Influenza Pandemics

What is Influenza?
An influenza pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads world-wide and effects a large amount of the population. Throughout history, the influenza virus has mutated and has caused pandemics or global epidemics.
Background
On March 11, 1918, a solider in Fort Riley Kans, reports the infirmary with symptoms which was a first thought to be the common cold. Within only an hour, several soldiers reported to the infirmary with similar symptoms. Fort Riley was a military outpost where new recruits were trained before being sent to fight in Europe. After five weeks, 1727 were infected and 46 died in Fort Riley. Soon after, in several after military camps soldiers with similar symptoms were reported. Infected soldiers
were then brought into Europe by ships. Eventually, the flu started to infect French soldiers.
Why did it spread?
Soldiers fighting contacted the flu because of the natural contagious properties. They brought the disease via ships when they went home. The cities were overcrowded, un-hygienic and over-populated making it easy for disease to transmit from one person to another. Because of the natural contagious properties, the amount of diseased soldiers and the condition of the cities, the influenza virus turned into a pandemic.
How did America try to stop it?
In 1918, the Public Health Services (PHS) had just begun to require state and local health departments to give them reports about the diseases in their communities. The only problem with this was that at the time, Influenza wasn’t a reportable disease. In Early March 1918, officials from Kansas sent a report to the PHS about 18 cases of a severe type of influenza in their area. By May, reports of the severe influenza appeared in Europe and within two months influenza spread from just the military to the civilian population.
On 27th September, Influenza became a reportable disease but the disease became so wide-spread that most states were unable to keep accurate reports.
Local officials started to request for the PHS to send doctors and nurses to help the sick infected people, but with the PHS having less than 700 doctors and nurses on duty because of the war and influenza, it was hard for them to help the communities. When the PHS were able to send in help, most became ill whilst travelling and those who reached their destination often couldn’t provide any real medical assistance because they were unprepared to help the large amount of sick
people.
Although in October, the Congress gave the AHS a million dollars to help them recruit and pay for additional medical practitioners. Because there was shortage, it made it harder to find and hire experienced doctors and nurses.
Eventually posters and cartoons were printed to warn people of the dangers of influenza but they were in English which meant that a lot of America’s population couldn’t understand stand. Even the English speaking population couldn’t fully understand the danger and were confused.
Citizens were forced to wear mask in some cities and people were advised to not shake hands and to stay indoors. In some cities, spitting was made illegal and was banned. Although the masks didn’t help because although they were effective in providing protection against bacteria, they weren’t as effective against viral infections.
How could the spread be decreased?
Because WW1 was raging at the time, the wartime press censorship stopped news and information regarding the spread of the pandemic reaching the public. This was because they thought that the information would be dangerous and stop the war efforts. The government was also too focussed on the war, when they should have been focussed on the influenza. The Spanish flu was a much larger threat than WW1 as it killed more people.
Because Spain was neutral during WW1, it meant that the press was able to print news about the flu because the news wasn’t controlled by the wartime censorship. Countries around the world including America learnt about the pandemic there. The general public didn’t have much knowledge on the disease, this meant that they were obvious that their celebrations were helping the virus spread more.
At this time there was no drugs and vaccines to treat or prevent the spread and the army was ineffective in quarantining their sick soldiers. If they were better in quarantining, this could off stopped the citizen population becoming infected, which decreases the death toll.
Legacy
Many Americans began to forget about the pandemic. This could be because of the pandemic’s close association with WW1 and the fact that influenza also hit communities quickly. The Asian Flu and H3N2 influenza were descendants of the 1918 strain/Spanish Flu.
Impact/Effects in America
- Telegraph and telephone services collapsed
- Garbage started to not be collected because many garbage collectors became sick
- Mail piled up and stopped being delivered
- No one was left to record the pandemic’s spread because state and local workers became ill
- Some areas became so overflowed with sick people that public and private places had to be converted into hospitals
- Libraries stopped lending out books
- Funeral parlours began to overfill and were overwhelmed because of the large amount of bodies needing to be buried. It was so terrible that some people had to bury their own friends and family.