Just watched a documentary about the 1918 Flu today that was originally released a year ago.
2/3rds of the people who died from it in the US were between 15-40 years old. It hit the young and healthy particularly hard. Estimates of 50-100 million worldwide deaths would be more like 200-450 million today if adjusted for population. India lost around 20 million alone.
It originally broke out in 1917 in the US in far western Kansas and the East coast about the same time. The US was ramping up from about 150,000 soldiers to 4 million for WW1. It took off in many of these training camps and spread via the railroads as the troops were moved out and over towards Europe. It did not come from Spain even though called the Spanish Flu. Recently the latest thinking is that it came from migrant workers who came to the US from..................CHINA.
The US Government avoiding talking about the flu and even tried to suppress news reports from newspapers. If they had only been open there could have been much more hand washing and social distancing which could have cut down the spread of it and saved lives. They were focused on big rallies and parades selling War Bonds to fund our involvment in the War once we entered the conflict. Back then it was not "fake news," it was NO news.
Sad that the leaders who should have been doing things to help the population were trying to suppress information and hence caused more deaths than necessary.
Edit: Forgot to mention that many of the people who contracted this virus might show symptoms and die within a 24 hour period. It was sometimes extremely fast developing.
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