The Spanish Flu: A History from Beginning to End (Pandemic History Book 2) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Published: 2020-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Third and Final Wave

“With none of the drugs and antibiotics we have today, doctors were powerless, and strong men and women were dead in the course of a few days.”

—John Pears Jackson, a survivor of Spanish flu

The world was impacted in the first wave of the virus, especially as World War I raged on. It was devastated in the second wave, when more deaths occurred across September, October, and November of 1918 than at any other time during the outbreak. It was especially poignant as World War I, the deadliest war the world had ever seen, finally came to a close, relieving beleaguered nations around the world. Then, a third wave of the Spanish flu began almost as soon as the second wave ended.

The third wave began in Australia. The fact that it spread so quickly, reaching the entire globe once again, is a reflection of both the unreadiness of the world to handle this kind of outbreak, and the devastated economies and societies that limped out of the First World War. It was also evidence that the world was, in some ways, becoming smaller. While the war caused unprecedented destruction, it also brought peoples and countries together in different ways. National economies began to become more integrated with other countries around the world, and travel increased. Contact with more of the world meant that disease could spread globally much more quickly.

However, with the war over, the third wave was bound to be less severe than the second. Although the third wave had an equally deadly mortality rate, the overall numbers of dead do not compare to the second wave. This means that while the third wave proportionally killed just as many people, it infected far fewer. This was a direct result of World War I having ended. No longer were so many people—mainly soldiers—living together in such close quarters, nor were people traveling to the degree that they did during the war.

The events in 1918 impacted the first two waves of the Spanish flu, and although they were very different, events in 1919 also impacted the third wave. For one thing, as previously discussed, the destruction of the war helped create conditions conducive to pandemic. Much of Europe had yet to rebuild, and millions were still displaced or homeless, or faced other obstacles directly caused by the war that made them vulnerable. But 1919 was also a global year of upheaval. In part inspired by the communist revolution in Russia, workers across the world went on strike, and socialist or other left-leaning movements took hold.

The war had caused massive inflation—in some places, textile prices tripled, and food prices doubled. Working families could not keep up with this rate of inflation and were unable to make ends meet, since wages had not kept apace. During the war, governments across the world had met some workers’ demands in order to keep production going. In addition, workers had been hesitant to strike, lest they hurt the war effort. In 1919,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.