The name of this flu was Spanish Flu, but it did not break out in Spain. At the beginning of the outbreak, as many as 8 million people were infected in Spain, even the King of Spain was infected, so it was called the Spanish Flu. It was the end of World War I. The United States had just entered the war but had committed millions of soldiers. These soldiers lived in overcrowded barracks, providing excellent conditions for the spread of the flu. The first records of the latest flu came from U.S. military barracks.
Unlike other diseases, the Spanish flu has a particularly high mortality rate for young people in their 20s, averaging as much as 5 percent! More than a third of soldiers in many barracks were infected, and as the war continued. Roving soldiers carried the flu virus to every corner of the continent, and even Eskimo villages were not spared. People died of the disease everywhere. The death rate from this cold was much higher than that of the common flu. A U.S. Army officer at the time describes, "These people who got sick looked like the common cold at first, but when they got to the hospital, their condition deteriorated rapidly. In a few hours, red spots started to grow on me, and then it turned into malignant pneumonia. The faces of the patients began to turn blue and purple, and it was impossible to tell if they were white or black. Because there were so many deaths, the hospital couldn't accommodate so many people, and many of the patients were put into body bags and thrown out before they died.
While the European continent was littered with corpses caused by the Spanish flu, transport ships from Europe brought the virus back to Asia, and within a month, all continents on the continent had been spread. At last count, the only human settlement on Earth that hadn't been spread by the virus was the island of Marajo at the mouth of the Amazon River. Even in Eskimo villages within the Arctic Circle, many villagers have died from the infection. When the flu was sent back to the United States, as many as 200,000 people died in the United States in the first month alone. All the newspapers at the time described the flu as a "plague of doom". Later, medical personnel were afraid to come into contact with sick people, and many lay at home, starving to death without help. Even some nurses were afraid to take calls from helpers for fear that the virus would spread through the phone lines.
Because there were so many deaths globally, it indirectly led to the early end of World War I because all the countries that went to war were short of soldiers. Even the French, American and British heads of state who attended the Paris Peace Conference after the war contracted the flu. Wilson, then President of the United States, suffered a stroke shortly after returning home, and many believed the cause to be the Spanish Flu.
Until the spring of 1920, this terrible plague never seemed to appear, mysteriously disappearing. To this day, it is not fully understood how this plague spread across the globe in a short period of time and why it suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth altogether. But after this incident, many people realized the importance of public **** hygiene. People realized that dirty environments can help the spread of disease, and the modern medical system is gradually improving.