The notorious flu epidemic of 1918 – known as the ‘Spanish’ flu epidemic – was first reported among US troops bound for the First World War trenches. Given the enormous mobility of troops at the time, the disease was largely free to spread to fresh population centres and so it claimed the lives of 50 million people worldwide. Spreading like wildfire. A powerful example of the destructive power of a pandemic.
Bear in mind that the virus went unidentified until 1935 and that the working class of the time was already familiar with the impact of cholera, TB, diarrhoea and fever, typhus, polio and measles. Each epidemic claimed lives by the thousands
Miguel G.