What Caused The Influenza Of 1918

There has been deadly diseases recorded throughout the history in the world. Millions of people died. The officials did not know what was wrong and why so many people were dieing so quickly. The Influenza of 1918 was a global disaster, it killed nearly between 30 and 50 million people world wide. Influenza of 1918 has been considered to be the most deadly pandemic recorded. It killed more people in a year than the people in World War I. It was estimated that 675,000 Americans died from 1918 to 1919 (“The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919,” n.d). The disease spread so fast that some states could not keep track of the pandemic and did not report to Public Health Services. The Public Health Service did not have enough doctors or nurses to help.

Many of the facilities like school or community centers were transformed into emergency hospitals. As the disease spread, everything in the cities went down. There were no telephone or mail services because everyone were so sick to work. Later, when bodies started piling up, there were no caskets and the morgues were full of bodies. There was no protection against the disease because officials did not know about the virus at the time. In the beginning, scientist thought that influenza was caused by bacteria called Pfeiffer’s bacillus. However, they could not find any traces of that bacteria. Scientist and physicians could not figure out the right cause of the influenza and it was unknown (“The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919,” n.d). Influenza could have been treated with vaccinations, but at the time they were unaware that it was virus that caused the