Is it true that the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain?

There is a common belief that the influenza virus that caused a pandemic at the beginning of the 20th century is called Spanish flu because it was first registered in Spain, and from there it spread to other countries and continents. We decided to check whether this etymology of the name of the disease is true.

If you look at the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), you can find many geographical names in the names of diseases. West Nile virus was first identified highlighted from the blood of a patient from Uganda, the country where the Nile originates. Zika virus named in honor of the forest where the rhesus monkey was caught, from whose blood it was isolated. Congo-Crimean fever, as the name suggests, was fixed for the first time isolated in both Crimea and Congo. Even the causative agent of the modern coronavirus pandemic is sometimes called Chinese virus. It is logical to assume that a similar naming principle could have been used in the case of the Spanish flu.

Spanish flu (influenza virus serotype H1N1) infected at least 500 million people (for comparison, as of September 14, 2021, coronavirus infection in the world got sick 225 million people), of which, according to various estimates, died from 50 to 100 million (from COVID-19 - only 4.6 million people). Only almost 80 years later, in 1997, scientists succeeded get a tissue sample with the virus preserved in organs buried in permafrost. In 2002, researchers were able to recreate the genome of the virus, and in 2007 infect obtained by the monkey virus, causing corresponding clinical symptoms in them. Like SARS-CoV-2, the Spanish flu virus posed a threat because provoked in patients with cytokine storm.

According to the latest data, the first cases of this flu happened in the spring of 1918 in the United States among military personnel at one of the bases in Kansas. However, the disease was not severe and was described local doctors like a cold. Throughout the first wave, the Spanish flu did not was different lethality, and at the end of summer it completely declined. It is appropriate to draw some parallel here with the coronavirus, whose first variant, the Wuhan one, also had less lethality than the “Alpha” and variants that appeared after some time "Delta". 

The second wave, which began in the fall of 1918, touched upon not only the USA, but also the countries of Europe, primarily the US allies in the First World War - France and Great Britain. Researchers notethat the war had significantly weakened the immunity of Europeans and therefore made people more vulnerable to the virus. By the end of autumn, the epidemic reached Asia and Africa, affecting the territories of the former Russian Empire. For some time, deaths were attributed to factors other than the virus. They also mentioned mustard gas, which was used for the first time as a weapon of mass destruction, and even spread a conspiracy theory about poisoned aspirin produced by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. Interestingly, a hundred years later, this conspiracy theory in a modified form continued to exist - in 2017 in Kazakhstan spread newsletter that paracetamol tablets contained the Machupo virus. The warring countries tried until the last to hide the outbreak of a previously unknown disease. However, in neutral Spain, wartime censorship did not apply, so the country's media openly began to write about an epidemic of a disease unprecedented in its lethality. 

It is worth noting that the Spaniards themselves did not use such a name in these publications: they called the disease is either the French flu, suspecting that French migrant workers spread the virus, or Russians. True, there were no microscopes strong enough to determine the causative agent of the disease, so the culprit in the epidemic appointed Pfeiffer's bacillus (today known as Haemophilus influenzae). The epidemic subsided in 1919, with isolated outbreaks registered until 1920.

Thus, if we strictly follow the principle of naming a disease according to the place where it first appeared, it would be more logical to call the Spanish flu American or American. However, it is worth noting that the United States is not deprived of mentions in the ICD. Suffice it to recall the spotted fever Rocky Mountain or strains of influenza called "Washington" And "Wisconsin".

Is it true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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2. Conspiracy pandemic