COVID-19 Pandemic

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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by bluemoon@piefed.social to c/coronavirus@lemmy.ml

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[–] Muehe@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Then, the soldiers left the war and spread flu all across the remote areas of the US.

Nah you are missing the point here. There was an already bad influenza strain, and millions of soldiers moving home on densely populated ships for weeks was a perfect environment for it to rapidly mutate and select for virulence and lethality. These soldiers making landfall then spread several strains of the virus, which led to vastly different mortality rates across the US. Much like we saw with Corona viruses rapidly mutating into different strains among the lockdowns.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It as only a "bad" strain because there was a massively immunologically naive population exposed to it.

Again, when Europeans brought over flu, it was minor to them, but killed off the natives. Similarly, native American and Inuit populations were killed at much higher rates in 1918. The Spanish Flu was not some kind of super flu, it was a typical influenza but there was a coincidental world war to spread it around from the US to Europe and back, likely from large US pig farms.

You can read about this here, or not.

https://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/academics/departments/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/archives/wwi/essays/medicine/influenza.html

[–] Muehe@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago

It as only a “bad” strain because there was a massively immunologically naive population exposed to it.

Yeah no it don't think it was, maybe "strain" was the wrong word here. Death rates in Europe were also much higher than usual, so there was definitely some major mutation going on. Naive populations will certainly have played a part, but I still think the virus gaining a captive host population to mutate in for several generations on each of those troop transporters, before those incubated populations were then spread all over the country, had an effect on it being more deadly in America than it was in Europe. I mean even the article you linked seems to suggest as much:

Military transport ships were the likely vector of influenza which was well-established around the world by August of 1918. As the pandemic grew and matured its virulence apparently increased. Mortality rates on the eastern coast of America climbed in newspaper reports, the epidemic seeming to emanate from military bases there. Thus, what had been called the “three day flu” at Camp Funston in March, with a mortality rate of perhaps two-percent, evolved into a much more severe illness in India where mortality rates in some places may have reached ten-percent.