The Impact of a Pandemic

The worst pandemic in human history took place between the 14th and the 19th century. However it would peak between the years of 1348 to 1350 It caused over 25 million deaths and reduced 1/3 of Europe’s population. It was even known to wipe out entire cities and even kill so many people that there was no one to even bury the bodies. This pandemic was known as the Black Plague. This plague was a huge part of history that would lead to the changes of religion, culture, economics, and politics. The black plague is known for causing a huge impact on Europe however that’s not where the disease originated from. (Haensch)

In 1918, at the end of World War I, the Spanish flu struck the US. Research says that the estimated amount of deaths are somewhere between 20-40 million people worldwide. The Spanish flu was one of the most devastating pandemics in modern history. The Spanish flu was something the medical world had never seen and affected the people living in California greatly.

The pandemic struck the world and infected 1/3 of earth’s human population, killing over 50 million humans. The world’s top doctors have never witnessed anything of this killing magnitude besides the bubonic plague of 1348 but the transmissibility is of nothing they’ve ever seen in their lifetime or of recorded history. People abruptly became aware of the importance of health, and need of medicine and cleanliness.

In two years between 1918 and 1919, A pandemic of influenza swept mercilessly over the planet, killing millions which stood in its path. Miraculously, the exact origin of the pandemic is unclear. What is exceedingly clear, however, is that often the actions of man aided in the spread of the virus, whether due to inadvertent endangerment, close quarters, religious principles, or failure to recognize the true threat that influenza posed.

An epidemic occurs when a disease spreads to more people in one area then usually happens. There have been many epidemics in history that have had devastating effects. Two epidemics that occurred right here in the United States were cholera and scarlet fever. From the 1830’s to the 1860’s, cholera spread throughout the United States killing many people. And in the late 1850’s scarlet fever spread throughout the New England area of the United States. For both of these terrible diseases it is not clear what stopped their rapid spread. Today there is a vaccine for cholera but not for scarlet fever. However, there are ways to protect yourself from catching these diseases. New and stronger illnesses seem to be happening all the time and are in the news. However, we still need to be aware of these diseases from the past so we can keep ourselves healthy.

Infectious epidemics and pandemics have happened all through mankind's history. “They remain the prime cause of death worldwide and will not be conquered during our lifetimes.” The flu of 1918 was one of the deadliest epidemics in history. “It infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide–about one-third of the planet’s population at the time–and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic.” No one knew how the virus spread, there were no antibiotics to fight it, and no flu shots to prevent it. In the final year of World War I, it struck terror in the hearts of people all across Europe and left more death in its wake than the combined military actions of the combatants. “It killed more Americans in a few months than World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the

Also noted by the CDC, the H1N1 flu pandemic that occurred last year was the first pandemic in over 40 years.

By the second year of pandemic the plague had killed an estimated 25 million (Plague) of the peasantry, nobility, and clergy. Nobody was immune to the disease. The poor sanitation became a massive issue with the lack of

The book The Great Influenza by John Barry takes us back to arguably one of the greatest medical disasters in human history, the book focuses on the influenza pandemic which took place in the year 1918. The world was at war in the First World War and with everyone preoccupied with happenings in Europe and winning the war, the influenza pandemic struck when the human race was least ready and most distracted by happenings all over the world. In total the influenza pandemic killed over a hundred million people on a global scale, clearly more than most of the deadliest diseases in modern times. John Barry leaves little to imagination in his book as he gives a vivid description of the influenza pandemic of 1918 and exactly how this pandemic affected the human race. The book clearly outlines the human activities that more or less handed the human race to the influenza on a silver platter. “There was a war on, a war we had to win” (Barry, p.337). An element of focus in the book is the political happenings back at the time not only in the United States of America but also all over the world and how politicians playing politics set the way for perhaps the greatest pandemic in human history to massacre millions of people. The book also takes an evaluator look at the available medical installations and technological proficiencies and how the influenza pandemic has affected medicine all over the world.

A pandemic differs from epidemic because a pandemic affects a large area while an epidemic affects a localized area. Old people, young kids (approximately younger than 5) and pregnant women are more at risk of getting ill from a pandemic or epidemic. The conditions of declaring a pandemic is if the virus is able to cause serious illnesses or even deaths it has to be a virus that can be spread from human to human It also needs to have little to none immunity levels. The societal factors that will increase the pandemic are water supply, sanitation facilities, food, climate, and temperature. Water supply could be a factor because people could have contaminated the water causing the water to infectious meaning that if they drink it then they could get the disease themselves. Food because if they kill and eat an animal without killing all the bacteria in the animal then they could get the disease. Climate and temperature because sometimes if the temperature becomes too hot then that could make the bacteria increase

The 1918 flu pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world’s population—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.

Many historians call the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 the deadliest disease outbreak of all time. As many as 100 million people were killed as a direct result of this disease (Taubenberger 1). The Great Pandemic affected everyone, the prosperous and the poor, developed and underdeveloped nations. Entire villages in Alaska were wiped out because of the viral disease (Public Health Service). The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 was caused by World War One, a high volume of immigration, and poor sanitary conditions.

pandemics: the Spanish flu of 1918, the Asian flu, the Hong Kong flu and the terror and

Avian influenza is a disease that has been wreaking havoc on human populations since the 16th century. With the recent outbreak in 1997 of a new H5N1 avian flu subtype, the world has begun preparing for a pandemic by looking upon its past affects. In the 20th Century, the world witnessed three pandemics in the years of 1918, 1957, and 1968. In 1918 no vaccine, antibiotic, or clear recognition of the disease was known. Killing over 40 million in less than a year, the H1N1 strain ingrained a deep and lasting fear of the virus throughout the world. Though 1957 and 1968 brought on milder pandemics, they still killed an estimated 3 million people and presented a new

The first wave of the 1918 pandemic appeared in San Sebastián, Spain. Within two months, 8 million of Spain’s residents were ill, and the disease had spread on a global scale. Soon it became known as the Spanish flu, because it received the most press there. The other nations had their media tied up with wartime censorship; Spain, a noncombatant, had no such measures in place (Kolata, Flu 9-10). The first wave of the 1918 pandemic appeared in America without much comment. The media was more interested in attention-grabbing news about topics like the war than the rather unremarkable flu. Most people were afflicted with symptoms for a few days before recovering and moving on. The only aspect of the flu that was remarkable was the condition of the lungs from the victims who had died from the flu and pneumonia (Crosby 17-21).