Spanish Flu Pandemic, 1918

Nowadays, despite the scourge of AIDs, the bird flu, and the hovering threat that ebola might get loose with devastating results, we're insulated enough by medicine in first world countries that we tend to forget what a pandemic can do. Hundreds of thousands of people are travelling from continent to continent every day, so containing the next pandemic is a major concern for the CDC, and I'm not convinced that even their earnest vigilance will be enough. So far, they've managed to hold the line with bird flu and ebola. But AIDs shows that once a disease has scattered, it's impossible to put the lid back on the bottle.

The Spanish Flu was particularly virulent, and particularly devastating to the economy and society because (unusually) most of its victims were 15-to-34-year olds (again, see link below) whereas it's usually children and the elderly who are most at-risk. Medical services and society were almost brought to a halt: so many people were sick, and so many doctors were being killed that infrastructure came close to the brink of collapse in many areas. It's honestly amazing to me that the world was able to recover so quickly... then again, the toll of the flu was masked somewhat by the toll of war.

I'd heard this ditty when I was little, but I didn't understand what it meant then, any more than I realized that Ring Around the Rosey was a children's song about the Black Death:

I had a little bird
and her name was Enza
I left the window open
And in-flu-enza.

The website below has a fascinating if grim in-depth study of news reports, medical reviews and soldiers' letters written during the height of the Pandemic of 1918.