The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

As I was doing my work while wondering why is my sorethroat still there after taking DCM Expectorant and Prednisolone prescribed by the doctor this morning... I remembered a book I saw in a second-hand store which I wanted to but eventually did not buy - The Great Influenza. I remembered that was in 2003 when I had to study about SARS outbreak in Immunology/Virology class with Prof. Dr. Ho. I was interested in reading it, but a poor student was I, couldn't fork out RM45 for a hand-me-down book at that time...

Here's an excerpt from a website which I think it is interesting...

The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger). People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths. One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate," (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth," (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza. In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme (Crawford):

I had a little bird,

Its name was Enza.

I opened the window,

And in-flu-enza.

The influenza pandemic circled the globe. Most of humanity felt the effects of this strain of the influenza virus. It spread following the path of its human carriers, along trade routes and shipping lines. Outbreaks swept through North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific (Taubenberger).

Click here to read more.

I find a similarity in the article with the previous entry I posted on the statement released by WHO Director-General which is this:

In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children.

Is history repeating itself? Sounds like the same type of virus is attacking human race after about 90 years of silence. I'm thinking of getting the book (The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History). Seriously thinking how to get my hands on this book! God please help me!!!

Let us pray:
O Merciful and Loving God, have mercy on us all and spare us from this current A(H1N1) virus attack. Amen!