The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 1)

In 1918, the world was at war. Though it was a different war and a different century, Gettysburg found itself once again occupied by an army. Young men were sent there to learn to fight the Germans in World War I.

They trained to fight the enemy using a piece of state-of-the-art military technology called the tank. The problem was that no one could see their enemy that they were fighting in Gettysburg. It moved indiscriminately through camps and communities injuring and killing men, women, soldier, children. It made no difference.

This war waged for about a year until the enemy retreated and hid but not before killing, by the worst estimate, about 50 million people or more than 4 times the population of Pennsylvania died.

It was not World War I that killed all those people. It was the Spanish Flu. It was called Spanish Flu because it apparently first appeared in Spain, but it was simply that year’s flu strain. And when it first appeared in the U.S. in the spring of 1918, it was a fairly typical flu. It was highly contagious, but it wasn’t any more deadly than a typical flu strain. The problem with the flu virus is that it mutates and some of those mutations can become deadly.

Remember the SARS scare? That killed a few hundred people out of a worldwide population of 6.9 billion.

Now imagine the terror people felt about a flu that killed 50 million people when the world’s population was less than 1.9 billion. Then 2-3 people out of every 100 across the world died. If the Spanish Flu struck today, the lethality would be around 180 million.

The Spanish Flu killed more people than World War I and in a shorter time frame, too, yet the war had the headlines during 1918 because it was winding down at the same time the Spanish Flu was reaching its peak. It was estimated that 675,000 Americans died from the Spanish Flu or 10 times more than died in the war.

It killed more people in one year than the Black Plague did in 4 years.

It was so devastating that human life span was reduced by 10 years in 1918.

Here’s how a Spanish Flu attack was described. One physician wrote that patients rapidly “develop the most vicious type of pneumonia that has ever been seen” and later when cyanosis appeared in patients “it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate.” Another doctor said that the influenza patients “died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their mouth and nose.”

Here’s how it was described in Flu by Gina Kolata: “The sickness preyed on the young and healthy. One day you are fine, strong, and invulnerable. You might be busy at work in your office. Or maybe you are knitting a scarf for the brave troops fighting the war to end all wars. Or maybe you are a soldier reporting for basic training, your first time away from home and family.

“You might notice a dull headache. Your eyes might start to burn. You start to shiver and you will take to your bed, curling up in a ball. But no amount of blankets can keep you warm. You fall into a restless sleep, dreaming the distorted nightmares of delirium as your fever climbs. And when you drift out of sleep, into a sort of semi-consciousness, your muscles will ache and our head will throb and you will somehow know that, step by step, as your body feebly cries out ‘no,’ you are moving steadily toward death.”

The flu can also mutate and move from humans to pigs and birds. That is why people were worried about avian flu or swine flu. They can mutate and make the jump from animal to human and be deadly.

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