If You Think Corona is Scary, You Need to Know About the Spanish Flu

Learning from the past will help us in the future

50–100 million people died during the 1918 epidemic called Spanish Flu: Image by Pexals from Pixabay

Pandemic of 1918

As scary as the threat of a Coronavirus pandemic is, it’s not as frightening as what happened in 1918.

A century ago, a strain of the flu traveled throughout the entire world, infecting 500 MILLION people, one-third of the world’s population. By the end of the 15-month pandemic, at least 50 million people were dead, with some estimates being as high as 100 million.

People called the virus, “The Spanish Flu,” for several reasons:

1. Spain’s population was hit hard with the virus, infecting even the King of Spain
2. Most countries were involved in WWI, the United States included, and because of that, the press was censored.
3. The Spanish press was not censored, and the King’s illness was widely publicized.

In fact, the term Spanish Flu was a misnomer. Many experts think that the epidemic actually started in Haskell County, Kansas. In January of 1918, one local doctor, Loring Miner, was so alarmed by the number of flu and influenza cases in Haskell County that he alerted the U.S. Public Health Service.

The genesis