Am J Public Health. 2016 Apr;106(4):642-4. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.303018.
Overcrowding and Mortality During the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
Aligne CA1.
Author information
Abstract
The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more than 50 million people. Why was 1918 such an outlier? I. W. Brewer, a US Army physician at Camp Humphreys, Virginia, during the First World War, investigated several factors suspected of increasing the risk of severe flu: length of service in the army, race, dirty dishes, flies, dust, crowding, and weather. Overcrowding stood out, increasing the risk of flu 10-fold and the risk of flu complicated with pneumonia five-fold. Calculations made with Brewer's data show that the overall relationship between overcrowding and severe flu was highly significant (P < .001). Brewer's findings suggest that man-made conditions increased the severity of the pandemic flu illness.
PMID: 26959269 [PubMed - in process]
Overcrowding and Mortality During the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
Aligne CA1.
Author information
Abstract
The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more than 50 million people. Why was 1918 such an outlier? I. W. Brewer, a US Army physician at Camp Humphreys, Virginia, during the First World War, investigated several factors suspected of increasing the risk of severe flu: length of service in the army, race, dirty dishes, flies, dust, crowding, and weather. Overcrowding stood out, increasing the risk of flu 10-fold and the risk of flu complicated with pneumonia five-fold. Calculations made with Brewer's data show that the overall relationship between overcrowding and severe flu was highly significant (P < .001). Brewer's findings suggest that man-made conditions increased the severity of the pandemic flu illness.
PMID: 26959269 [PubMed - in process]