Trivia: Influenza History – See If You Know It!

About one hundred years ago, the world experienced one of the most deadly scourges in history — the 1918 influenza pandemic. Do you know which of the following are true of the 1918 pandemic?

1. More people died from it than from battle wounds in WWI.
2. It started in the U.S.
3. It was called “Spanish flu.”
4. Scientists did not know what caused it at the time.
5. None of these
6. Two of these
7. All of these

The answer is (g): All of these.

Calculating exactly how many people were infected and died from influenza during the 1918 pandemic is difficult for a variety of reasons; however, most estimates suggest that more people died from the pandemic than on the battlefields during World War I (WWI). The fact that the war was ongoing during the pandemic provides an interesting opportunity to explore the intersection of science and society. For example, because of the war, most countries hid the fact that the disease was widespread and they were losing soldiers to the illness. Because Spain was neutral, reports coming from that country more accurately depicted the severity of influenza circulating at the time. As a result, many people incorrectly believed that the pandemic started in Spain, oft referring to it as the “Spanish flu.” Historians and scientists now believe that the pandemic actually started in the U.S. — in Haskell County, Kansas.

Interestingly, at the time of the pandemic of 1918, scientists did not know what caused influenza. Some believed Bacillus influenzae (known today as Haemophilus influenzae) caused the illness because that bacteria could be found in the lungs of some who had died from the disease during autopsies. However, scientists later realized that a virus was causing influenza. Influenza virus was isolated in the early 1930s, and influenza type A, the type that causes pandemics, was identified in 1933.