Photo by: Tom Patterson
Spanish flu, a word which can recall you a dreadful incident occurred in the world history. This is the most devastating influenza pandemic (an infectious disease affecting a large portion of the population of a large region) so far in the world history killing 500,000 Americans and 50 million world-wide. During 1918-1919, Spanish flu was exceptionally severe; estimation shows nearly 500 million people were infected globally during this pandemic. So, it’s known as 1918 flu.
Influenza A (h1N1) was the virus that caused the Spanish flu, but the source that the virus derived from still unknown. In contrast, Spanish flu pandemic made a positive impact on the influenza endemic that, it was lowered the mortality rate of the influenza endemic in 1920s. The Researchers who engaged in Spanish flu pandemic research for 75 years were unable to find answers for most basic questions even in the early 1990s.
Image by: Kat Masback
Unlike the most other influenza outbreaks, the Spanish flu pandemic spread in 3 parts of the world simultaneously, in Asia, Europe and North America. In most other cases, Asia was the first to show outbreak for any Influenza. Infecting humans and swine nearly at a same time was another feature of the Spanish flu. During the 1918 flu epidemic, almost half of the death population was young adults. This distinct feature shows Spanish flu out in the crowd.
The specialty of the Spanish flu and the virus has the ability to kill more than 100 million people if, any pandemic occurs in this modern world as no or very little preexisting immunity in humans, but the probability of the Spanish flu re-emerging seems to be very remote.
The only thing you can enjoy yourself is having developed two types of antivirus drugs. Rimandatine and oseltamivir both are antiviral drugs seem to be very effective against influenza virus similar to the Spanish flu virus.
Source: The Impact of the Spanish flu
