Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/March 2018/Op-ed


 * By TomStar81

On March 4, 1918, Private Albert Gitchell took ill at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. Illness at the time was nothing new, biological hazards in the 20th century were numerous, and like the illnesses of the past and distant past, infectious disease were known to spread and eliminate large and wide swaths of the human population - most notably the Black Death in Europe, which claimed an estimated 30–60% of Europe's total population at the time. What would make Private Albert Gitchell's illness notable is that it was the first known case of the H1N1 virus strain that would fuel the so-called 1918 flu pandemic, an enormous outbreak of what was referred to as Spanish Flu, that due to wartime conditions would spread across continents and countries, leaving in its wake tens if not hundreds of millions dead.

In our time, a pandemic-rich environment is not per se unusual; we live in a world where jet planes, high speed railroads, subway systems, transit buses, and personal vehicles are widely available and affordable to just about anyone, and the slow manifestation time for people to show symptoms of a disease coupled with the rise of fast global trade and transportation has made it easier than ever for nefarious and malevolent virus and bacteria strains to infect large swaths of the population. Advances in modern medicine have helped to stem the tide of these diseases through cures, immunizations, and broad-spectrum antibiotics which can reduce or eliminate the threat a given disease strain poses, but all the same we live in a time where infectious outbreaks and biological warfare-related threats from these diseases are very real.

At the turn of last century, however, this threat was somewhat reduced. While massive cities and public transportation venues did provide for the chance for disease to jump from one carrier to the other, the threat posed by diseases was somewhat reduced since folks back then didn't move as much as we do now. This all changed, however, when war was declared; suddenly citizens from every walk of life were shoved shoulder to shoulder in camps, trench-lines, ships, and other communal spaces and frequently exposed to both friendly and hostile armed forces members in their day-to-day routines. With so many people doing so much traveling in such close proximity it was only a matter of time before some sort of widespread illness outbreak occurred, and so it came to pass in 1918 that this new strain of influenza made its presence known in the United Sates.

Due to modern advancements in medical science, we know that the disease spreads through touch and through air if one is in close enough proximity to inhale particles from a sneeze or cough. At the time, with the war on, many people were unable to access disinfecting materials like alcohol swabs and soap for hands, and in the heat of battle no one consciously stops fighting for his or her life to spend the recommended 30 seconds to wash hands with hot water and soap or to cover one's mouth or nose when coughing and sneezing, respectively. Consequently the influenza strain was able to spread like wildfire. Because of a loss of records and a lack of a single, unified system for reporting the symptoms, research on where and when the outbreak began is to a certain extent conjecture. Symptoms consistent with the Spanish Flu are attested to in early 1917 in Austria, late 1917 in France, China, and the United States, although whether these are the same strains or different strains, and whether these are separate or interconnected outbreaks remains undetermined.

In either event, following the first documented and confirmed case of the disease on March 4, officials declared the illness to be the flu on March 11. By that time nearly 100 soldiers had come down with the sickness, and the disease had migrated to Queens, New York. By the time the virus began killing Americans in Queens the U.S. government had come under criticism for not acting faster to stop the spread of the disease by instituting quarantine or taking other measures as necessary to contain the virus while on the army base. As the virus began killing able-bodied men, doctors and the Red Cross began working to treat and contain the pandemic. Fall-out from the pandemic also adversely affected the general situation, making things worse for those caught in its path. In areas with smaller populations the loss of able-bodied persons to shoulder the burden of the heavy work left the young, elderly, and others to take up the burden, while in cities and front-lines the attempt to limit the spread of the pandemic left some people unable to obtain goods or services needed, for fear of spreading the flu. As the world saw a reduction of flu cases toward the middle and latter half of 1918, people began to breathe a sigh of relief, however in August 1918 a mutated version of the virus manifested and once again viciously tore into the population. Between the two strains, the wartime conditions, and the close proximity of persons during the outbreak, the virus was estimated to have infected 500 million over the course of the outbreak and killed a total of 50-100 million (or roughly 3-5% of the total population at the time).

The pandemic would not officially be judged to be over until December 1920, however its presence in the world in 1918 at a time when the world was engaged in an unprecedented industrialized war underscored the fact that nature has no allies and that in war everyone is a casualty. Uniquely, while an unprecedented pandemic for its time and a prime case for the study of how disease spreads, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is typically overlooked in the annals of history, reemerging only recently as new influenza strains and biological diseases made their appearance in the 1990s and 2000s.