Spanish flu
1918–1920 global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in the state of Kansas in the United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million,[6] and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.
Spanish flu | |
---|---|
Disease | Influenza |
Virus strain | Strains of A/H1N1 |
Location | Worldwide |
First outbreak | Unknown |
Date | February 1918 – April 1920[1] |
Suspected cases‡ | 500 million (estimated)[2] |
Deaths | 25–50 million (generally accepted), other estimates range from 17 to 100 million[3][4][5] |
‡Suspected cases have not been confirmed by laboratory tests as being due to this strain, although some other strains may have been ruled out. |
The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime censors in the belligerent countries suppressed bad news to maintain morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to the "Spanish flu" misnomer.[7] Limited historical epidemiological data make the pandemic's geographic origin indeterminate, with competing hypotheses on the initial spread.[2]
Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the young and old, with a higher survival rate in-between, but this pandemic had unusually high mortality for young adults.[8] Scientists offer several explanations for the high mortality, including a six-year climate anomaly affecting migration of disease vectors with increased likelihood of spread through bodies of water.[9] The virus was particularly deadly because it triggered a cytokine storm, ravaging the stronger immune system of young adults,[10] although the viral infection was apparently no more aggressive than previous influenza strains.[11][12] However, the claim that young adults had a high mortality during the pandemic has been contested.[13] Malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, exacerbated by the war, promoted bacterial superinfection, killing most of the victims after a typically prolonged death bed.[14][15]
The 1918 Spanish flu was the first of three flu pandemics caused by H1N1 influenza A virus; the most recent one was the 2009 swine flu pandemic.[16][17] The 1977 Russian flu was also caused by H1N1 virus.[16][18]
This pandemic was known by many different names—some old, some new—depending on place, time, and context. The etymology of alternative names historicises the scourge and its effects on people who would only learn years later that invisible viruses caused influenza.[19] The lack of scientific answers led the Sierra Leone Weekly News (Freetown) to suggest a biblical framing in July 1918, using an interrogative from Exodus 16 in ancient Hebrew:[lower-alpha 1] "One thing is for certain—the doctors are at present flabbergasted; and we suggest that rather than calling the disease influenza they should for the present until they have it in hand, say Man hu—'What is it?'"[21][22][23]
Descriptive names
Outbreaks of influenza-like illness were documented in 1916–17 at British military hospitals in Étaples, France,[24] and just across the English Channel at Aldershot, England. Clinical indications in common with the 1918 pandemic included rapid symptom progression to a "dusky" heliotrope cyanosis of the face. This characteristic blue-violet cyanosis in expiring patients led to the name 'purple death'.[25][26][27]
The Aldershot physicians later wrote in The Lancet, "the influenza pneumococcal purulent bronchitis we and others described in 1916 and 1917 is fundamentally the same condition as the influenza of this present pandemic."[28] This "purulent bronchitis" is not yet linked to the same A/H1N1 virus,[29] but it may be a precursor.[28][30][31]
In 1918, 'epidemic influenza' (Italian: influenza, influence),[32] also known at the time as 'the grip' (French: la grippe, grasp),[33] appeared in Kansas in the U.S. during late spring, and early reports from Spain began appearing on 21 May.[34][35] Reports from both places called it 'three-day fever' (fiebre de los tres días).[36][37][38]
Associative names
Many alternative names are exonyms in the practice of making new infectious diseases seem foreign.[39][40][41] This pattern was observed even before the 1889–1890 pandemic, also known as the 'Russian flu', when the Russians already called epidemic influenza the 'Chinese catarrh', the Germans called it the 'Russian pest', while the Italians in turn called it the 'German disease'.[42][43] These epithets were re-used in the 1918 pandemic, along with new ones.[44]
'Spanish' influenza
Outside Spain, the disease was soon misnamed 'Spanish influenza'.[45][46] In a 2 June 1918 The Times of London dispatch titled, "The Spanish Epidemic," a correspondent in Madrid reported over 100,000 victims of, "The unknown disease…clearly of a gripal character," without referring to "Spanish influenza" directly.[47] Three weeks later The Times reported that, "Everybody thinks of it as the 'Spanish' influenza to-day."[48] Three days after that an advertisement appeared in The Times for Formamint tablets to prevent "Spanish influenza".[49][50] When it reached Moscow, Pravda announced, "Ispánka (the Spanish lady) is in town," making 'the Spanish lady' another common name.[51]
The outbreak did not originate in Spain (see below),[52] but reporting did, due to wartime censorship in belligerent nations. Spain was a neutral country unconcerned with appearances of combat readiness, and without a wartime propaganda machine to prop up morale;[53][54] so its newspapers freely reported epidemic effects, including King Alfonso XIII's illness, making Spain the apparent locus of the epidemic.[55] The censorship was so effective that Spain's health officials were unaware its neighboring countries were similarly affected.[56]
In an October 1918 "Madrid Letter" to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a Spanish official protested, "we were surprised to learn that the disease was making ravages in other countries, and that people there were calling it the 'Spanish grip'. And wherefore Spanish? …this epidemic was not born in Spain, and this should be recorded as a historic vindication."[57] But before this letter could be published, The Serbian Newspaper (Corfu) said, "Various countries have been assigning the origin of this imposing guest to each other for quite some time, and at one point in time they agreed to assign its origin to the kind and neutral Spain…"[58]
Other exonyms
French press initially used 'American flu', but adopted 'Spanish flu' in lieu of antagonizing an ally.[59] In the spring of 1918, British soldiers called it 'Flanders flu', while German soldiers used 'Flandern-Fieber' (Flemish fever), both after a famous battlefield in Belgium where many soldiers on both sides fell ill.[44][41][60][61] In Senegal it was named 'Brazilian flu', and in Brazil, 'German flu'.[62] In Spain it was also known as the 'French flu' (gripe francesa),[52][7] or the 'Naples Soldier' (Soldado de Nápoles), after a popular song from a zarzuela.[lower-alpha 2][59] Spanish flu (gripe española) is now a common name in Spain,[64] but remains controversial there.[65][66]
Other names derived from geopolitical borders and social boundaries. In Poland it was the 'Bolshevik disease',[62][67] while the Bolsheviks referred to it as the 'Kirghiz disease'.[61] Some Africans called it a 'white man's sickness', but in South Africa, white men also used the ethnophaulism 'kaffersiekte' (lit. negro disease).[44][68] Japan blamed sumo wrestlers for bringing the disease home from a match in Taiwan by calling it 'sumo flu' (Sumo Kaze), even though three top wrestlers died there.[69][70]
World Health Organization 'best practices' first published in 2015 now aim to prevent social stigma by no longer associating culturally significant names with new diseases, listing "Spanish flu" under "examples to be avoided".[71][40][72] Many authors now eschew calling this the Spanish flu,[59] instead using variations of '1918–19/20 flu/influenza pandemic'.[73][74][75]
Local names
Some language endonyms did not name specific regions or groups of people. Examples specific to this pandemic include: Northern Ndebele: 'Malibuzwe' (let enquiries be made concerning it), Swahili: 'Ugonjo huo kichwa na kukohoa na kiuno' (the disease of head and coughing and spine),[76] Yao: 'chipindupindu' (disease from seeking to make a profit in wartime), Otjiherero: 'kaapitohanga' (disease which passes through like a bullet),[77] and Persian: 'nakhushi-yi bad' (disease of the wind).[78][79]
Other names
This outbreak was also commonly known as the 'great influenza epidemic',[80][81] after the 'great war', a common name for World War I before World War II.[10] French military doctors originally called it 'disease 11' (maladie onze).[41] German doctors downplayed the severity by calling it 'pseudo influenza' (Latin: pseudo, false), while in Africa, doctors tried to get patients to take it more seriously by calling it 'influenza vera' (Latin: vera, true).[82]
A children's song from the 1889–90 flu pandemic[83] was shortened and adapted into a skipping-rope rhyme popular in 1918.[84][85] It is a metaphor for the transmissibility of 'Influenza', where that name was clipped to the apheresis 'Enza':[86][87][88]
I had a little bird,
its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
and in-flu-enza.
Timeline
First wave of early 1918
The pandemic is conventionally marked as having begun on 4 March 1918 with the recording of the case of Albert Gitchell, an army cook at Camp Funston in Kansas, United States, despite there having been cases before him.[89] The disease had already been observed 200 miles (320 km) away in Haskell County as early as January 1918, prompting local doctor Loring Miner to warn the editors of the U.S. Public Health Service's academic journal Public Health Reports.[10] Within days of the 4 March first case at Camp Funston, 522 men at the camp had reported sick.[90] By 11 March 1918, the virus had reached Queens, New York.[91] Failure to take preventive measures in March/April was later criticized.[92]
As the U.S. had entered World War I, the disease quickly spread from Camp Funston, a major training ground for troops of the American Expeditionary Forces, to other U.S. Army camps and Europe, becoming an epidemic in the Midwest, East Coast, and French ports by April 1918, and reaching the Western Front by the middle of the month.[89] It then quickly spread to the rest of France, Great Britain, Italy, and Spain and in May reached Wrocław and Odessa.[89] After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918), Germany started releasing Russian prisoners of war, who then brought the disease to their country.[93] It reached North Africa, India, and Japan in May, and soon after had likely gone around the world as there had been recorded cases in Southeast Asia in April.[94] In June an outbreak was reported in China.[95] After reaching Australia in July, the wave started to recede.[94]
The first wave of the flu lasted from the first quarter of 1918 and was relatively mild.[96] Mortality rates were not appreciably above normal;[2] in the United States ~75,000 flu-related deaths were reported in the first six months of 1918, compared to ~63,000 deaths during the same time period in 1915.[97] In Madrid, Spain, fewer than 1,000 people died from influenza between May and June 1918.[98] There were no reported quarantines during the first quarter of 1918. However, the first wave caused a significant disruption in the military operations of World War I, with three-quarters of French troops, half the British forces, and over 900,000 German soldiers sick.[99]
Deadly second wave of late 1918
The second wave began in the second half of August 1918, probably spreading to Boston, Massachusetts and Freetown, Sierra Leone, by ships from Brest, where it had likely arrived with American troops or French recruits for naval training.[99] From the Boston Navy Yard and Camp Devens (later renamed Fort Devens), about 30 miles west of Boston, other U.S. military sites were soon afflicted, as were troops being transported to Europe.[100] Helped by troop movements, it spread over the next two months to all of North America, and then to Central and South America, also reaching Brazil and the Caribbean on ships.[101] In July 1918, the Ottoman Empire saw its first cases in some soldiers.[102] From Freetown, the pandemic continued to spread through West Africa along the coast, rivers, and the colonial railways, and from railheads to more remote communities, while South Africa received it in September on ships bringing back members of the South African Native Labour Corps returning from France.[101] From there it spread around southern Africa and beyond the Zambezi, reaching Ethiopia in November.[103] On 15 September, New York City saw its first fatality from influenza.[104] The Philadelphia Liberty Loans Parade, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 28 September 1918 to promote government bonds for World War I, resulted in 12,000 deaths after a major outbreak of the illness spread among people who had attended the parade.[105]
From Europe, the second wave swept through Russia in a southwest–northeast diagonal front, as well as being brought to Arkhangelsk by the North Russia intervention, and then spread throughout Asia following the Russian Civil War and the Trans-Siberian railway, reaching Iran (where it spread through the holy city of Mashhad), and then later India in September, as well as China and Japan in October.[106] The celebrations of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 also caused outbreaks in Lima and Nairobi, but by December the wave was mostly over.[107]
The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much more deadly than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. October 1918 was the month with the highest fatality rate of the whole pandemic.[108] In the United States, ~292,000 deaths were reported between September–December 1918, compared to ~26,000 during the same time period in 1915.[97] The Netherlands reported over 40,000 deaths from influenza and acute respiratory disease. Bombay reported ~15,000 deaths in a population of 1.1 million.[109] The 1918 flu pandemic in India was especially deadly, with an estimated 12.5–20 million deaths in the last quarter of 1918 alone.[96][page needed]
Third wave of 1919
Pandemic activity persisted, in general, into 1919 in many places. This persistence in activity is possibly attributable to climate, specifically in the Northern Hemisphere, where it was winter and thus the usual time for influenza activity.[110][111] The pandemic nonetheless continued into 1919 largely independent of region and climate.[110]
Cases began to rise again in some parts of the United States as early as late November 1918,[112] with the Public Health Service issuing its first report of a "recrudescence of the disease" being felt in "widely scattered localities" in early December.[113] This resurgent activity varied across the country, however, possibly on account of differing restrictions.[111] Michigan, for example, experienced a swift resurgence of influenza that reached its peak in December, possibly as a result of the lifting of the ban on public gatherings.[114] Pandemic interventions, such as bans on public gatherings and the closing of schools, were reimposed in many places in an attempt to suppress the spread.[113]
There was "a very sudden and very marked rise in general death rate" in most cities in January 1919; nearly all experienced "some degree of recrudescence" of the flu in January and February.[115]: 153–154 Significant outbreaks occurred in cities including Los Angeles,[116] New York City,[1] Memphis, Nashville, San Francisco, and St. Louis.[117] By 21 February, with some local variation, influenza activity was reported to have been declining since mid-January in all parts of the country.[118] Following this "first great epidemic period" that had commenced in October 1918, deaths from pneumonia and influenza were "somewhat below average" in the large cities of the United States between May 1919 and January 1920.[115]: 158 Nonetheless, nearly 160,000 deaths were attributed to these causes in the first six months of 1919.[119]
It was not until later in the winter and into the spring that a clearer resurgence appeared in Europe. A significant third wave had developed in England and Wales by mid-February, peaking in early March, though it did not fully subside until May.[120] France also experienced a significant wave that peaked in February, alongside the Netherlands. Norway, Finland, and Switzerland saw recrudescences of pandemic activity in March, and Sweden in April.[121]
Much of Spain was affected by "a substantial recrudescent wave" of influenza between January and April 1919.[122] Portugal experienced a resurgence in pandemic activity that lasted from March to September 1919, with the greatest impact being felt on the west coast and in the north of the country; all districts were affected between April and May specifically.[123]
Influenza entered Australia for the first time in January 1919 after a strict maritime quarantine had shielded the country through the latter part of 1918.[124] It assumed epidemic proportions first in Melbourne, peaking in mid-February.[125] The flu soon appeared in neighboring New South Wales and South Australia and then spread across the country throughout the year.[124] New South Wales experienced its first wave of infection between mid-March and late May,[126] while a second, more severe wave occurred in Victoria between April and June.[125]
Land quarantine measures hindered the spread of the disease, resulting in varied experiences of exposures and outbreaks among the various states. Queensland was not infected until late April; Western Australia avoided the disease until early June, and Tasmania remained free from it until mid-August.[124] Out of the six states, Victoria and New South Wales experienced generally more extensive epidemics. Each experienced another significant wave of illness over the winter. The second epidemic in New South Wales was more severe than the first,[126] while Victoria saw a third wave that was somewhat less extensive than its second, more akin to its first.[125]
The disease also reached other parts of the world for the first time in 1919, such as Madagascar, which saw its first cases in April; the outbreak had spread to practically all sections of the island by June.[127] In other parts, influenza recurred in the form of a true "third wave". Hong Kong experienced another outbreak in June,[128] as did South Africa during its fall and winter months in the Southern Hemisphere.[129][130][131] New Zealand also experienced some cases in May.[132]
Parts of South America experienced a resurgence of pandemic activity throughout 1919. A third wave hit Brazil between January and June.[110] Between July 1919 and February 1920, Chile, which had been affected for the first time just in October 1918, experienced a severe second wave, with mortality peaking in August 1919.[133] Montevideo similarly experienced a second outbreak between July and September.[134]
The third wave particularly affected Spain, Serbia, Mexico and Great Britain, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.[135] It was in general less severe than the second wave but still much more deadly than the initial first wave.
Fourth wave of 1920
In the Northern Hemisphere, fears of a "recurrence" of the flu grew as fall approached. Experts cited the history of past flu epidemics, such as that of 1889–1890, to predict that such a recurrence a year later was not unlikely,[136][137] though not all agreed.[138] In September 1919, U.S. Surgeon General Rupert Blue said a return of the flu later in the year would "probably, but by no means certainly," occur.[139] France had readied a public information campaign before the end of the summer,[140] and Britain began preparations in the fall with the manufacture of vaccine.[141]
In Japan, the flu broke out again in December and spread rapidly throughout the country, a fact attributed at the time to the coming of cold weather.[142][143] Pandemic-related measures were renewed to check the spread of the outbreak, and health authorities recommended the use of masks.[143] The epidemic intensified in the latter part of December before swiftly peaking in January.[144]
Between October 1919 and 23 January 1920, 780,000 cases were reported across the country, with at least 20,000 deaths recorded by that date. This apparently reflected "a condition of severity three times greater than for the corresponding period of" 1918–1919, during Japan's first epidemic.[144] Nonetheless, the disease was regarded as being milder than it had been the year before, albeit more infectious.[145] Despite its rapid peak at the beginning of the year, the outbreak persisted throughout the winter, before subsiding in the spring.[146]
In the United States, there were "almost continuously isolated or solitary cases" of flu throughout the spring and summer months of 1919.[147] An increase in scattered cases became apparent as early as September,[148] but Chicago experienced one of the first major outbreaks of the flu beginning in the middle of January.[149] The Public Health Service announced it would take steps to "localize the epidemic",[150] but the disease was already causing a simultaneous outbreak in Kansas City and quickly spread outward from the center of the country in no clear direction.[147] A few days after its first announcement, PHS issued another assuring that the disease was under the control of state health authorities and that an outbreak of epidemic proportions was not expected.[151]
It became apparent within days of the start of Chicago's explosive growth in cases that the flu was spreading in the city at an even faster rate than in winter 1919, though fewer were dying.[152] Within a week, new cases in the city had surpassed its peak during the 1919 wave.[153] Around the same time, New York City began to see its own sudden increase in cases,[154] and other cities around the country were soon to follow.[155] Certain pandemic restrictions, such as the closing of schools and theaters and the staggering of business hours to avoid congestion, were reimposed in cities like Chicago,[156] Memphis,[157] and New York City.[158] As they had during the epidemic in fall 1918, schools in New York City remained open,[158] while those in Memphis were shuttered as part of more general restrictions on public gatherings.[157]
The fourth wave in the United States subsided as swiftly as it had appeared, reaching a peak in early February.[159] "An epidemic of considerable proportions marked the early months of 1920", the U.S. Mortality Statistics would later note; according to data at this time, the epidemic resulted in one third as many deaths as the 1918–1919 experience.[160] New York City alone reported 6,374 deaths between December 1919 and April 1920, almost twice the number of the first wave in spring 1918.[1] Other U.S. cities including Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis were hit particularly hard, with death rates higher than all of 1918.[117] The Territory of Hawaii experienced its peak of the pandemic in early 1920, recording 1,489 deaths from flu-related causes, compared with 615 in 1918 and 796 in 1919.[161]
Poland experienced a devastating outbreak during the winter months, with its capital Warsaw reaching a peak of 158 deaths in a single week, compared to the peak of 92 reached in December 1918; however, the 1920 epidemic passed in a matter of weeks, while the 1918–1919 wave had developed over the entire second half of 1918.[162] By contrast, the outbreak in western Europe was considered "benign", with the age distribution of deaths beginning to take on that of seasonal flu.[163] Five countries in Europe (Spain, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Switzerland) recorded a late peak between January–April 1920.[121]
Mexico experienced a fourth wave between February and March. In South America, Peru experienced "asynchronous recrudescent waves" throughout the year. A severe third wave hit Lima, the capital city, between January and March, resulting in an all-cause excess mortality rate approximately four times greater than that of the 1918–1919 wave. Ica similarly experienced another severe pandemic wave in 1920, between July and October.[164] A fourth wave also occurred in Brazil, in February.[110]
Korea and Taiwan, both colonies of Japan at this time, also experienced pronounced outbreaks in late 1919 and early 1920.[165][166]
Post-pandemic
By mid-1920, the pandemic was largely considered to be "over" by the public as well as governments.[167] Though parts of Chile experienced a third, milder wave between November 1920 and March 1921,[133] the flu seemed to be mostly absent through the winter of 1920–1921.[115]: 167 In the United States, for example, deaths from pneumonia and influenza were "very much lower than for many years".[115]: 167
Influenza began to be reported again from many places in 1921.[115]: 168 The pandemic continued to be felt in Chile, where a fourth wave affected seven of its 24 provinces between June and December 1921.[133] The winter of 1921–1922 was the first major reappearance of influenza in the Northern Hemisphere, in many parts its most significant occurrence since the main pandemic in late 1918. Northwestern Europe was particularly affected. All-cause mortality in the Netherlands approximately doubled in January 1922 alone.[115]: 168 In Helsinki, a major epidemic (the fifth since 1918) prevailed between November and December 1921.[168] The flu was also widespread in the United States, its prevalence in California reportedly greater in early March 1922 than at any point since 1920.[115]: 172
In the years after 1920, the disease, a novel one in 1918, assumed a more familiar nature, coming to represent at least one form of the "seasonal flu". The virus, H1N1, remained endemic, occasionally causing more severe or otherwise notable outbreaks as it gradually evolved over the years.[169] The period since its initial appearance in 1918 has been termed a "pandemic era", in which all flu pandemics since its emergence have been caused by its own descendants.[170] Following the first of these post-1918 pandemics, in 1957, the virus was totally displaced by the novel H2N2, the reassortant product of the human H1N1 and an avian influenza virus, which thereafter became the active influenza A virus in humans.[169]
In 1977, an influenza virus bearing a very close resemblance to the seasonal H1N1, which had not been seen since the 1950s, appeared in Russia and subsequently initiated a "technical" pandemic that principally affected those 26 years of age and younger.[171][172] While some natural explanations, such as the virus remaining in some frozen state for 20 years,[172] have been proposed to explain this unprecedented[173] phenomenon, the nature of influenza itself has been cited in favor of human involvement of some kind, such as an accidental leak from a lab where the old virus had been preserved for research purposes.[172] Following this miniature pandemic, the reemerged H1N1 became endemic once again but did not displace the other active influenza A virus, H3N2 (which itself had displaced H2N2 through a pandemic in 1968).[171][169] For the first time, two influenza A viruses were observed in cocirculation.[174] This state of affairs has persisted even after 2009, when a novel H1N1 virus emerged, sparked a pandemic, and thereafter took the place of the seasonal H1N1 to circulate alongside H3N2.[174]
Potential origins
Despite its name, historical and epidemiological data cannot identify the geographic origin of the Spanish flu.[2] However, several theories have been proposed.
United States
The first confirmed cases originated in the United States. Historian Alfred W. Crosby stated in 2003 that the flu originated in Kansas,[175] and author John M. Barry described a January 1918 outbreak in Haskell County, Kansas, as the point of origin in his 2004 article.[10]
A 2018 study of tissue slides and medical reports led by evolutionary biology professor Michael Worobey found evidence against the disease originating from Kansas, as those cases were milder and had fewer deaths compared to the infections in New York City in the same period. The study did find evidence through phylogenetic analyses that the virus likely had a North American origin, though it was not conclusive. In addition, the haemagglutinin glycoproteins of the virus suggest that it originated long before 1918, and other studies suggest that the reassortment of the H1N1 virus likely occurred in or around 1915.[176]
Europe
The major U.K. troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples in France has been theorized by virologist John Oxford as being at the center of the Spanish flu.[178] His study found that in late 1916 the Étaples camp was hit by the onset of a new disease with high mortality that caused symptoms similar to the flu.[179][178] According to Oxford, a similar outbreak occurred in March 1917 at army barracks in Aldershot,[180] and military pathologists later recognized these early outbreaks as the same disease as the Spanish flu.[181][178] The overcrowded camp and hospital at Étaples was an ideal environment for the spread of a respiratory virus.
The hospital treated thousands of victims of poison gas attacks, and other casualties of war, and 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp every day. It also was home to a piggery and poultry was regularly brought in from surrounding villages to feed the camp. Oxford and his team postulated that a precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.[180][181]
A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found evidence that the 1918 virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.[182] Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting the influenza began in Austria in early 1917.[183]
A 2009 study in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses found that Spanish flu mortality simultaneously peaked within the two-month period of October and November 1918 in all fourteen European countries analyzed, which is inconsistent with the pattern that researchers would expect if the virus had originated somewhere in Europe and then spread outwards.[121]
China
In 1993, Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the Spanish flu at the Pasteur Institute, asserted the precursor virus was likely to have come from China and then mutated in the United States near Boston and from there spread to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, with Allied soldiers and sailors as the main disseminators.[184] Hannoun considered several alternative hypotheses of origin, such as Spain, Kansas, and Brest, as being possible, but not likely.[184]
In 2014, historian Mark Humphries argued that the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines might have been the source of the pandemic. Humphries, of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, based his conclusions on newly unearthed records. He found archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China (where the laborers came from) in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.[185][186] Unfortunately, no tissue samples have survived for modern comparison.[187] Nevertheless, there were some reports of respiratory illness on parts of the path the laborers took to get to Europe, which also passed through North America.[187]
China was one of the few regions of the world seemingly less affected by the Spanish flu pandemic, where several studies have documented a comparatively mild flu season in 1918.[188][189][190] (Although this is disputed due to lack of data during the Warlord Period, see Around the globe.) This has led to speculation that the Spanish flu pandemic originated in China,[190][191] as the lower rates of flu mortality may be explained by the Chinese population's previously acquired immunity to the flu virus.[174][190] In the Guangdong Province it was reported that early outbreaks of influenza in 1918 disproportionately impacted young men. The June outbreak infected children and adolescents between 11 and 20 years of age, while the October outbreak was most common in those aged 11 to 15.[192]
A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found no evidence that the 1918 virus was imported to Europe via Chinese and Southeast Asian soldiers and workers and instead found evidence of its circulation in Europe before the pandemic.[182] The 2016 study found that the low flu mortality rate (an estimated one in a thousand) recorded among the Chinese and Southeast Asian workers in Europe suggests that the Asian units were not different from other Allied military units in France at the end of 1918 and, thus, were not a likely source of a new lethal virus.[182] Further evidence against the disease being spread by Chinese workers was that workers entered Europe through other routes that did not result in a detectable spread, making them unlikely to have been the original hosts.[176]