Why the 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed

The 1918 flu pandemic started rather mildly in the spring of 1918. The flu strain was found to be Influenza type A strain H1N1. This is virus that can infect humans, birds and pigs. This flu was called the Spanish flu as that is where it was though to have originated at the time. However, today researchers are divided over where it actually started.

When it started it was a very mild infection. Few deaths, more than during a normal flu season, were reported. After the summer arrived it went away. However, in the fall it came back again and this time it was the killer everyone remembers. More than 50 million died because of it. Its is estimated that over a billion people were affected by this pandemic which was about one third of the world population at the time.

The second wave ran from September to December of 1918 then it went away just to return a third time. In the spring of 1919 it came back for a third visit. This time it killed about one third as many as the second wave did but that was still many times more dead than would be expected in a normal flu season. During a normal flu season an average of 15,000 people will die in the United States alone (there are two flu seasons each year).

Something seemed to have happed to it between the end of the first wave and the beginning of the second wave. No one is sure what happened to make it so virulent on its return. There were three flu pandemics in the 20th century. One was in 1918 and the other two were in 1957-58 and 1968-69.

From frozen specimens from the 1918 pandemic it was determined that most of the people died from pneumonia and not the flu directly. In a number of the cases the person had gotten over the flu completely just to be killed by the pneumonia side effect. While they didn’t have our modern antibiotics back then it would have made no difference. Currently there is no known effective treatment or cure for viral pneumonia caused by flu pandemics (Influenza A types H1N1 and H5N1).

Another strange thing about most of the dead was they were between the ages of 10 and 58 with the peak of the fatalities around 28 years old. These fatalities were among the healthiest on the planet yet many more of them died then did the elderly or the very young. As a matter of fact the number of elderly and very young that did die in the 1918 pandemic was the very same that normally died during a normal flu season. The middle age group (10 to 58) is where most of the 50 million deaths were reported.

On a side note one of the outcomes of the 1918 pandemic was that millions and millions of grand parents were left to raise their grand children. This was because the children’s parents were killed by the pandemic and the elderly and young were left virtually unscathed.

It was finally found that the cause of the deaths was due to the person’s own immune system. What happened is called a “cytokine storm”. This is when the immune system is started and all of the fail safes that keep it in check and from running wild all failed. In a normal system these disease fighters would go to an area and multiply and when the invaders had been neutralized the immune system would slow down.

However, here that didn’t happen. The end result was an immune system that generated way too many white blood cells and T cells and sent then to the initiation point. Usually the initial site of infection was the lungs as this illness was transmitted from person to person through the air. In the lungs this ‘storm’ would irritate the lung tissue which would then cause fluid to build up. This fluid would clog the airways and death would result.

The symptoms of a cytokine storm are high fever, swelling and redness, extreme fatigue and nausea. These symptoms seem to be those experienced by people who have a bad case of the flu. These bad cases of the flu may turn out to be due to the ‘storm’ from our own immune system instead of the flu itself. The symptoms of the Influenza A flu are fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing.

What this means is that the healthier a person is, if they are infected with this strain, they will be more susceptible to a serious illness than would a person with a weakened immune system. In the early 21st century doctors carried out experiments to see if immune suppression drugs would reverse this ‘storm’ condition. What they found was after the ‘storm’ condition was started using immune suppressor drugs did no good.

Using immune suppressor drugs prior to coming down with a virus that may start a cytokine storm is not recommended. This is because the immune system keeps all sorts of infections under control. With a weakened immune system one is prone to all sort of life threatening illnesses that would otherwise go unnoticed in a healthy individual.

Additional work has been done in Asia on which viruses could cause the ‘storm’ to start. It was found that avian flu virus, H5N1, would cause the ‘storm’ when infecting human cells. Also it was found that Influenza type A was the most virulent of the three types of Influenza. The 1918 flu pandemic was caused by Influenza type A (type H1N1).

The bottom line here is that the only way to be sure of staying healthy is to stop the virus from gaining a foothold in your body. To ensure this, all of the virus can be killed before it can kick off the immune system into a runaway condition, cytokine storm. Unfortunately, with the antiviral drugs on the market today this isn’t possible as they take days to a week to work which is more than enough time to set of the immune system. The virus needs to be completely killed not long after symptons are felt and are still extremely mild.

As far as we know our Cold Booster antiviral agents are the only thing on the market that will kill Influenza type A virus within a few hours. In this situation a Cold Booster Plus capsule should be taken as soon as symptoms are noticed (wait until two hours after eating a meal as these need to be taken on an empty stomach or they will do no good) and another capsule at bedtime.

The flu outbreak in the spring of 2009 was named the Swine Flu. However, after it was found that no pigs were affected the World Health Organization suggested it should be renamed to the North American Influenza or Influenza A(H1N1) instead of the Swine Flu.

It is interesting to note that pandemics come in waves over several flu seasons. The 1918 spring flu pandemic started out as a normal flu season with a few more than normal flu cases but it appeared to be a benign flu season. However, when it returned in the fall it was the killer everyone remembers. The main killing wave lasted from September to December 1918 (this was the second wave – the first was the spring of 1918). Then in the spring of 1919 the third wave hit. The third wave killed about one third as many people as the second wave and many times more than did the first wave.