The " Spanish Flu " Remembered !

Flu is just something that turns up regularly each year and we suffer a bout of the sneezes and runny noses, or is this years flu something more sinister  ?  We are only one third of the way into winter and nearly 33,000 people are confirmed infected in this state alone - and fifty-seven have died of its effects.  No wonder that calls to get a vaccine jab have become so urgent.

It is a fact that this flu epidemic is now twice the numbers of past average flu years and science has long predicted that the greatest threat that humankind faces will come in the form of an epidemic.  In earlier centuries the world was afflicted with Bubonic Plague, which was spread by the fleas carried by rats. Then in the winters of 1918-19 the world suffered what became known as the " Spanish Flu " and it is estimated that it killed about a hundred and fifty million across the globe.

It started in a farm state in America and researchers conclude that it achieved the breakthrough that allowed the passage from animals to humans to occur via some form of water bird, probably ducks. The United States had entered the first world war and the timing was atrocious.   Huge numbers of fresh troops were being packed on ships for the passage to Europe and this epidemic spread like wildfire.  By wars end, more soldiers and civilians were being killed by the flu than deaths occurring on the battlefield.

That Spanish flu is still a part medical mystery.  For reasons not yet known, fit and otherwise healthy adults were more likely to die and children were more likely to make a recovery, but it was a particularly unpleasant death and it came very quickly.  The sufferer began to cough up blood and the lungs quickly filled with fluid.  People simply drowned in their own juices.  Those who recovered from the Spanish flu had life long immunity from the disease.

This epidemic picked an opportune time to strike.  The end of the first world war saw thousands of troops returning home - and bringing the flu with them.  It was extremely contagious and it spread through the civilian population.  Fortunately, at that time the means of travel between world countries was mainly by ship and this slowed the progress of the flu and allowed for an effective quarantine.  In the age of air transport we might not be so lucky if that epidemic ever re-emerges.

One of the mysteries of this Spanish flu was the abrupt ending of the epidemic.  It rampaged through the world - and just as suddenly as it started it came to an end.  Millions of victims were hastily buried and yet there has been no infections caused by progress intruding into those graves.  Today that Spanish flu is as big a mystery as it was at the end of  the first world war - and we are still no closer to finding a cure.

It is a sobering thought as we have two more months of winter to endure.  This is not the Spanish flu returning, but it is something that should be causing us concern - and a good reason to have that flu jab.