when did the spanish flu first started killing thousands of people years ago ? and why ?
Answers
Answer:
The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920; colloquially known as Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people around the world, including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic, and resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (three to five percent of the world's population), making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.
Explanation:
The major troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples, France, was identified as being at the center of the Spanish flu by research published in 1999 by a British team, led by virologist John Oxford. In late 1917, military pathologists reported the onset of a new disease with high mortality that they later recognized as the flu. The overcrowded camp and hospital — which treated thousands of victims of chemical attacks and other casualties of war — was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus; 100,000 soldiers were in transit every day. It also was home to a live piggery, and poultry were regularly brought in for food supplies from surrounding villages. Oxford and his team postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated so it could migrate to pigs that were kept near the front.
An interesting speculation about the outbreak was made by Private Arthur Bullock in his World War I memoir, describing an incident in June 1918 when members of the Gloucestershire Regiment caught an intense fever after sleeping in a cowshed. Arthur also records how he evaded the flu despite being treated in a military hospital where everyone else had it.
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