what’s called a “W curve”—high numbers of deaths among the young and old, but also a huge spike in the middle composed of otherwise healthy 25- to 35-year-olds in the prime of their life.
“That really freaked out the medical establishment, that there was this atypical spike in
the middle of the War,” says Harris.
READ MORE: How Florence Nightingale’s Hygiene Crusade Saved Millions
Not only, was it shocking that healthy young men and women were dying by the millions worldwide,
but it was also how they were dying. Struck with blistering fevers, nasal hemorrhaging and pneumonia,
the patients would drown in their own fluid-filled lungs.
Only decades later were scientists able explain the phenomenon now known as
“cytokine explosion.” When the human body is being attacked by a virus, the immune
system sends messenger proteins called cytokines to promote helpful inflammation.
But some strains of the flu, particularly the H1N1 strain responsible for
the Spanish flu outbreak, can trigger a dangerous immune overreaction in healthy individuals. In those cases, the body is overloaded with cytokines leading to severe inflammation and the fatal buildup of fluid in the lungs.
British military doctors conducting autopsies on soldiers killed by this second wave of the Spanish flu
described the heavy damage to the lungs as akin to the effects of chemical warfare.
Lack of Quarantines Allowed Flu to Spread and Grow.
Harris believes that the rapid spread of Spanish flu in the fall of 1918 was at least partially to blame on public health officials unwilling to impose quarantines during wartime. In Britain, for example, a government official named Arthur Newsholme knew full well that a strict civilian lock down was the best way to fight the spread of the highly contagious disease. But he wouldn’t risk crippling the war effort by keeping munitions factory workers and other civilians home.
According to Harris’s research, Newsholme concluded that “the relentless needs of warfare justified
incurring [the] risk of spreading infection” and encouraged Britons to simply “carry on” during the pandemic.
The public health response to the crisis in the United States was further hampered by a severe nursing shortage as thousands of nurses had been deployed to military camps and the front lines. The shortage was worsened by the American Red Cross’s refusal to use trained African American nurses until the worst of the pandemic had already passed.
Medical Science Didn’t Have the Tools.
But one of the chief reasons that the Spanish flu claimed so many lives in 1918 was that science simply didn’t have the tools to develop a vaccine for the virus. Microscopes couldn’t even see something as incredibly small as a virus until the 1930s. Instead, top medical professionals in 1918 were convinced that the flu was caused by a bacterium nicknamed “Pfeiffer’s bacillus.”
After a global flu outbreak in 1890, a German physician named Richard Pfeiffer found that all of his infected patients carried a particular strain of bacteria he called H. influenzae. When the Spanish flu pandemic hit, scientists were intent on finding a cure for Pfeiffer’s bacillus. Millions of dollars were invested in state-of-the-art labs to develop techniques for testing for and treating H. influenzae, all of it for naught.
“This was a huge distraction for medical science,” says Harris.
PHOTOS: Innovative Ways People Tried to Protect Themselves From the Flu
By December 1918, the deadly second wave of the Spanish flu had finally passed, but the pandemic was
far from over. A third wave erupted in Australia in January 1919 and eventually worked its way back to Europe
and the United States. It’s believed that President Woodrow Wilson contracted the Spanish flu during
the World War I peace negotiations in Paris in April 1919
The mortality rate of the third wave was just as high as the second wave, but the end of the
war in November 1918 removed the conditions that allowed the disease to spread so far and
so quickly. Global deaths from the third wave, while still in the millions, paled in comparison
to the apocalyptic losses during the second wave.
Source: https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
As The World Governments Try To Figure Out Ways To Treat Coronavirus?
I am searching for clever ways to prevent people from getting it and go on living a normal life.
As I research one important piece of the puzzle.
The coronavirus death toll in Illinois is at least 597 as of Saturday morning, with more than 17,000 known
cases of COVID-19 in the state and over 6,600 cases in Chicago, according to state officials. Coronavirus is disproportionately killing the black community. Here’s what experts say can be done about it African Americans have been dying from the coronavirus at a higher rate than other racial demographics, according
to several states’ analysis of data and that same is true in Chicago. Some 58% of deaths from COVID-19 in Illinois’ Cook County were black though the population is 23% black, and 72% of Chicago deaths were black patients though the city is 32% black. “Just this week we talked about the disproportionate burden that black Chicago is facing with infections and deaths related to COVID-19,” she said.
This leads me to believe being that blacks are known to have lower levels of Vitamin D.
Could there be a relationship between vitamin D deficiency and an increase chance of getting coronavirus? Many times when it comes to different health issues the so called experts don’t agree on anything.
Besides having low vitamin D levels that quite possibly caused the coronavirus to replicate in your body.
Dr. Michael Holick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at the Boston University
Medical Campus, is a long-time proponent of what he calls sensible sun exposure.
However, “you should never, ever get a sunburn,” he says – that’s what increases the risk
for melanoma and other skin cancers. If you decide to get limited, unprotected sun exposure
for the sake of vitamin D, he suggests the following rules of thumb:
1. Always protect your face and top of your ears at the beach, because those are
the most sun-exposed and sun-damaged skin areas.
2. Allow 10 to 15 minutes or so of unprotected sun exposure to your arms, legs, abdomen and back.
After that, follow up with good sun protection, like a 30-SPF or higher sunblock.
3. Choose the right time of day. “If your shadow is longer than your body height, you can’t make any vitamin D,” Holick says. Between 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. is the usual window for significant sun exposure, he says.
He’s helped develop the dminder app, which uses multiple factors – time of day, location and skin type –
to recommend optimal sun exposure and provide sun-safety warnings.
“You cannot get an adequate amount of vitamin D from your diet,” Holick says, even
with fortified foods. He recommends vitamin D supplements in appropriate doses for
adults and children.
Another important aspect may also be alkalinity and given the variant opinions you have about the aluminum impurities of baking soda and or brands of alkaline water and taking to much can have an adverse health affect. The Survivor of The 1918 Influenza Pandemic Virus that took the lives of 50 Million People was
Edna Register Boone.
PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SHE SAYS AT 2:22 AND AT 4:38 IN THE VIDEO.
This is SO VERY IMPORTANT! IT COULD VERY WELL, SAVE YOUR LIFE!
After the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 that infected 500 million people around the world, the US Public Health Service made an observation that people who had been alkalized by Sodium Bicarbonate (same chemical compound of baking soda) rare contracted the disease and those who did, had mild symptoms. The mechanism for bicarbonate is that it RAISES the pH (not lowers). And that’s what Bob’s Red Mill’s Baking Soda is pure, water-extracted sodium bicarbonate. No harsh chemicals, no-aluminum-added and no gluten and.does (raises the pH) You can fight viral infections by neutralizing the pH (the acidity in your cells) and decreasing the environment that promotes viral infections from spreading with this simple ingredient you probably have around the house!
Although I prefer Aklaline Water, Green Tea and Manuka Honey!!
Something that sits in your kitchen everyday has more benefits than you ever could imagine!.
However, an adult dosage is at the 2:30 mark in the top embedded video below. I’m showing you this clip, because
I really do care about you. Mark my words, and please get a head start on everybody else, but pretty soon,
you will not be able to find one box of Baking Soda on any shelves, or in any stores.
Share with everyone you know. The flu is a virus just like the coronavirus!
The longer version breaks it down:
Can baking soda help protect you from the Coronavirus?
This video is looking at blood pH, not skin pH. Thanks for watching. In case you are curious, you can mix the baking soda with water directly for the most effectiveness, then with fresh lemon or fresh lime or canned lemon or lime with baking soda and water. I have read people like to mix the baking soda with black strap molasses and maple syrup Raphaela Laurean
The mechanism for bicarbonate is that it RAISES the pH (not lowers). And that’s what Baking Soda does
(raises the pH) I was trying to get this out quickly, apologies folks. You can fight viral infections by neutralizing the ph (the acidity in your cells) and decreasing the environment that promotes viral infections from spreading with this simple ingredient you probably have around the house! After the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919 that infected 500 million people around the world, the US Public Health Service made an observation that people who had been alkalized by Sodium Bicarbonate (same chemical compound of baking soda) rarely contracted
the disease and those who did, had mild symptoms.
This is huge watch the video here. ~ William Seeds MD
Read the full articles and sources here:
https://seeds.md/make-your-
immune-system-fight-viral-infections/
Sometimes people will say, I don’t like the taste of baking soda water and that they’re concerned about the balance between Sodium bicarbonate and potassium bicarbonate that are key components of body tissue that helps to regulate the body’s acid/aklaine base balance.†
This formula of pure, buffered mineral compounds can assist in reestablishing the acid/base balance when the body’s own bicarbonate reserves are depleted as a result of metabolic acidosis caused by reactions to food or other environmental exposures.†
You may be advised to take it in capsule form https://klaire.com/v033-25-bicarb-formula.
Remember this tip is not a cure for coronavirus but may prevent having an occurrence
with this dreadful virus causing a global pandemic.
What to know about coronavirus:
How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained
What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms
Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus map
See all the pandemic coverage here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P4JEZrkXjc