In 1918 one-third of the world got infected with the influenza. The flu virus originated from pigs in the middle of Kansas. There were many symptoms of the flu, but most remedies didn’t help. The flu ended with millions of deaths and even more cases that had been caught.

The dreaded H1N1 influenza virus started in 1918, in Haskell County, Kansas.  It struck in the United States, Russia, India, and China.  It lasted for nine months and turned into a world-wide pandemic.  Even though this virus could cause death, a lot of people mistook the flu for a common cold and didn’t think they would get sick.

The most common symptoms of the flu were “three days of a fever, a drippy nose, achy bones, followed by a slow recovery.”  Sometimes other people would get a “knock out fever, bloody sputum, lungs filled with reddish fluid.”  The worst symptoms were when people got “deprived of oxygen and turned dark blue, the feet black, and people died” (Smith 1).  People wore cheesecloth masks to prevent getting sick but it didn’t do much good.  The people most affected were people in the twenty to forty age group.  The government decided to quarantine the sick and close public places.  Many advertisements told people to “steer clear of secretions of the nose and throat passages, conveyed on handkerchiefs, towels, cups and mess-gear” (1).  Fire stations held booths where people could get the “Aunty Flu” , a remedy that got sprayed down the throat. Some people were getting this treatment daily.

Fifty to one-hundred million people died in the nine months tha the flu had infected people; that is two percent of the people in the world.   In just San Diego “3,337 San Diegans came down with the flu; 202 died” (3).  The amount of people that usually die from pneumonia and the flu is 4,000 but in 1918 194,000 people died.  The flu slowed down when the virus became weaker, after killing the weaker people, usually the elderly.  After nine months of the flu running its course, it wasn’t strong enough to kill the stronger, younger people.  In the end the flu ‘killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years’ (2).

The influenza pandemic was happening at the same time that World War I was ending.  Many soldiers who had survived the war came home to find that their family and friends hadn’t survived life on the Home Front.  Although they had looked forward to coming home and spending time with friends and family, many soldiers found themselves lonely.  The flu had killed more people at home than soldiers fighting in the war.