The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry. Examining the 1918 Influenza, John addresses one of the worst pandemics in history. The 1918 pandemic surpasses COVID-19 in so many horrible ways.
As World War I raged across Europe, American soldiers unknowingly took influenza to the battlefields. Yet US military commanders well understood the risks before they ordered them abroad.
Barry’s work is a sobering reading. The 1918 flu killed 500 million people. John certainly begins strong for readers diving into the 1918 pandemic.
However, chapters three to thirteen review in great detail the history of medical education item United States, Germany, and France at the turn of the century. Do not lose interest. John’s lessons for COVID come into focus slowly.
Death itself could come so fast. Charles-Edward Winslow, a prominent epidemiologist and professor at Yale, noted, “We have had a number of cases where people were perfectly healthy and died within twelve hours.” The Journal of the American Medical Association carried reports of death within hours: “One robust person showed the first symptom at 4:00 P.M. and died by 10:00 A.M.”
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At the same time, Barry, history, and medical documentation can now identify the source. Yet, it would not be Madrid or Barcelona as the source. Epidemiological evidence confirms the influenza virus originated in Haskell County Kansas, where an army cook at Camp Funston took ill on March 4, 1918. The camp was built to train and deploy solider to France. The domino effect of sending soldiers to European battlefields would only accelerate a global spread that we fully understand today.