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The Importance Of The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

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Pandemics are events in which a disease spreads across the entire world. Many pandemics have become notorious for their lethality, symptoms, or historical events that surrounded them. Various notorious pandemics include the ‘Black Death,’ an event caused by the plague, Yersinia Pestis, that killed an estimated 25 million people (“Black Death”), or the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic, an event that has killed an estimated 35 million people (“HIV/AIDS”). The ‘Black Death’ and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have killed many people; however, neither has killed nearly as many people as the 1918 influenza pandemic. The 1918 influenza pandemic, better known as the ‘Spanish Flu,’ was a strain of the influenza virus that struck in the wake of world war one (WWI). The 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people, with some estimates as high as 100 million deaths (Taubenberger, “1918 Influenza: the Mother” 1) with at least 500 thousand of those deaths being American …show more content…

The transmission of the flu can only happen within a certain time period. This time period is from when the virus enters the body to four to seven days after it leaves the body (“How Flu Spreads”), and symptoms will only show after one to four days from hen the virus enters the body (“How Flu Spreads”). This allows for a time period where the virus can spread but not show symptoms, so the host does not know they are spreading the virus. This helps spread the virus because when someone identifies an illness, they will usually stay inside and away from other humans, stopping transmission. This time period allows for the virus to be transmittable while the host has not isolated themself. The population’s unknowingness of transmission was a factor in the ease of transmission of the 1918 pandemic

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•The influenza infection is extremely infectious: When a contaminated individual coughs, wheezes or talks, respiratory droplets are produced and transmitted into the air, and can then can be breathed in by someone close-by. •A person who touches something with the infection on it and afterward touches his or her mouth, eyes or nose can get to be contaminated. •An influenza pandemic, for example, the one in 1918, happens when a particularly harmful new flu strain for which there 's practically no immunity shows up and spreads rapidly from individual to-individual around the world.

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The first outbreak occurred in September of 1918 in Quebec. 2. In the fall of 1919, the federal government established the Department of Health. 3. Approximately 50,000 people died from this silent enemy as opposed to 40,000 in the war.

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In Rio de Janeiro, the newspapers were only concerned with the spread of the flu (Doc 4). The historical context that this article took place in South America shows the negligence of medical centers. The flu had been known to the world as well as the alarming rate of the spread of it, yet there were no medicals safety precautions being taken place. By time the flu and reached South America, medical facilities had the chance to make safety precautions as to stop the spreading of the virus. The same angry reaction occured in British Samoa as the newspapers blamed the British government for neglecting to issue isolation when influenza had spread to Samoa (Doc

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Boston Smallpox Epidemic of 1721: When smallpox broke out in Boston, Cotton Mather introduced an untested medical procedure called “inoculation”, which would introduce a small amount of the virus to a patient, in hoping they would become immune to it. Many were opposed to it, even though it worked. Many people died due to the epidemic. 31. Common Sense: Thomas Paine wrote a book called "Common Sense", it sold more than 150,000 copies when the population was only 3 million.

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Therefore, the epidemic would be passed on from a culture with a high immunity to a culture with a low immunity. It all depended on where you lived. Some cities or places were more immune to certain diseases and infections, while others had not yet been exposed to

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All plagues strike by uprooting individual lives and society as a whole. Nevertheless, the particular circumstances regarding the government, and religious and cultural beliefs in the affected lands influence the specific results of the tragedy, as witnessed through the Black Death and smallpox. Although both diseases led to drastic economic changes, they caused different overturns of religious beliefs, and only the Black Death resulted in the creation of public health services and the marginalization of groups of people. A lack of labor precipitated alterations to the economy--the end of feudalism in the case of the Black Death and the creation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the case of smallpox.

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Influenza was a deadly virus that killed millions of people around the world back in 1918. The virus of influenza has eight genes with no fix structure, and the segment structure can change the virus fragmentation endlessly. The virus is independent and can replicate rapidly once it gets into your lungs which can the air pathway and the infected person would drown in their own body. People with the virus can spread it by coughing, sneezing, and sometimes people might touch a surface which has the virus on it and touch their mouth or nose without properly washing it. The virus has eight genes.

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these men are usually the least affected people in sicknesses like this. However during this time men were always together, in the pub and at work so they were much more likely to receive the influenza, than those who stayed at home by themselves not risking the deadly virus. Geoffrey Rice was one of the main historians of the 1918 Influenza pandemic, he interviewed many survivors of the epidemic and published an informative book on the epidemic called Black November. Rice 's interviews were often very private and saddening.

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Often as a result of overpopulation, pandemics—like swine flu and ebola, for instance—have affected life on Earth for centuries; one of the most well-known, and possibly the most unforgiving epidemics was the Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death . Although the first symptoms of the Plague trace back to the Mongol Empire in 1331, the disease first struck Europe in Venice and Genoa during the winter of 1348. In the following years, the Bubonic Plague spread rapidly throughout Europe, killing roughly a third of its population. It is suggested that the rapid spread and extreme severity of the Black Death was partially due to the weakened immune system of the Europeans, which had been caused by the Great Famine, a period of food scarcity that affected Europe from 1315 to 1322. Additionally, the lack of knowledge about the spread of

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Soon, the epidemic arrived in Chicago. On August 28, 1918, reports of the increased death rate in Massachusetts were reported in Chicago newspapers, warning citizens of the potential risk of the epidemic reaching them. Nationwide, military camps suffered mass outbreaks throughout September, and yet, the Chicago Tribune printed reassuring news stories that suggested the flu was under control. On September 8, 1918, the virus took its first victims of the city: sailors at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

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In the stories “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe wrote about an infectious disease. Whereas in “Climate Change Could Spread Plague” it tells how the infectious diseases are spread. In 1918, a devastating flu pandemic killed 20 million people worldwide. Have you ever thought about what the human cost would be if a similar pandemic occurred today? There would be so many sick people all over the world.

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There has been many outbreaks of the plague from the first time it developed and the time it stopped causing mass epidemics, which can be attributed to huge advances in medicine. There were three major outbreaks of the plague throughout history. The first came in the 500’s called the Justinian Plague, The European Plague which is the most known of the three major epidemics. The European Plague is where the Plague got its famous nickname “The Black Death”. The final major outbreak of the Plague was known as The Great Plague of London which occurred in the 1600’s.

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Which are insects that spread a disease. And carrier state is the period when the virus is in the body, but the person is not actively sick. In the 1630’s, a smallpox epidemic hit what is now Massachusetts. After this epidemic, other smallpox epidemics would hit native tribes and kill off half of the population. William Bradford wrote of the effects of smallpox and claimed that victims died and lost strength so quickly that victims could not bury their own dead, let alone light a fire or fetch water.

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The best possible conduct of rulers toward subjects and partners stays to be talked about. Numerous others have treated this subject, yet Machiavelli constructs his perceptions in light of this present reality, not on an envisioned perfect. There is such a great amount of contrast between the way individuals ought to act and the way they do act that any sovereign who tries to do what he ought to will destroy himself. A sovereign must know when to act unethically. Everybody concurs that a ruler ought to have all great qualities, but since that is unimaginable, an astute sovereign will keep away from those indecencies that would decimate his energy and not stress over the rest.

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The regulations put out by government ensured that the outbreak would come to an immediate halt, and if a new epidemic were to sweep through the states, it would be derailed. Another outbreak of influenza became prevalent in England in 1933. A doctor was able to isolate the disease and noticed how it spread. Lots of this was due to research from the Spanish Influenza, and the death toll was much lower. (Youngdahl)

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