What makes the 1918 flu unique is that it simultaneously spread in three waves within one year affecting three distinct regions. The jackpot events in influenza evolution occur when two different types of flu viruses happen to get into an animal cell at the same time swapping entire chromosomes to create reassorted.
Influenza Causes Treatments Pandemics History
Thats the global pattern.
How did the flu start. The vulnerability of healthy young adults and the lack of vaccines and treatments created a major public health crisis causing at least 50 million deaths worldwide including approximately 675000 in the United States. Many assumed this was because. The 1918 flu pandemic struck in three waves across the globe starting in the spring of that year and is tied to a strain of H1N1 influenza ancestral to ones still virulent today.
The influenza virus can incorporate the genetic material of animals particularly swine and fowl to evade the human immune system and wreak havoc. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Influenza is a virus thats spread from person to person.
Spanish Flu Origin. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. Asia Europe and North America.
If the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain where did it start. Influenza pandemics before and after 1918 usually developed in Asia and spread to the rest of the world. It originates actually among birds and other animals such as pigs and new viral strains of influenza come to this country and to Europe from Southeast Asia.
In the United States it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. For a long time scientists had thought that the flu was caused by a bacteria called Haemophilus influenzae but after the 1918-19 pandemic they started to suspect it. The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain BMJ10191918 where it allegedly killed 8 million in May BMJ 7131918.
As the pandemic reached epic proportions in the fall of 1918 it became commonly known as the Spanish Flu or the Spanish Lady in the United States and Europe. That gave others the. The Spanish flu named for causing millions of deaths in Spain soon after it was identified didnt actually originate in Spain.
The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. The Asian flu swept the world in 1957 the Hong Kong flu in 1968 and in 1976 the swine flu looked enough like the 1918 virus that President Ford ordered the inoculation of the entire US. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated it spread worldwide during 1918-1919.
In March of that year the United States experienced the first outbreaks of what would become known as The Spanish Flu an erroneous term adopted because the press in neutral Spain escaped wartime censorship and freely wrote about the illness. Scientists say the gene-swapping that gave rise to the newly discovered swine flu virus happened 10. The conditions of World War I overcrowding and global troop movement helped the 1918 flu spread.
Although the Spanish Flus exact point of origination has been hotly debated some contend it all began in Haskell County Kansas. However a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. Pigs can become mixing pots for viruses to swap genes and mutate.
During the flu pandemic of 1918 the New York City health commissioner tried to slow the transmission of the flu by ordering businesses to open and. Throughout history many flu pandemics have originated in China.
