At the beginning of the year the russian-language youtube channel "History Pi" (through which i learned about this forum) published a curious revision of the Spanish and world press on this epidemic. At the beginning of the year, this information seemed very relevant to me. The automatic translation of this video makes no sense in many parts. I made an English translation of the subtitles (not perfect, but to keep the meaning), and suggested the author use it. The author of the channel thanked me, but unfortunately it seems he was never able to add the subtitles made to his video. So i decided to publish this translation on this forum.
Augmented Reality: the Spanish flu
Most people think they know all about their recent past. For example: the Spanish flu.
The largest epidemic of the early twentieth century. It seems that the epidemic has already described with from all sides. There is a known person from whom the epidemic began, the number of people who became ill, and the reason why the epidemic was called the Spanish flu. But almost everything you know about the Spanish flu doesn't match the real facts.
Even the name "the Spanish flu" itself. Let's start with the name. It seems to me that a very beautiful word has been chosen for the name of the largest epidemic in human history: the Spanish flu. There's some kind of magic in that word. But here's what's strange: people couldn't really call this epidemic with this word. Let us first consider the official version of the origin of the name, and then I will tell you why it could not be.
It was 1918: World War I was in full swing, unfavorable conditions, devastation, cold and famine, and the displacement of huge masses of people contributed to the development of a huge number of infectious diseases, among it was the flu. But since the military censorship of the struggling parties during the First World War did not allow reports of the epidemic that had begun in the army and among the population, the first news about it appeared in the newspapers of Spain in May-June 1918. Why in Spain? Because Spain maintained its neutrality and there were no military operations on its territory. Spain lived a normal peaceful life and therefore, when in May 1918 Spain had the largest flu outbreak and 8 million people were infected (which is almost 40 percent of the population of Spain), the newspapers published articles about the flu epidemic, and from the Spanish newspapers the whole world learned about the terrible flu epidemic. The place where the epidemic began, so this flu was called Spanish.
Very good historical version, which no one doubts, but there is one very big oddity in it: imagine, Spain, 1918, a peaceful country, everything is fine, is not involved in hostilities, only getting rich, selling food and equipment to the warring parties. People go to concerts, social events and then in May the flu appears: 40% of the population gets sick. Probably, all major Spanish newspapers should write about this event on the main pages, should write about the number of dead and about preventive measures. They should have written about it. But it never really happened.
The largest Spanish newspaper ABC, the second most important in Spain, practically does not write about the terrible epidemic of influenza. In May 1918, articles are written about anything: the situation in Russia, Europe, decorative art, new submarines and even the results of the national lottery.
Of course, sometimes there are articles that mention the flu. Here on May 16, 1918, page 18 shows that the flu killed 145 people, 60 died of cancer, 89 of chronic bronchitis, 23 of pneumonia and 124 of other respiratory diseases. The next mention of influenza will be only on June 4, 1918 newspaper, page 20. Then on June 15, page 8, there is a mention of bronchopneumonia. I checked all the issues of one of the most popular Spanish newspapers in February, April, May, and June 1918 - I found only three references to the flu epidemic. These are small articles written practically on the last pages. But according to historical data, 8 million people fell ill in Spain during this period.
It turns out that the articles of our time wrote that in Spain, 40 percent of the population fell ill. Only in Spain itself in 1918 did not know about this terrible epidemic. In the newspapers of 1918, there are small notes about the flu, but no one writes about the global epidemic. Judging by the ABC newspaper, Spain is living a normal life. Spaniards go to work, rest in theatres and they don't even know that 40 percent of the population had a particularly dangerous flu. Again, it's unclear how the global community first found out about the flu. According to the official version, from the Spanish newspapers. But those small notes, which were published in the last pages of Spanish newspapers - could not affect the world community.
There were enough of those reports in all the European newspapers. In 1918 people were dying of pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid fever. And there were tens of thousands of such cases, and the newspapers of Germany, Russia, France and other countries wrote about it. A few small articles of Spanish newspapers could not interest the world community, it simply would not have noticed by them. Therefore, the question of the name the Spanish flu remains open, as this flu epidemic has hardly been noticed in Spain. But this is based on articles from newspapers in 1918. If you study history from the books of our contemporaries, it becomes scary how the Spaniards survived. It's a good thing the Spaniards of 1918 can't read the modern books. They'd probably die bacause of shock.
Now let's move on to the next question: the huge numbers of sick and dead around the world. It is said that 550 million people fell ill and 55 to 70 million people died from the Spanish flu. It's huge numbers, but it's not clear how those numbers were obtained. Even if you agree with the fact that 550 million people worldwide are sick, in all more or less serious articles about the Spanish flu mortality rate from the Spanish flu is from 1 to 7.5%. In the United States, the Spanish flu took the lives of 675,000 citizens and 3.01 percent of those affected. In the U.S. Army, the mortality rate was 1.25 percent for white soldiers and 1.39 per cent for colored soldiers. In the French Army in 1918, the mortality rate was 7.44 percent. In Kiev, there were 700,000 illnesses and the mortality rate was 1.5 percent. In Russia, the figures are from 1.5 to 3 million deaths.
But if to listen to more less serious experts in this question, for example, the head of department of infectious diseases of epidemiology of the Russian Medical University, Vladimir Nikiforov - in his interview he directly said that the number of deaths in 1918 from the Spanish flu in Russia can not be called exactly. After all, in Russia during these years raging typhus and now it is simply impossible to say from what disease people died in 1918. A link to an interview with Vladimir Nikiforov under video.
78 thousand soldiers of the British Navy were infected with the Spanish flu, 2822 people died. Mortality rate is up to 3.5 percent. It turns out that according to all the official data, the average mortality rate of those infected is no more than four percent. Let's take the 550 million diseased and real deaths no more than 4 percent. We get no more than 20 million deaths. That's a huge figure, but it's not 55 million, as a modern researcher likes to say. And what is interesting is that in the 20s, they called about the same figure - 20 million people died from the Spanish flu. The figure of "55 million" only appeared in the 90s.
Now let's look at the attitude to the Spanish flu in other countries, and for some reason no one considered it deadly in 1918. Buenos Aires, 26 October 1918: The cruisers Demerara and Infanta Isabel arrived in Buenos Aires with numerous flu cases on board. There were several deaths on board, but health authorities allowed passengers to unload without any preventive measures. Don't you think this is some kind of strange situation? After all, we are told how dangerous the Spanish flu was: people died in almost three days. The whole world already knew about the danger in October 1918, and here they let sick passengers into the city without any quarantine, and Argentina was one of the first in the world in those years in terms of living standards. Argentina let the carriers of a particularly dangerous virus into its territory with complete calm. Then in Buenos Aires 250 thousand people fell ill, but for some reason only 9 people died, all those who died of pneumonia. Survivors showed symptoms like headache, muscle pain, sore throat, high fever. The recovery came on the fifth day.
A similar story occurred at the end of November 1918: SS General von Steuben was transporting demobilized US citizens from Europe to New York. On the way to New York, there was a flu epidemic on the ship. Of the three thousand people, 50 died. In general, such a particularly dangerous ship is approaching New York, but New York City does not take any preventive measures against the spread of a particularly dangerous virus, do not prepare hospitals and quarantine facilities, on the contrary, the mayor of New York City organized a solemn parade for American heroes who returned from the war. In general, infected soldiers were able to personally communicate with tens of thousands of New Yorkers during the parade. After this parade, a wave of the Spanish flu swept across America. Again, we see a difficult situation to explain: the ship carrying the infected people is not only not sent to quarantine. On the contrary, there is a special parade to facilitate the transmission of infection to civilians.
There are several possible answers: firstly, a targeted sabotage, a specially created situation to transmit the virus to civilians. But I am inclined to another version: I think that in reality the horrors of the Spanish flu were deliberately exaggerated after the end of World War I.
I do not deny the epidemic itself. In 1918 there was an epidemic of influenza, but it was not very different from any epidemic of the late nineteenth century. There were many people who became ill, but most of them became mildly ill and recovered after a few days. There were, of course, cases of rapid illness, high mortality, people dying of pulmonary haemorrhage, but these were not mass cases. This is evidenced by the careless attitude with which ships with sick people were received in ports of other countries. Just imagine, if there were much more cases of hemorrhage of lungs, it would look like a manifestation of some pulmonary plague or similar terrible disease. No country in the world would allow to unload people spitting blood to come ashore. But all countries quietly allowed ships to enter the ports. So, in 1918, no one saw serious danger in the Spanish flu. So, at the time, it was a common epidemic and all that horror about the Spanish flu was invented later.
Someone was deliberately increasing the number of people who got sick and died from the Spanish flu: 8 million ill in Spain itself. The fact that the Spanish newspapers were not printing articles about an unknown and very dangerous disease. You can check for yourself what the most popular newspaper in Spain wrote about in 1918 - I will leave you a link and you can check all the numbers of the newspaper for 1918. I looked through February, April, May, June — I can not find a description of an epidemic that affected 8 million people. All video clips about the Spanish flu refer to these months, which is when the world learned about Spanish flu. I think that those people who refer to Spanish newspapers as the first source of information about Spanish flu themselves have never tried to at least look at what the 1918 Spanish newspaper looks like.
Today's scientists are surprised by the speed with which the Spanish flu was spread and the number of people got sick. After all, no next epidemic of influenza could not even come close to these numbers. For example, the Asian influenza pandemic. The pandemic had two waves: 1957 and 1959. In several parts of Asia, a sharp increase in influenza-like diseases was recorded almost simultaneously. This wave of influenza covered all countries in Asia in two months. In May, the epidemic spread to Africa, causing major outbreaks in several countries, reaching America and Australia in July. In September and October, the influenza pandemic spread widely to Europe and the USA. In May, the epidemic covered the Soviet Union. Within a few months, the epidemic had covered the entire world — like it was with the Spanish flu. The overall mortality rate is also high, at 1.5 percent. In the case of the Asian influenza, similarities with the acute manifestation of the Spanish flu were also observed. A characteristic feature of these cases is the rapid development of the disease, leading to a fatal end within a short time: sometimes 2 days, occasionally a few hours from the beginning of the disease. As a rule, symptoms increased and the treatment was ineffective even with antibiotics. Morphological signs of the disease were divided into 2 groups:
1) with predominance of common toxic phenomena with multiple hemorrhages, oedema and hyperaemia;
2) with predominance of local pulmonary changes having hemorrhagic pneumonia character.
By all indications, fleeting cases of the Spanish flu as well as deaths of Asian flu are very similar. The Asian flu of 1959 killed about 70,000 people in the United States. Exact data on the Soviet Union is not available because of censorship, but approximate figures: about 20 million people fell ill. Although the Asian flu spread very rapidly around the world it killing about one million people, it was very badly treated by medication. If it hadn't been for the huge number of additions and falsifications at the end of the 20s, the real number of deaths from the Spanish flu would have been roughly the same as the number of deaths from Asian flu in 1959. But no more than 5 million people. Now it is not very clear who benefited from the overstatement of the real number of deaths from the Spanish flu in the tens of times and attributed to the Spanish flu victims of all diseases raging in 1918. Such as: typhus, respiratory diseases, all pneumonia, cholera.
It is only clear that the Spanish flu is promoted by the same government groups that a few years ago promoted swine flu, and today coronavirus. Read the Spanish newspapers and things will get a lot easier. That's it, watch my channel.
Subtitles text file:
View: https://pastebin.com/qG7YiDLn
https://www.abc.es/archivo/periodicos/abc-madrid-19180516-1.html
