20th Century Pandemics

The website Flu.gov says that “historically, the 20th century saw 3 pandemics of influenza, and the 21st has experienced 1 flu pandemic.”

The Black Death, a horrible pandemic plague that spread through all of Europe, taking 25,000,000 people along with it. In 1347, a mysterious pandemic appeared in the city-states of Italy just as Europe was recovering from famine. The Epidemic did not end until 1351 partly due to the belief of the people that this plague was spread through the air and was gods way of punishing them for their sins. Although this plague killed many people, its effects led life to the way it is today. The three most important effects of the Black Death on Western Europe were the changing relationships between people and the church, the People beginning to express their faith and

One of the most virulent strains of influenza in history ravaged the world and decimated the populations around the world. Present during World War I, the 1918 strain of pandemic influenza found many opportunities to spread through the war. At the time, science wasn’t advanced enough to study the virus, much less find a cure; medical personnel were helpless when it came to fighting the disease, and so the flu went on to infect millions and kill at a rate 25 times higher than the standard.

With the migration of Influenza throughout the land, it open doors for a new technique in try to stop this epidemic. According to document 5, Influenza swept through North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific. In 1918-19 this

     Influenza has been around almost as long as people have walked the earth. Its roots draw back as far as 412 B.C., when a man named Hippocrates wrote of an uncontrollable outbreak of a disease that closely resembles influenza. This pandemic devastated an entire

The disease got its name not from the country that it first performed. It is said that the influenza has exterminated more than twenty to forty million people, which is more than World War I. The Spanish flu, in only one year killed more than the Black Death Bubonic Plague did, which lasted for about four years from 1347 to 1351. The disease globally spread and infected anybody and could end up dead. There had to be a way that they could stop it from infecting any more individuals. Therefore, physicians and scientist were trying their best to understand the disease and hopefully prevent it to continue.

No matter the technical, or medical advances that evolved over the years, nevertheless if an outbreak as powerful as the Influenza was to occur again in the United States it would still be just as bad as the first epidemic. With the first epidemic being massive enough to take out an estimate of fifty to an hundred thousand people in the matter of months, compared to the other epidemics that were just as harmful, but fatalities were not as high as the Influenza. Being aware of this

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 impacted places throughout the world both negatively and positively. Often the reason for the major spread of pestilence was due to transportation of goods and people. This pandemic infected people worldwide, killing millions. Overall people responded to the pandemic in different ways through commitment to the task, consulting religion, avoiding contact with others, and the effort to raise public health awareness.

The virus that caused the pandemic was a strain of H1N1 Influenza A that killed through a cytokine storm (overreacting the bodies immune system). This is why healthy adults had a higher death rate than elderly people or children. The name "Spanish Flu" comes from the fact that Spain was the only country reporting on the outbreak while other countries suppressed the outbreak to keep morale up as WWI was happening.[1] The pandemic had two main waves in 1918 and was gone by 1920. The Spanish Flu killed 50 to 100 million people (3%-5% of the worlds population at the time) and around 500 million people were infected. The life expectancy in the U.S in 1918 dropped by 12 years as a result of the disease.[2]After the second deadly wave hit in 1918,

This research paper covers the basic history of influenza. It begins with its early history

The first reported case of the 1918 flu was at Camp Funston in Kansas on March 4 1918. This was the first wave and it spread from America to Europe in April and it was in Spain and Portugal by May. Even though it spread so quickly, the disease was fairly innocuous at this point. This is a quote from Purple Death that reports the

Influenza, normally called “the flu”, the influenza virus causes an infection in the respiration tract. Even though the influenza virus can sometimes be compared with the common cold. It also can cause a more severe illness or death. During this past century, pandemics took place in 1918, 1957, and 1968, in all of these cases there where unfortunately many deaths. The “Spanish flu” in 1918, killed approximately half a million people in the United States alone. It killed around 20 million worldwide. The “Asian flu” in 1957, in the United States their 70,000 people died. In 1968 the “Hong-Kong flu” There where 34,000 deaths in the United

The 1918 Flu Pandemic is considered to be one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history, estimated to have affected up to 33% and killing anywhere between 3% and 6% of the world population at the time. It killed up to 20% of those infected, as opposed to the usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%. The disease also distinguished itself in its morbidity and mortality patterns as it predominantly killed previously healthy young adults more than it did children and the elderly. Modern research on the bodies of frozen victims has concluded that the virus killed through an overreaction of the body's immune system. The stronger immune reactions of young adults resulted deadlier when compared to the weaker immune systems of children and

Illnesses have long haunted the human race. As long as these illnesses have existed, humans have developed ways to cure themselves, beginning with simple herbs and proceeding as far as vaccines and complex medicines. One cure that long eluded scientists was that of the influenza virus. Now, the influenza vaccine, or flu shot, saves thousands of lives a year and helps prevent serious complications resulting from influenza infection.

The world has experienced a total of four pandemics in the twentieth century starting in 1918 until present. In 1918, the spanish flu caught worldwide attention when it infected close to half the population of the world, claiming more than 40 million lives. What made the spanish flu capable of infecting over a billion people was the ability to quickly transfer from person to person. At the time, world war 1 was happening and the mass activation and recruitment of troops to fight made the spread of the flu easy.