18 Facts About 1918 flu

1.

Clinical indications in common with the 1918 flu pandemic included rapid symptom progression to a "dusky" heliotrope cyanosis of the face.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,501
2.

Spanish 1918 flu is a common name in Spain, but remains controversial there.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,502
3.

Second wave began in the second half of August 1918 flu, probably spreading to Boston and Freetown, Sierra Leone, by ships from Brest, where it had likely arrived with American troops or French recruits for naval training.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,503
4.

The Philadelphia Liberty Loans Parade, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 28 September 1918 flu to promote government bonds for World War I, resulted in 12,000 deaths after a major outbreak of the illness spread among people who had attended the parade.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,504
5.

The celebrations of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 flu caused outbreaks in Lima and Nairobi, but by December the wave was mostly over.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,505
6.

October 1918 flu was the month with the highest fatality rate of the whole pandemic.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,506
7.

In January 1919, the third wave of the 1918 flu hit Australia for the first time, where it killed around 12,000 to 20,000 people following the lifting of a maritime quarantine, and then spread quickly through Europe and the United States, where it lingered through the spring and until June 1919.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,507
8.

Report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found evidence that the 1918 flu virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 flu pandemic.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,508
9.

Report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found no evidence that the 1918 flu virus was imported to Europe via Chinese and Southeast Asian soldiers and workers and instead found evidence of its circulation in Europe before the pandemic.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,509
10.

Studies have shown that the immune system of Spanish 1918 flu victims was weakened by adverse climate conditions which were particularly unseasonably cold and wet for extended periods of time during the duration of the pandemic.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,510
11.

Government actions in the early stages of the virus' arrival in the country in September 1918 flu are believed to have unintentionally accelerated its spread throughout the country.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,511
12.

The 1918 flu has been linked to the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,512
13.

In some areas, the 1918 flu was not reported on, the only mention being that of advertisements for medicines claiming to cure it.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,513
14.

Spanish 1918 flu killed a much lower percentage of the world's population than the Black Death, which lasted for many more years.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,514
15.

An effort to recreate the Spanish 1918 flu strain was a collaboration among the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the USDA ARS Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,515
16.

The effort resulted in the announcement that the group had successfully determined the virus's genetic sequence, using historic tissue samples recovered by pathologist Johan Hultin from an Inuit female 1918 flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost and samples preserved from American soldiers Roscoe Vaughan and James Downs.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,516
17.

In 2018, Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Arizona who is examining the history of the 1918 flu pandemic, revealed that he obtained tissue slides created by William Rolland, a physician who reported on a respiratory illness likely to be the virus while a pathologist in the British military during World War One.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,517
18.

The ages of males dying of the 1918 flu show that tuberculosis was a factor, and as males primarily had this disease at the time of the pandemic, they had a higher mortality rate.

FactSnippet No. 1,516,518