Spanish Flu 1918-1920 by Mass Media Student Gianna D

    In 1918, there was an outbreak called the Influenza Pandemic. This pandemic lasted for around 2 years causing the death of 20-50 million. A fifth of the world's population was affected just from a simple cold to barely surviving with any actual care. To protect themselves they had to wear  gauze as a mask  that was probably not very good at being protective. Though this affected everyone, it was most effective on the younger people from late teenage years to late 40 and early 50’s.

    This was the largest pandemic that has happened in history. This pandemic happened just as World War 1 was beginning to  end and killed way more people then the people had been put through war. Some men had caught the disease and were too sick to fight.  This mainly affected the younger people around the age of 15 to about 40. People that had been affected by the Influenza that had struggled with pneumonia had a death rate 20% higher than the people that had not been infected yet. 

    The Influenza (Spanish Flu), originated in Spain. It had reached Spain in May killing 8 million people. It had soon reached the U.S shortly  because of how fast it spread. People believed it had come from China because of a rare genetic shift. However the first wave of Influenza appeared in the early spring in Kansas in November. 

    The Spanish flu lasted for 2 years. It started right as World War 1 was ending. It has been said that there was a third wave of the pandemic that happened in the war time troops. The second wave happened in the fall of 1918. The second wave caused peoples jobs to shut down due to the amount of people sick.  The last wave happened in the winter. After some time when the flu stopped affecting everyone, they developed a shot in the 1930’s but was used in 1945. Thomas Francis Jr. and Jonas Salk invented the flu shot with the help of the US army. They used fertilized chicken eggs and they still use that today.

    The whole flu pandemic happened because of the war of Europe (WW1) but no one really knew where it came from. They say it's from China but they aren't sure. When the army was at war, it was in Asia so it could be a possibility that it was from China. Now we have a flu shot for everyone to use and it is very effective. Overall, the flu was a very serious event that had happened in history killing over 5% of the world's population.