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Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/m...785692bb5.html
St. Louis saw the deadly 1918 Spanish flu epidemic coming. Shutting down the city saved countless lives
By Blythe Bernhard St. Louis Post-Dispatch Feb 12, 2018
It started in a dusty and desolate corner of Kansas, as horror stories might.
The deadly influenza virus that would be known as the mother of all outbreaks tore through Haskell County in the winter of 1918. The county doctor warned that young, sturdy hog farmers were collapsing in the fields as if they?d been shot.
Historians believe that the flu soon reached Camp Funston at Fort Riley, where troops trained to fight World War I. By spring, flu outbreaks hit most of the Army camps across the country. Thousands of troops in effect carried germ warfare in their arsenal to European shores, and the pandemic took hold.
The particular strain of influenza was most aggressive in healthy people ages 20 to 40, possibly because their strong immune systems overreacted to the invading virus. The 1918 Spanish flu got its name after King Alfonso of Spain, 32, fell ill that May.
?It was working-age adults, people who were young and healthy suddenly getting sick and dying,? said Dr. Steven Lawrence, infectious disease specialist at Washington University. ?It made for a devastating pandemic.?
When a second wave of flu hit the U.S. the next fall, St. Louis had the advantage of planning for disaster as East Coast cities were struck first. By late September, Jefferson Barracks went under quarantine as the first soldiers came down with the flu...
St. Louis saw the deadly 1918 Spanish flu epidemic coming. Shutting down the city saved countless lives
By Blythe Bernhard St. Louis Post-Dispatch Feb 12, 2018
It started in a dusty and desolate corner of Kansas, as horror stories might.
The deadly influenza virus that would be known as the mother of all outbreaks tore through Haskell County in the winter of 1918. The county doctor warned that young, sturdy hog farmers were collapsing in the fields as if they?d been shot.
Historians believe that the flu soon reached Camp Funston at Fort Riley, where troops trained to fight World War I. By spring, flu outbreaks hit most of the Army camps across the country. Thousands of troops in effect carried germ warfare in their arsenal to European shores, and the pandemic took hold.
The particular strain of influenza was most aggressive in healthy people ages 20 to 40, possibly because their strong immune systems overreacted to the invading virus. The 1918 Spanish flu got its name after King Alfonso of Spain, 32, fell ill that May.
?It was working-age adults, people who were young and healthy suddenly getting sick and dying,? said Dr. Steven Lawrence, infectious disease specialist at Washington University. ?It made for a devastating pandemic.?
When a second wave of flu hit the U.S. the next fall, St. Louis had the advantage of planning for disaster as East Coast cities were struck first. By late September, Jefferson Barracks went under quarantine as the first soldiers came down with the flu...
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