By contrast, American Samoa recorded no casualties.The pandemic was especially hard on children, perhaps more than any other segment of the population. An estimate from 1991 states … With accommodation for up to 100,000 soldiers, Étaples lay on a migratory bird flyway close to the Somme estuary and had all the necessary conditions for a spillover event: wild waterfowl, plus chickens and pigs, living in close proximity to men packed into airless barracks. I have to be yours. The deadly strain of influenza that swept the globe in 1918 tended to strike those aged between 20 and 30, with strong immune systems.Britain was still at war when the virus claimed its first recorded victim, in May 1918. As a consequence, when faced 28 years later with Spanish flu viruses they mounted the wrong response (ie, to Russian flu rather than to the real threat). Adjusting for population growth, that is equivalent to between 200 million and 425 million today.The next to fall ill was Ada’s mother, Jane Berry, and her baby sister, Edith, followed by her younger brothers, Austin, two, and Noel, four. Where the virus first leapt from birds to humans or some other mammal is even more perplexing, with some scientists favouring a Kansas point of origin and others northern France or China.On 11 September 1918, Lloyd George, riding high on news of recent Allied successes, arrived in Manchester to be presented with the keys to the city. Or it could be that the unusual mortality pattern seen in 1918 was the result of an as yet unidentified environmental exposure or stressor peculiar to young adults at the time.“It’s like a film in my head,” she told me in 2005. The genes map most closely to wild waterfowl from north America but, despite examining the Smithsonian Institute’s extensive bird collections, Taubenberger was unable to find viable autopsy remains from before 1918.
Thus, while the average case mortality in the developed world was about 2%, in India, where 18.5 million perished, it was 6%, and in Egypt, where 138,000 died, it was 10%. Cinemas, theatres and other places of entertainment were closed across the country.Nevertheless, the city's health commissioner came under pressure from businesses to keep premises open, particularly movie theatres and other places of entertainment.There was no centrally imposed lockdown to curb the spread of infection, although many theatres, dance halls, cinemas and churches were closed, in some cases for months.Public health messages were confused - and, just like today, fake news and conspiracy theories abounded, although the general level of ignorance about healthy lifestyles did not help.In November 1918, the News of the World advised its readers to: "wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning, then breathe deeply. News of the epidemic was initially suppressed in other countries to avoid damaging morale.Pubs, which were already subject to wartime restrictions on opening hours, mostly stayed open. In many ways, though, it was far deadlier than anything we’ve seen before or since.
While the adults walked around wearing masks, children skipped rope to this rhyme: I had a little bird Its name was Enza I opened a window And In-flu-enza. “There were the black horses with the plumes made from ostrich feathers, then the gun carriage with my dad’s coffin covered with the union flag. As a consequence, when faced 28 years later with Spanish flu viruses they mounted the wrong response (ie, to Russian flu rather than to the real threat). In Ameal Peña’s town of Luarca it claimed 500 lives – a quarter of the town’s population of 2,000. "But a "memorandum for public use" he had written in July 1918, that advised people to stay at home if they were sick and to avoid large gatherings, was buried by the government.Publicity campaigns and leaflets warned against spreading disease through coughs and sneezes.In some factories, no-smoking rules were relaxed, in the belief that cigarettes would help prevent infection.It is dangerous to draw too many parallels between coronavirus and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, that killed at least 50 million people around the world.All photographs subject to copyrightBut it proved impossible to prevent mass gatherings in many US cities, particularly at places of worship.But the actions taken by governments and individuals to prevent the spread of infection have a familiar ring to them. In Cape Town, observed one eyewitness, the autumn wave “made orphans of between two to three thousand children”.A rival theory, favoured by the British virologist John Oxford, is that the pandemic began at Étaples, a huge British military camp an hour south-west of Boulogne.