Pre-intermediate reading exercise: 'The Spanish Flu'

The Spanish flu is the name given to a disease which affected a huge percentage of humanity in the last century. It lasted for 2 years between 1918 and 1920, one hundred years before Covid 19.

No one is sure of how many people were infected or died of the disease. In those years 1918-1920 the world was a very different place. Most of the world's population did not have electricity let alone television, radio, the internet and so on. It was difficult to keep accurate records or statistics.

However there are various estimates.

It is suspected that 500 million people were infected which means about a third of the global population back then.

As for how many died of it estimates range from 17 million to 100 million. This disparity in estimates is partly due to the fact that record-keeping wasn't as organised and efficient as it is now.

Though it is called the 'Spanish flu' this does not necessarily mean it started off in Spain. No one is exactly sure where it originated but some believe that it was in the USA and this is where the first known official case happened, in March 1918. Also as the first world war was taking place at that time then American soldiers who went to Europe would transmit the disease if they had it.

So why is it called the 'Spanish' flu? Well, that's because Spain at that time was not involved in the first world war unlike many other countries including America, Britain, Russia, most of Europe, Japan and other nations. So its newspapers were able to focus on the huge amount of deaths being caused by the flu at the time. The huge publicity the flu had in Spain linked it to that country in many peoples' eyes and so the disease became known as the 'Spanish flu'.

It happened more than once in four different 'waves'.

The Spanish flu was relatively forgotten in modern times about until Covid-19 broke out in 2019.

However the Spanish flu is not the deadliest disease that mankind has known. The epidemic which has killed more people than any other is the 'Black death',  which some believe killed 200 million people.

Other deadly epidemics include the 'Plague of Justinian' which is estimated to have killed 30-50 million but 1500 years ago mainly in the eastern Mediterranean region. In addition there is small pox which is believed to have taken 56 million lives during the 17th and 18th centuries. So depending on how many people died from the Spanish flu it could be either the 2nd, 3rd or 4th most deadly epidemic in history.

So  we can see that plagues and epidemics have taken place constantly during human history.

What is the best way to deal with them?

The best way is of course for everyone including both individual citizens and national governments to ensure sanitation and hygiene include clean water and a generally healthy lifestyle and living conditions.