The 1918 flu pandemic is considered one of the most deadly of all time, and although it has never been completely eradicated, the pandemic came to an end after about two years and three waves of infection.
The “Spanish” flu was first found in U.S. soldiers and popped up in Europe and Asia in March of 1918. It was a form of an avian flu originating in birds. While the first wave was mild, the second was extremely deadly, with nearly 200,000 American deaths in October 1918 alone.
The spread was exacerbated by travel for World War I, and the same public health measures used today, such as masking and social distancing, were implemented to help stop the spread.
However, the flu whipped around the world with such intensity that 500 million people were infected, which accounted for one-third of the global population at the time. Hospitals were overwhelmed, businesses shut down and morgues were overrun with the dead, according to records kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A third wave triggered by the end of WWI started to subside over the summer, and by 1920, the pandemic had ended and moved into an endemic stage, meaning clusters were only found in certain regions and cases spiked seasonally just like the cold and flu does now.
The 1918 pandemic ended due to public health measures and herd immunity that was achieved by the colossal amount of infection.
The 1918 influenza pandemic infected 500 million people and is known as the mother of all pandemics. See below a timeline of how the pandemic unraveled with information collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
* March 1918: Outbreaks of flu-like illness are detected in U.S. soldiers which spreads through Europe and Asia in the next six months, but cases are mild.
* September 1918: A second wave of the flu emerges and is highly fatal.
* October 1918: 195,000 Americans die of the flu in October alone. Businesses are closed, hospitals have staff shortages and masks are worn.
* January 1918: The end of WW1 triggers a third wave which subsides in the summer.
* Early 1920: With one third of the global population having been infected, the pandemic ends and enters an endemic phase. Modern day flu strains still have a footprint of the 1918 flu. – Boston Herald
One-third of the world was infected with the Spanish flu, and eventually, so many people either died from it or had immunity that the disease had nowhere to go.
Unfortunately, coronavirus is nowhere near having sickened one-third of the globe, which would be about 2.6 billion people. Recorded COVID-19 cases currently stand at 268 million.
But the 1918 pandemic never disappeared completely; it continued to survive by becoming less virulent, and today, modern flu strains still contain ancestral links to the pandemic that happened more than 100 years ago.
Dr. Todd Ellerin, director of infectious disease at South Shore Health, said coronavirus will never end either, thanks to its rapid mutations. He said coronavirus will just evolve and hopefully morph into a seasonal illness to which we pay little mind, but it’s still too soon to know if that will happen.
Ellerin said there’s “no prospect” of herd immunity like there was in 1918, but tools like vaccines, boosters and natural immunity will help combat the severity of coronavirus in all its forms.
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The chinese virus epidemic has been over it’s just the brandon followers believe the lies told by the democratic party and continue to be lead by corruption and deception. If the epidemic is not over then Florida has it all wrong and their citizens are sick but they don’t know it.
EVEN IF we ever do ‘get to herd immunity’, THE VAX PUSHERS and maskers, will KEEP PUSHING THEIR draconian regulations on us… AS LONG AS WE let them.
There was a lesson to learned from 1918 but obviously no one thought to investigate it! The problem here is that it was partially artificially induced aside from nature so what unknown properties are inherant that we may not discover for quite some time?
There were no mandates nor lockdowns either.
Covid seems to be a far stronger version of the common cold and flu. If it continues to weaken as it mutates it may eventually be no worse than a mild flu.
I’m not sure if that will happen but it passes my common sense test and the article seems to support it.
There’s no hope coming from politics and no real help to be had from the medical world. Weakening on its own is probably our best hope.
That’s because the medical world, as a whole, seems to FULL ON SUPPORT the leftist vax and masks mandates, BUT IGNORE THE REAL SCIENCE..
One of the many things the government isn’t telling us is that one of the viruses that causes the common cold is in fact a corona virus. They’ll continue to hype every new variant no matter how benign to keep their power and the population under control.
The 1918 spanish flu pandemic death toll was mostly from people developing bacterial pneumonia from wearing masks.