{"id":25,"count":5,"description":"

A separate, but related event of the First World War was the Great 1918 influenza pandemic . This virulent new strain of the flu was first observed in the United States and was misleadingly known as the \"Spanish flu\". It was accidentally carried to Europe by infected American troops with 25% of Americans contracting  the influenza virus. The disease spread rapidly through continental America, Canada and Europe, and eventually reached around the globe, partially because many people were weakened and exhausted by the famines of the World War. The exact number of deaths is unknown, but about 50 -100 million people are estimated to have died from the influenza outbreak worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The first cases of the influenza epidemic in Britain, appeared in Glasgow<\/span><\/a><\/span>,<\/span><\/span> in May 1918. It soon spread to other towns and cities and during the next few months the virus killed 228,000 people in Britain. This was the highest mortality rate for any epidemic since the outbreak of cholera in 1849.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In Britain desperate methods were used to prevent the spread of the disease. Streets were sprayed with chemicals and people started wearing anti-germ masks. Some factories changed their no-smoking rules under the mistaken impression that tobacco fumes could kill the virus. Others believed that eating plenty of porridge would protect you from this killer disease. However, despite valiant attempts, all treatments devised to cope with this new strain of influenza were completely ineffectual.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

In Hull, the outbreak began during the last week of June and lasted for almost a year. During the period June 1918, to May 1919, a total of 1,261 deaths were recorded as being due to influenza, whilst deaths ascribed to pneumonia and bronchitis were considerably above the average for the previous ten years, The peak of the epidemic was in October and November 1918, when over a five week period, 684 flu deaths were recorded.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The Influenza epidemic of 1918 particularly affected those between the ages of 20 -35. Many men who had survived the horrors of fighting were to die in large numbers as the war ended from flu. <\/span>The Hull Memorial contains the name of many influenza victims.<\/span><\/p>","link":"https:\/\/www.ww1hull.com\/?cat=25","name":"Influenza 1918-19","slug":"influenza","taxonomy":"category","parent":7,"meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ww1hull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/categories\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ww1hull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/categories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ww1hull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/taxonomies\/category"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ww1hull.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/categories\/7"}],"wp:post_type":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ww1hull.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&categories=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}