My wife started reading a new book, which prompted a conversation this morning about the Spanish Flu. At some point, we shifted and started talking about the origins of the flu. There are a few interesting facts:
The Spanish Flu is called the Spanish Flu because the other countries in the time period (1918ish) had media censorship, while Spain had a free press. America still doesn’t have a truly free press, but it’s a lot harder to stifle these facts today. Thanks TikTok reporters.
Virologists don’t fully agree on where the flu started. The two leading theories are it started in a major hospital in Étaples, France. There is another theory that it started in China, and brought into Europe via America where it mutated. It’s interesting to me that we still cannot conclusively figure where epidemics start.
Only 3-5% of the population was killed by this flu, which isn’t really a threat to humanity’s continuing survival. The lower bound is likely 50 million people died from this flu, which is lower than the total number people infected HIV. This is really jarring to me, where HIV feels much bigger than an epidemic a hundred years ago that afflicted a sizable percentage of the population.
What is most interesting is that if you look at the Japanese wikipedia article for Spanish Flu and compare to English it cites very different origins:
流行の経緯としては、第1波は1918年3月に米国デトロイトやサウスカロライナ州付近などで最初の流行があり[1]、米軍のヨーロッパ進軍と共に大西洋を渡り、5〜6月にヨーロッパで流行した。
Translated to English:
As for the history of the epidemic, the first wave had its start in Detroit, U.S.A. and South Carolina in March 1918, it then crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the U.S. forces in to Europe and reached Europe in May and June.
I don’t understand the discrepancy, nor can I find any reputable sources that explain it. While Detroit was hit quite hard by the Spanish flu, they weren’t in the beginning of it. This is fascinating to me that there is a discrepancy here.