How the Spanish Flu Worked

The Spanish Flu killed anywhere from 20-100 million or more people over 1918/1919. All of this played out with World War I in the foreground, one big reason why the flu spread so far, so fast. Learn all about this devastating pandemic in today's episode. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there, there's Jerry
over there, and well, well you guys are feeling fine.

(00:21):
I'm a little under the weather, but it's still stuff
you should know, the two thousand nineteen Flu edition, that's right.
And this is dangerously close to published date for us. Yeah,
a little a little close for comfort if you ask me.
But you know what, this gives us the opportunity to
do real time stuff. Yeah, like say Seattle, Portland in

(00:43):
San Francisco. Yeah, we're gonna be in your town next week.
Uh the week, No, you're right, dude, next week when
this comes out. Yeah, so uh more Theater on January,
uh in Seattle, Revolution Hall in Portland on je X,
and then our annual Sketch Fest show at the Castro

(01:04):
on January. Tickets are moving kind of slow, guys, And
I think there's been, uh, there's been people writing in
saying they didn't even know that you were coming. Yeah, so, uh,
I don't know what the problem is. We're coming, We're coming. Yeah,
We're still troubleshooting what the deal was, what, because we
don't ever want to happen again. But um, I just
feel good knowing that everybody's not mad at us out

(01:26):
in the Pacific Northwest. Well, I hope not. I would
hope not too, but it was kind of luck in
that way for a second. We think it might be
something to do with our promos, who knows, so we
wanted to put it in this episode, right, like in
the body of the episode, like you can't miss it.
So now you know, go to s y s K

(01:46):
live dot com and there will be links out to
go get tickets, info all that stuff, and we'll see
you guys next week. So hurry, hurry, hurry, go get
your tickets. We'll see you next week next Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday, right, and I will be feeling better by then,
I'm hoping, ye. So, um, the chuck is kind of

(02:07):
appropriate that we're talking about the flu, because I don't
have the flu, but I'm a little sick, a little funky. Um,
I'm not contagious, so don't worry. Well, I appreciate you
wearing the face mask anyway, which it turns out, according
to this uh this article that ed wrote, um it, Uh,
it's yeah, useless. It doesn't do anything. Yeah, I don't.

(02:28):
I don't know if that's truly useless, is it? Yes?
I think it is actually quite useless. Um. If it's
a bacterial infection, it might do something because bacteria is
much larger than viruses. But viruses are very very small,
certainly small enough to be expelled through the mash of
a gauze when you cougher sneeze into it, sneeze and
that mask puffs out and little particles spew. Maybe just

(02:52):
not as far. Yeah, yeah, they might be slowed down
a little bit. Who knows, maybe like being pushed through
like a little channel beats them up and increases their
tragic Oh my god, we don't know yet. Uh. Yeah,
but this is a flu centric episode, and I can't remember.
I think I was turned onto this idea. You were

(03:14):
turned on by this idea to this idea? Um, I
think it was when I was sort of going down
a World War One rabbit hole. Oh yeah, you were
talking about that in some episode. I think that was
what it was. So this is pretty appropriate that we're
talking about this because exactly a hundred years ago today,
basically the United States. The world really was standing there, stricken,

(03:40):
picking up the pieces of basically shattered societies all around
the globe that has just been leveled, absolutely leveled by
a flu epidemic that came through and killed so many people,
made so many people sick. It's widely seen as possibly
tied for for if not, it's a very close second

(04:02):
to the worst natural disaster and the worst pandemic to
ever hit human kind in the history of our species. Yeah,
that's how bad it was, and it happened just a
hundred years ago. Yeah. I've seen estimates as high as
fifty million people dead. Yeah, I've seen I've seen it
up to a hundred million. I think fifty million. Is

(04:23):
it used to be like the low end and now
or the high end? And now it's starting to become
clear it's probably about the low end. I think the
low end is twenty Oh is that right? Uh? And
I'm gonna name the high end. Five million people. That's
supposedly from what I've seen, how many were actually infected? Oh?
Well possibly, And not only that, like, when that many

(04:46):
people die, it changes the course of world history. Yeah,
it changes it. Basically, it unravels the fabric of society
as we'll see sociding cultures and rules and uh, just
how humans looked at the earth. It like it it
really turned the forward march of humanity in a certain direction.

(05:12):
It definitely did. And like this, it's really difficult. Like
this is one of the most fascinating pieces of of
world history to me because it was like it's it was.
It's pretty well documented because it happened only a hundred
years ago, and because it's just so insane what happened,
Like the Spanish flu was so bad chuck that um

(05:35):
people were dying of thirst because there was no one
around them to take care of them. The people who
were still healthy were so afraid of catching the flu
they would basically let their neighbors die alone in their
homes rather than go help them and take care of
them and give them water. Like that's that's how bad
it was. Like people were dying of thirst from being

(05:56):
so laid up by the flu and not being able
to get water themselves and not having anyone to take
care of them. And it happened in the United States
hundred years ago and all over the world. And despite
all of this horrific thing, Uh, we're about to talk
about the Grabster started his article writing about hockey as
he is from Buffalo, and then later on he's like,

(06:18):
it's the third wave that that canceled the NHL playoffs. Yeah,
I mean it is a footnote though. The Stanley Cup,
the very famous Stanley Cup, the trophy of the NHL
uh that has all the winning teams etched into it
says series not completed. That's all it says. And unless
you know what's going on, you might just scratch your

(06:40):
head and say, why was the series not completed that year?
And the reason is because the Spanish flu literally killed
one of the players and got quite a few of
them sick on both sides of the Seattle Metropolitans. In
the Montreal Canadiens, yeah, I guess, like right before the
fifth game was going to be played, um or the

(07:00):
sixth game was going to be played, they like four
of them were in the hospital. One died, and they're like, yeah,
we'll just go ahead and canceled the series this year.
But what's what is crazy is like, that's pretty bad
because think about it, you're a hockey player, you're probably young,
you're probably pretty healthy. That's really weird to die from
the flu. Uh, and that was a big hallmark of

(07:23):
the Spanish flu as we'll see. But this was also
like a third wave. This is the third like roundhouse
that the Spanish fluid delivered to the global population when
the when the Stanley Cup was canceled or the the
NHL Playoffs was canceled that year in amazing. So let's
talk a little bit about flues normally, shall we. Yeah,

(07:46):
I mean, I think everyone understands that the flu is
not bacterial like you were talking about. It is a virus,
and ordinarily like the flu that you have, is that
the flu you have are cold. It's just like a cold.
It's just funk, you know what I mean? You me
and I went to Vegas for her birthday, um, to
go see Dave Chappelle and John Mayer, and I think
just being on the plane and being kind of run

(08:08):
down and everything, we we both kind of picked up
a little bit funk. I think it's a tummy year.
It's a funky kind of year. Emily gets sick every January. Yeah.
I think it's also has to do with the holidays, uh,
just because they're as fun and and unadulterated ly enjoyable
as they are, they're also a taed stressful sometimes. Well yeah,

(08:30):
and her that's her busy time of year for her business,
so oh yeah, that's it's it's almost inevitable that she'll
get sick every January, just like her body's fighting and
fighting all through December and then just goes literally the
day after Christmas. It's like sniff, yeah, he just crashed.
Here it comes. Yeah. So the flu was a virus,
and in most cases, like I was saying, you have

(08:51):
the you know, you have your eggs and your fever
and your coughing, and you're tired, and uh, sometimes it
may be affect your stomach some sometimes it may not,
but it's usually in and out in a few days,
and that's sort of the end of it. Um. If
you're like you mentioned, if you're elderly, or if you're
a little little tiny one, uh, the flu can be

(09:12):
pretty dangerous in any case, but ordinarily in healthy adults,
is just a regular sickness that comes and goes. Yeah,
especially like if you look at you know, a graph
of ages starting at an infant all the way say
two hundred year olds. If you if you look at
flu deaths, it goes down in the middle and then
goes back up. It's high on one end, high on

(09:32):
the other end, very low to non existent in the middle,
like healthy, like middle aged and younger adults don't die
from the flu normally, right. Uh So, there are many
types of flu. Uh, many strains of this virus. And
in nineteen eighteen, for the Spanish flu, which we'll get

(09:53):
to the naming of that in a second, it was
type A subtype H one in one because they have
subtype designations, and then within those subtypes there are other strains.
Because the flu is constantly trying to outrun humans and
humans trying to beat it down. Yeah, I guess so.
So it's like I'm just gonna change a little Yeah,

(10:14):
watch this, and it goes big boom boom boop, and
now it's Bumblebee from Transformers exactly. Uh So, this was
a genuine pandemic called the Spanish flu. And I never
knew this at all, but it had really had nothing
to do with being out of Spain or have anything

(10:35):
to do with Spain other than the fact that Spain
was neutral in World War two, I'm sorry, world War One,
and while other newspapers around the world were really censoring
things and not so free. Spain was just reporting. The
only country really reporting about the flu. Yeah right, I
didn't call the Spanish flu. I didn't realize this either.
In the Spanish were like no, no, wait, wait, you

(10:57):
guys aren't getting this. It's all just disproportionately on us.
But it started in Kansas, it right. It seems like
the um the that Spain had the worst of it because,
like you said, they were the only ones who were
openly reporting on it. And some of the Axis and
Allied actually that might have been World War two, but
some like France, Germany, Great Britain, the US, the governments

(11:19):
were at war and their propaganda machines were in full swing.
They didn't want to do anything to impact morale. They
also didn't want to give the enemy any indication that
their troops were sick, that there was a flu virus
spreading through their their ranks, so they just downplayed it
at home and everywhere. But since Spain was neutral, they
talked about it. It It seemed like Spain had the worst

(11:39):
of it. That's totally not the case. It's just it
was all just reporting. Spain just reported on it openly.
That's fascinating. To me. Yeah, totally fascinating, and uh, it
was a legit pandemic because it touched UM kind of
every corner of the globe, except for notably two places
that were able to successfully quarantine themselves. What was that

(12:01):
American Samoa, Yeah, in New Caledonia. Are those even places?
They still are places thanks to those quarantines. Yeah, it
could have wiped them out. Oh yeah, I think some
places did get wiped out. I believe Western Samoa UM
was basically wiped out by the Spanish flu. There were
plenty of UM like settlements, especially Native American settlements in

(12:23):
more remote places like Alaska, that were almost entirely if
not entirely wiped out UM. And then you know if
depending on where you went around the world, like Japan
got hit, but they they had like a one percent
infection rate or something like that, where other places had
like like I think globally it was about thirty. So

(12:44):
it was strange how it hit people differently. But it
was definitely, like you said, it was a real pandemic
in that it was everywhere around the world that this
strain of the flu was leveling people. Yeah, and there's
a couple of other kind of startling stats. That five
million in fact that you were talking about not dead
but infected. That was about a thirty three percent of

(13:04):
the world's population, which is startling. And in the United
States life expects you know how it talked about it
just changing everything. Oh yeah, it actually altered life expectancy
in the US by twelve years. Yeah, from nineteen eighteen
and nineteen nineteen, they expected average expected or the life

(13:25):
expectancy like you said, it went from it went to
thirty six point six for men and forty two point
two for women man, which is pretty like the the
what it had been before was still pretty low, but
to drop twelve years overnight, basically because I don't think
we've gotten this across yet, Chuck. What we're talking about

(13:45):
happened in less than a year. In less than a year,
a third of the world's population came down with this
very virulent flu and as much as five percent of
the world's population died from that flu in less than
a year. Yeah, and the we'll talk about the different waves,
but the second deadliest wave really was about four months

(14:07):
and and the amount of people that died within a
four month period all over the world was just like
it's hard to really grasp it really is. And the
other thing about it too, is largely because of that
propaganda machine, that was the propaganda machines that were in
full operation in all those different countries, along with um
kind of exuberance for the war being over or just

(14:30):
basically being focused on the war. Because the Spanish flu
happened at the same time World War One was going
on and ending. Um, it wasn't. It's not remembered like
you think it would be. Like you would think this
would be like everyone would know about this and be
talking about it, and it's not. It just kind of
got swept under the rug historically speaking in a lot
of ways. You want to take a break. Yeah, I

(14:52):
think that was a uh wonderful, long winded setup. That's
what we do. That's how we do things, alright, Chuck.

(15:30):
So let's start at what maybe the beginning. There's this
guy named John M. Barry, and he is a not
Embury by the way, his meddle initials M, and his
last name is Barry. Uh. He is an historian, and
he wrote a book called The Great Influenza, and he
wrote an article based on his research called how the

(15:52):
Horrific en flew spread across America. It's on Smithsonian magazine. UM,
and this guy's done some leg work and he has
created a theory that's starting in about January of nineteen eighteen,
the beginning of nineteen eighteen, uh, there was a flu
outbreak in Haskell County, Kansas, which is a very rural

(16:14):
agricultural area, and that some of those farm boys who
came down with the same flu made their way to
Camp Funston, which is part of Fort Riley, Kansas now
Santa Fe in particular, was is the town if you
want to even pinpointed further in Kansas, not New Mexico,
Santa Fe, Haskell County, Kansas, three miles west of Camp Funston, YEP.

(16:38):
So some of these farm boys who were sick with
this flu ended up being drafted and sent to Camp Funston.
And it was Camp Funston where they think the first
cases of the Spanish flu started to break out. That
first wave happened in about the spring and then traveling
over to Europe into the summer of nineteen unique teen.

(17:00):
And it wasn't that first wave wasn't particularly bad, It
wasn't any particularly noteworthy, and it was mostly confined to um,
two dough boys basically people who worked on on military
basis as well. Um, and then maybe towns near military basis.
But that was about it. And then it went away
and it wasn't like had it just been that, it

(17:22):
probably would not have been remarkable historically at all. Yeah,
and you know this, we may not even know about
any of this as far as its origin. And there
have been a lot of other theories over the years
about its origin, but this one seems to hold the
most water now. But we may not have ever known
anything about any of the origin if it had not

(17:42):
been for Dr Loring Minor, who was a great for
a small of a county in town as this was.
He was a really great town doctor. Uh. And he
was like at the time, flew just would come and go,
like I said. So was never reported on in journals.
It was never uh, it was never really a big deal.

(18:05):
It was never published. But Dr Loring Minor was so
alarmed at the rate of spread in his small town
and the how much of a wallop that it packed.
He actually published his concerns in a in a journal
called the Public Health Reports journal has a different name today,
but he was the only person in the world expressing concern.

(18:28):
And I believe this is still the very first case
of influenza being reported because of how like unusual and
and deadly that they thought it could be. Yeah. I
saw that too, that the very fact that this guy
reported it at all is remarkable. Yeah. So they kind
of trace it back and say, we we now think
we know where ground zero was, Haskell County, Kansas. So

(18:51):
from Haskell County, Kansas, it went to Camp fund Stone
and then it went over to Europe. This is the
first way that we're talking about. They hadn't changed their
name because that used to be we put the fun
in fun Stone, right, and then after that they were like, yeah,
we gotta go to Fort Riley. So um, over in Europe,
something happened to this, to this flu I mutated in

(19:15):
some way, it did something. It mixed with some other
flu maybe from Asia, maybe something that was present in Europe,
who knows, but there you know, there was a flu
outbreaks over there in um in Europe, particularly at one
called a Topoa. I think I added a little extra

(19:35):
mustard on that, but um, it's generally how you say it.
It was a huge British camp that held up to
a hundred thousand troops and it was packed elbow to
elbow in the summer of nineteen eighteen, and so that
definitely did not help UM keep the flu under wraps.
It's spread pretty quickly. And then some of those dough boys,

(19:56):
those American UM soldiers fighting in World War One who
were in Europe made their way back to the United States,
and so this this strain of flu that had made
its first wave out of Kansas over to Europe came back.
And when it came back, it was different in all
the worst ways. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about

(20:16):
how it got overshadowed by World War One, but it
may not have even happened had it not been for
World War One, because the conditions of of army boot
camp and in shuttling soldiers overseas, like you were saying,
it's tight quarters, it's like just dude stacked on each other,
all up in each other's faces, and it was just

(20:39):
sort of a recipe for disaster. Yeah, while this war
was you know, not unfolding, it had unfolded by that point,
but it was really just a confluence of factors. It
was really kind of staggering. Well, plus also you can
make the case that those Kansas farm boys never would
have made their way to Camp fund Ston, and they
certainly never would have made their way to Europe. So

(20:59):
it probably wouldn't have happened, especially if the thing mutated
in Europe and got worse. The Spanish flu, Yeah, probably
never would have happened had it not been for the
First World War. Yeah. The other problem was and there
were a lot of factors to why it spread so quickly,
but one was because that it didn't really look like
the flu in a lot of cases. Uh doctors really

(21:20):
quite you know. They they were slow to diagnose as
a flu and then as an epidemic because a lot
of people were dying from pneumonia and uh sometimes for
a while they thought it was bacterial in nature. So
they were coming up with vaccines and all this stuff,
and none of that was working, and so it kind
of took a long time. Even though doctor uh Minor

(21:43):
in Kansas was kind of ringing the bell, no one
was still paying attention. So it took a long time
for them to kind of sound the alarm and say,
all right, we got a real problem here, right, And
at the time they knew that viruses existed but they
still weren't sure what they were. They called virus is
filterable agents because they had figured out and I think
back in that if you've filtered an infection through something

(22:07):
called a Chamberlain candle, which can filter out any in
all bacteria, some infections still persist, which shouldn't be the
case because you've just filtered out all the bacteria. So
that means that there's something smaller than bacteria that they
we don't really know about that can cause infection. There's
some other pathogen out there, and this is the way

(22:28):
that they that they approached viruses um. I think by
the time the Spanish fleet was still around, we knew
that there was something out there, but no one had
actually ever seen a virus, and wouldn't see a virus
until I think the nineteen thirties because they're too small
for optical microscopes. So the the idea that this was
caused by a bacterial agent, it makes a lot of sense.

(22:48):
That's what humanity had experience in dealing with entreating. But
then on top of it, like you said, so many
people were dying or getting pneumonia that it just appeared
like it was a horrible material pandemic rather than a
viral one or typhoid or cholera, like it was misdiagnosed
all over the place because some of these symptoms were

(23:09):
just unusual, Like bleeding out of the ears. It's so bad.
When you're bleeding out of your ears, things are going
badly for you. Like, it doesn't get much worse than
bleeding out of your ear. You have serious issues if
you're bleeding, unless, of course you've like you know, nicked
the inside of your ear with your fingernail. If you're

(23:30):
bleeding out of your ear from inside of your head,
that's bad news. Yeah, I just want to make sure
I'm on the record as being having that position. I'm
bleeding out of your ears anti ear bleeding pretty much.
Um and with the war effort, Like again, it's just
all these things are kind of happening at once. So
it was sort of just kind of sneaking through the

(23:51):
back door and like the worst way you could ever imagine.
So this is all going on. Uh, the reason we
we do know so much of aut it and I
know that it hasn't gotten all the attention of like
the plague and things like that, but in the medical
community it has they weren't like, all right, well that
went away. That's great. Like here in modern times, like

(24:12):
starting in the nineteen thirties, they started, you know, on
the download collecting blood samples and examining tissue slides and
getting you know, either from from people who had died,
like from the bodies, or from people that were still
alive that survived it. And they have really been doing
all this kind of cool like almost like a criminal

(24:32):
case like this research to try and learn because you
know you can only you don't want something like this
to ever happen again, right right, Well that one of
the scary things, Chuck, is that like most people who
are in public health and epidemiology and virology say like, yeah,
this could totally happen again, and it would probably be
way worse because of our connectibility, how connected we are. Um,

(24:57):
we probably have a greater chance of containing it, just
because of the the advances in public health that we've
we've undertaken thus far. Um. But the it could, it
could happen. I actually talk about this a lot, including
the Spanish flu and um this one biotech episode of
the End of the World, and it it from what
I saw it, it could very well happen just about

(25:20):
any time. Well this other part I don't quite get,
Um does it does this strain still exist or not?
Because it was a little confusing in that part. Okay,
get this too. It had gone totally extinct it it
had come and gone as we'll see it just basically,
maybe it burned through everybody, It killed off everybody so

(25:41):
fast that it couldn't spread any longer. And like you said,
flu viruses mutate like very frequently, so also our body.
Like if you survive a viral infection, you typically are
conferred immunity for the rest of your life. So the
people who are left, we're not going to catch the
Spanish flu again. Okay. So um. And it had run,

(26:02):
it run its course, gone extincts so much so that
not even just the strain of flu, but all H
one N one flus left human circulation. By the fifties
nine fifties. Somebody, this dude named Johann Houlton, who was
a microbiologist in the fifties and then later on in
the nineties, he went to a little town called Brevig, Mission, Alaska,

(26:23):
and he dug up the corpse of a Native American
woman and an upac woman who had died and who
had been buried in a mass grave from the Spanish flu,
and took samples of her lung tissue and took it
back to another microbiologist whose name I cannot remember, who
basically synthesized the genome of it. Okay, great, we understand

(26:44):
it genetically, we've got it. No, they went one step
further and actually created the Spanish flu virus again, resurrected
it from extinction. And yes, the Spanish flu is still
around because humans brought it back to life. All right,
Well that makes more sense now, I mean in one way, right,
Not not that it's a great thing to do, but well,

(27:04):
what's funny is like, if you depending on what you read,
like if you read like a popular mechanics article about
it's it's like, this is an amazing, great achievement. But
for my money, it was a terrible achievement. I don't
I really don't think we should have taken that extra
step and resynthesized it. Although admittedly we have learned a
lot about the Spanish flu from that process, but I
think there you could have still stopped short from resurrecting

(27:26):
it from Extinctioneez. Yeah, alright, So we talked a lot
about the three waves, which is really unusual, uh for
an epidemic like this. Um it, I mean it had
happened before. I'm thinking the sixteen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. Um,
but this was a whole different sort of beast. So

(27:47):
that first wave hit in the spring of nineteen eighteen, uh,
specifically like March and April. It was in the US,
it was in Europe, and it was in Asia. So
it's already I mean, that's some serious ground that it's
covered already, thanks again to World War One. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,

(28:07):
this this one wasn't like super super deadly. Uh. Military
bases and camps was where it was mostly found. But
again with these troops moving everywhere, it was really kind
of moving fast. The second wave was the really really
deadly one, and that's one where I mentioned it. Over
about a four week I'm sorry, four months, sixteen week period,
it did most of the killing, uh that fall, with

(28:30):
October being the most deadly month in the United States
in the history of the United States. To this day,
it's the deadliest month. A hundred and ninety five thousand
people died in America from the flu in October of nineteen. Yeah,
like literally everyone was touched in their family, like there's
no way to escape it almost at that point. Yeah,

(28:50):
and I mean like we'll talk about it later, but
like this is that's how a society can can crumble.
That's how like a small community can crumble when that
many people die, I that quickly, Like things, things just
get out of whack for to say the least. Yeah,
So this one. They think that the reason this one
came back so deadly was because it mutated over that

(29:11):
summer and came back even more lethal than it was before.
And uh, some people who had been infected by that
first wave did have some immunity on that second wave,
which is pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess
if you survived the first wave, you would, especially if

(29:32):
it was just a slightly mutated version of the exact
same strain. I could see that. Well. That's what I
wondered though, is like how much does something have to
mutate before that immunity doesn't count? Well, I don't know,
we should say chuck two um, Like we're speculating here
that the first wave and the second wave were the
same strain of fluid um. That's never been proven in

(29:53):
the same the like fluid samples and the tissue samples
that you said they took back in the thirties, those
were all from second wave victims and survivors. We don't
have any samples from the first and maybe not even
the third wave, but definitely the bulk, if not all,
of the samples we have, and so all the studying
we've done has been from that second most deadly wave.

(30:14):
So they may not have been the exact same strain,
but it is weird that people would have had an
immunity to that second wave if they've been through the first. Yeah,
I think it was connected for sure. I do too.
So third wave hits after a short period of time.
This was less widespread, not as severe as the deadly
second wave, but worse than that first wave, which was

(30:34):
not so deadly. And um, this was mainly through like
the beginning of nineteen nineteen through April of nineteen nineteen. Yeah.
Ed points out that, like, it depends on where you're
talking about, but it was much more sporadic geographically. It
wasn't like all from from January to April the whole

(30:55):
world didn't have the flu It's just around the world
that that that flew outbreak is still going on, but
not everywhere. Should we take another break? Let's all right,
We're gonna take another quickie and then talk about kind
of what also made this especially deadly. Right after this,

(31:43):
all right, we're going to talk about what made this
so deadly in addition to the war going on at
the same time, there was some other weird, weird factors
and characteristics of this this flu. Right, we mentioned young
and healthy people already, but it bear saying again. The
death rate for people between twenty five and thirty four

(32:04):
was really really high. And conversely, uh, children were infected
at a high high rate. It's not like they weren't
getting it, but they had a low mortality rate. And
nothing about that makes sense. Yeah, So for for the
twenty five to thirty four age group, who you would
think would probably be the the the um, the highest

(32:25):
group of survivors, they had a two times higher death
rate than the forty five to sixty four age group
during the Spanish flu, which was ancient. Yeah yeah, really,
I mean, if the average life expectancy normally was something
in the forties to the fifties, that is kind of ancient. Actually,
I would be on death's door in n Yeah, and

(32:46):
and just like with a just like with a typical
flu infants and the very elderly and people with compromised
immune systems. Uh, they died in the greatest numbers. But
when you look at that graph that there's a huge
spike among like young healthy adults, UM, where they're normally

(33:07):
shouldn't be. And there's a lot of theories about why
that happened. UM. One reason is because it was spread
among soldiers, and those soldiers were starting to come home
at the time, so they spread it to their wives
who were about the same age. Uh, they spread it
to their children, they spread it to their friends, So
it definitely was hanging around a specific age group. But

(33:30):
they also think that there was a large amount of
deaths and that this also accounts for the pneumonia deaths
that killed so many people. UM something called the pyto
keine storm, which sounds like terrifying to me. Yeah, that
is uh, when you have such an overstimulation of immune
cells that it just generates. Basically, you you drown in

(33:52):
your own flegm because of an over stimulation of immune cells,
creating so much fluid, like your immune system is so
good and so healthy it kills you. Your immune response
is so massive. And this is that they're just starting
to understand cytokine storms. Cytokines activate immune cells, and they
that's what causes the inflammation, the the the water on

(34:14):
the lungs, which then gets infected by bacteria, which gives
you pneumonia, which can kill you. Um. They they're just
starting to understand this, but they have linked it to
the appearance of new flues that people haven't been exposed
to before. And this is probably the number one reason
why people UM who were young and healthy adults died

(34:34):
in such numbers because their age group hadn't been exposed
to any H one N one flu before. So not
only was this a new h new strain of H
O and N one to their bodies, this is a
brand new type of virus that they've never been exposed to.
And so people whose immune systems were um overamped died

(34:56):
from these cytokine storms. They think, Man, Another usual thing
was how fast it killed you. U. There were cases
where you would literally say, I'm not feeling so good
and then twelve hours later you were dead. Can you
believe that? Yeah, it's victims died very very fast, um,

(35:17):
which you know, when people are dying this quickly, it
just compounds. And then you've got like hospitals and overflowing
with people, and then you can't care for them, and
then people being turned away because they're too full, and
then they spread it more. And I mean there were
reports of people toe tagging people that were still alive.

(35:37):
They just knew that they were going to be dead soon.
Did you see that American Experience documentary. It was really tough,
like what the apparently bedside manners just developed in the
last couple of decades. Because but did it well, yeah,
that's a good question. But I mean, can you imagine
going to the doctrine, the doctor saying like, better get
in line for a casket. Son. Yeah, it's of year old. Yeah,

(36:00):
we're telling your twelve year old that you just punched
that doctor in the mouth or putting a toe tag
on a live person. That's just nuts. But that's that's
there's verifiable reports that they did this. Of course back then,
if you were twelve, you've you've seen a lot of
life kid here middle eight, you you you've had two
full careers, right, you retired from coal mining at seven,

(36:23):
but get yourself fitted for that casket because you're not
going to live to see thirty like your old man.
And here's the lollipop. So sad. I know we're making
fun of this, but that's the only way I can
get through it. Another thing that it did was, um, well,
we've we've already kind of hit on this a lot,
but how far, how quickly it went so far? Uh
And again, largely because of this war and because it

(36:46):
was it was attacking people so violently and quickly like US,
towns in the United States tried to quarantine themselves, but
it was just too late. Like it was, you couldn't
stem that tied at that point, you couldn't. There was
a guy on the American Experienced documentaries who lived through
it as a boy, and he was saying, like it was,
it was coming our way. It was coming down the

(37:06):
highway toward US. Just town after town would get his
flu outbreaks, and his town tried to quarantine themselves, but
the mailman brought it in. And you know, if it's
not the mailman, it's gonna be somebody else. If you
have a soldier returning from home from Europe, you're not
gonna be like, you can't come home yet. We gotta
wait till this this potentially never ending flu epidemic goes

(37:27):
away before you can come back home. Like there's just
some way it's going to get through. And it got
through apparently everywhere except New Caledonia and American Samoa. Yeah. Um.
Another thing, another characteristic of it was the symptoms that
had so like, in addition to bleeding out of your ears,
you would get mahogany cheeks, these weird brown spots on

(37:50):
your cheekbones. You would turn blue because your your lungs
were not oxygen eating the blood nearly enough, so your
extremities and your face and lips would turn blue. Um. You.
There was a nurse in that documentary that said you
needed to basically be on guard at all times because
people would shoot blood out of their nose across the

(38:12):
room and like you would just have to step out
of the way to not get splattered by it. Um.
Like people would scream when they were touched even lightly.
It was just an astoundingly bad flu. There was vomiting, nausea,
um like, delirium, just every every horrible symptom you can

(38:34):
think of. People basically had and this is like if
you're a doctor at the time, you're not like, oh,
this is the flu. You were like, what is this,
I've never seen anything like this before. Well, and again
that led to it getting even worse because of the
confusion again over symptoms. How slow they reacted because of
the war, Like it's really hard to imagine a pandemic

(38:55):
outbreak coinciding with the World War. Yeah, like the likes
of which the war the world had never seen at
that point. Yeah, you know, and they said that, you know,
people had room to really focus on one thing, and
they had to choose between the war and the flu pandemic,
and they chose the war instead. Well, because it was
also a time I mean, not to make two light
of it, but back then it was when you know,

(39:17):
like you're not really sick, like pull yourself up by
your bootstraps and get to work, right, you know, people
dying over there. People didn't have the most sympathy for
for you know, sickness like this, get yourself fitted for
a cast, get stuff complaining. So eventually they did, but
it was just that slow slowness to react that that

(39:37):
made it such a health crisis, especially in the US. Yeah,
it's not like they didn't know that there was such
thing as infectious disease, and that if you banned public
gatherings and said no, you you know, we got to
close these movie theaters or these bars, or not hold
these parades, that it would have a positive effect on
public health. But they chose willfully, uh, the people in

(39:58):
charge chose not to out of a sense of patriotism
and nationalism and um the idea that you didn't want
to have any impact on morale. That public health commissioners
around the country were just ignoring it, and in in
cases where they weren't ignoring it, they were outright downplaying
it in the press, saying this is not this is
not a thing. It's fine, like any any reports you're

(40:20):
hearing are overblown. And there was one commissioner in particular,
guy named Wilmer Krussen, who was the health commissioner of Philadelphia.
Hard They got hit the worst out of any American city,
and it was because of this guy and the moves
that he made, and one of the big ones, one
of the biggest mistakes he made, knowing full well that
there was a flu pandemic going on in his city,

(40:42):
he allowed a Liberty Parade to take place in Philadelphia
in September late September um, where two hundred thousand people
showed up to the parade, and within a few days
Philadelphia had it worse than anybody. In one day, seven
d fifteen time people died in Philadelphia and one day

(41:03):
within a week or two of this parade taking place,
like the parade was, was you know, moment zero for
the real spread of the pandemic in Philadelphia. And it
was this guy's fault. Yeah. That and with his declaration
a virus and every cheese steak, I don't know, it

(41:23):
depends on the virus. I might still eat the cheese
steak to tell you that. Oh man, I love a
good cheese steak. Oh yeah, it's hard to find him
in Atlanta. It really is pretty good. Ones. What he's,
of course, over near the park is kind of the
the old standard. Do you like it? Though? What he's
it's all right, I mean it's pretty traditionally Philly like,
is it. I thought they like left off the cheese

(41:45):
was and put on ketchup. Really they don't put on ketchup.
I think they do well. I just had one and
had no ketchup. On it. Well, maybe they changed the recipe,
because I swear to God that I've had one with
ketchupon it there really I know. Did you ask for
a bloody Oh yeah, that was the problem. I asked
for it with ketchup. They do. They do bastardize it

(42:07):
with the They have one version with bacon. Uh, that
is not as good as you would think, Like everything
isn't better with bacon. That's absolutely true because what they
do is a it's not like strips of bacon wedged
in the role. It's it's diced up and cooked with
the meat. And normally I would say like, oh man,

(42:29):
sign me up, but it's something about it just didn't
work here. Yeah, I think. Plus the fact that pigs
are smarter than dogs also makes makes things less good
with bacon sometimes too. What yeah, there's really smart, I know,
But well you gotta bring dogs into this. Have you
seen like that that peta ad it's like a pig. No,

(42:52):
it's a a labrador's body with the pig's head on it.
And it said like if if pigs looked like this,
would you eat them? Or so then they got a
bunch of a bunch of stuff for it. It's a
pretty weird looking at too. Yeah, I would say, so. Um,
all right, so let's let's talk about let's wrap this
puppy up, okay, and the legacy of of the pandemic

(43:15):
of nineteen eighteen, the Spanish flu also called the Spanish
Lady and the Blue Death, and I think Flanders disease
in Germany, Flanders. Not sure why. Maybe it started h
near a place called Flanders. Yeah, and in Belgium, I belief.
But that's I mean, that's a pretty long standing tradition

(43:35):
is blame some neighbor you don't really like for the
flu that's killing off your population. You know, well, this
was all blamed on Spain. They had nothing to do
with it. You don't want to call it like us
flu or anything now. So I want to say one
more thing though, Chuck. So we talked a little bit
about the um about the society breaking down, right, you
said that people ran out of caskets. I don't think

(43:56):
like we really got that across. Like, put yourself in
a mind where they're so many dead people all of
a sudden that you don't have any caskets to put
them in anymore. You have to wait for them to
to hurriedly build more caskets unless the people that build
the caskets are dead. Yeah, that's another real possibility to
like imagine building a casket, falling into it from the flu,

(44:18):
and well they just leave you in there because you
are dead. Now. Well, but that's what I mean, Like
we're kind of kidding. But when I said it altered humanity,
Like in a small town, what if the doctors died
and the teachers died, and then there were towns that
may have survived, but they had no infrastructure because there
were no cops or doctors or teachers or you know, police,

(44:41):
like you know, it was it was killing everybody. So yeah,
so you could just be left, you know, with a
bunch of twelve year olds, right, yeah, yeah, it's children.
Are the corn up in there? It kind of was.
I'm sure that happened to a lot of towns that
are now run by children as out of custom. Maybe,
so that's probably where it started. But but the other
thing that that was a casualty of the Spanish flu,

(45:03):
especially in small towns, was like civic life because if
you were healthy, you looked at other people on the
street with suspicion. If you went out at all. You
didn't stop and talk to people and say hi. Maybe
you didn't do all the things that keep like a
community glued together. And so communities started to fall apart.
And then when public officials finally did start to react,

(45:24):
they shut down schools, they shut down bars, they banned gathering.
Some towns banned funerals, like you couldn't have a funeral
for your your dear departed mother. You had to leave
her in a box on your porch for the undertakers
to come get on an open wagon, like it's the
medieval plague collectors, you know. I mean, this was nineteen eighteen.
I know that sounds like a long time ago. But

(45:45):
this wasn't the sixteenth century. No, no, So this is
this was going on, and at the same time, it
wasn't leaving a genuine, lasting national impression on America or
anywhere really in the world that I could see, which
is bizarre. Well, yeah, that's one of the weird things
about its legacy is and again we had to keep
hammering this home. But because of the war, it wasn't

(46:08):
like the Spanish flu went away, which was really weird.
It went away very much. Uh, kind of quickly and
no one really knew why. Um, but it's not like
that happened. And then they were like, all right, well man,
we really need to change public health policy, and we
really need to to get all these breakthroughs and sanitation
and vaccinations going and really really take care of things.

(46:30):
Now they kind of were just like, oh, well, thank
god that's gone, and it would be decades before they
made real changes in policy to to help prevent something
like this, which is bizarre because you would think, like,
you know, when something like that happened, it would have
that effect, but it didn't. It just didn't like there
were there were no teachable Oprah moments from it. It
was just like you said, everybody was glad it was gone. Yeah.

(46:52):
I thought the bit that Ed included about Woodrow Wilson
had I had heard this before. It was really interesting. Um.
He was was US president at the time. He got
the flu in January of nineteen nineteen. Obviously did not
die from it, but there are people and historians that
say that it altered him so much, um, that it

(47:13):
left him very paranoid, very secretive, and even caused him
to impose harsher reparation reparations on Germany uh in the
Treaty of Versailles, which basically crippled Germany, which led to
the right of the rise of Nazism and the Nazi Party,
which led to World War Two. So World War Two

(47:34):
may have never even happened. Who knows had it not
been for Woodrow Wilson being sick with the Spanish flu.
Maybe it's bizarre, it's a bit of a leap, but
I have other people I've heard that case made. I've
seen it too, that he he just kind of changed
and apparently took a completely different tack than he originally
had intended as reparations against Germany. Yeah, and in in

(47:56):
US towns, it wasn't. I mean, this was the time
when people opened up their door to a stranger if
and they were in need, and that really changed that.
Like people were, like you said, they not only were
they not hanging out on the street, but like people
were turning people away at gunpoint, and people were taking
their own lives and the lives of their family. It

(48:17):
was just like it was brutal. Yep, it was brutal.
And it's weird that it's not, you know, more recognized
than it is. But hopefully we just contributed it to
being remembered forever, that's right. But we now know today
because we have continued to study the flu of uh
really how a pandemic can play out. And it's not

(48:38):
like uh science has forgotten. They are still studying the
causes and the repercussions and what we can do better.
It's really interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating, is what it is.
By God, If you want to know more about Spanish flu,
there's a lot more to it. We talked about everything
we possibly could, but there's it's just big. So you

(49:00):
can go search for it in your handy search bar
of your handy UM search engine on your handy computer.
Do that. And since I said that, it's time for chuck. Oh, yes,
you say it? Okay, administrative details, all right, everybody, This

(49:31):
is the time of the show. Every quarter or so's
it quarterly? Roughly? Yeah? Definitely after um uh the holidays,
because we're thankful for everybody who thought of us over
the holidays, that's right. So we want to begin by
saying we got a lot of Christmas cards and letters,
and rather than list all of those individually like we should,

(49:56):
we're just gonna give a blanket thank you for Christmas
cards and let and well wishes in the form of
a written or typed letter. It's always nice to get those. Still,
I should say we're pretty thankful after the whole days. Uh.
Let's see Dan Yell and Adam. They sent us a
wedding invitation and they got married in Phoenix, Uh, the

(50:17):
weekend after our live show in Atlanta. So Mazel Tov
and congratulations and best wishes to Dan Yell and Adam.
That's right, we got a very special gift. We got
a real deal American flag that was flown in battle,
in combat. Major Mike Wilkes of the United States Air
Force sent usis flag flown by Special Forces Ops crew

(50:39):
on actual combat missions. Uh. And it came with a
certificate of its legitimacy signed by four of the crew members. Right.
That's about as legitimate as it gets. Um. John Hank
sent us some of his Ready Bamb lip balm. That's
I feel bad for John. That's a tough act to follow,
but you can check out it's good lip bomb. You

(51:01):
can check it out at ready bomb r e a
d y bomb be a LM fine dot com. Ready
Bamb dot com by John Hank We got a lot
of pens everybody. We did our episode on Ballpoint pens
and people felt the need to share their favorites, which
is pretty cool. So there will be some pins scattered

(51:22):
throughout here. But first up, Christina Twig sent us her
favorite pilot easy blue colored Pilot, easy touch, fine point.
Not bad. It's still no pilot G twos, but it's
not bad. Yeah, I've been I've been trying out these
different pins. Oh that's interesting. Another dude, uh named I
can't try. I try them, but then they just like

(51:42):
cramp my hand and I start bleeding from under my
fingernails something like that. You know, I just can't do it.
Another guy who sent us pens is Ryan Pinto, who
has a great name. Thanks Ryan, that's right. Marcus Claytor
from the UK sent me a hand drawn film still
from the movie Rushmore. He's a movie crush fan as well,

(52:02):
and he said he draws film stills by hand and
send me one that you want me to do. So
I picked the very famous last shot of Rushmore of
of Max and his teacher Um standing in front of
each other to dance at the at the Big Dance
while everyone else is dancing around them and it's really
really pretty. I gotta see it. I haven't seen it.

(52:25):
It's awesome. Our old buddy van Nostrin, one of the
original fans, I would say, and now a pal. Yeah. Um,
he and Lee are both pals. Uh. He sent us
a Satanic skull as his you know, the usual, and
a vintage relief map of Puget Sound, his beloved sound. Yeah.
That's because he's a big kayaker now and I've hit

(52:47):
him up yesterday and I said thanks for the map,
and he said, now you will know where to find
my body one day or something like. Yeah, at the
very least we'll find his foot floating and sound. That's right. Uh,
Aaron Cooper are speaking of old friends and listeners. Uh.
Coop has been around with us for many, many years
and is very famous within our community for for doing

(53:09):
the excellent photoshops of us. And he's still every Christmas
sends us the selects and nice large printed form and
he sent us another bounty of posters this year. But
a great guy. He's also an administrator on the s
Y s k Army Facebook page. Yes, and also designs
a lot of the T shirts and just all around

(53:31):
great guy. Yeah, good guy, great father, nice goatee. Who
else do we have, Chuck? Rebecca Rube. Yes, that's Robe,
believe it or not. Okay, good. I'm glad you you
corrected me because it's R O O B. And I
was like, I feel bad, but I'm not calling Rebecca
Rube and I'm glad it's Robe. So Rebecca Robe sent

(53:52):
us a box full of goodies from South Dakota, and
especially for Chuck, a ween poster from the artist Change Rotor,
who can be found at s H A I N
E A RT dot com Shane art dot com. That's right.
And if you live in South Dakota, particularly near a
story of South Dakota, you can do a lot worse

(54:14):
than R and R landscape design, which is Rebecca's jam.
She works out in gardens for people. Nice. That's very
lovely work. That's good work for sure. Mimi Bailey of Greenville,
South Carolina, send a lot of a lot of cool things.
They sent a toy for Momo, thank you. They sent
some Neco wafers for me and this, and I think

(54:35):
tiny Tabasco as well. And then Jerry didn't get a
little tiny miso miso because we always laugh about the
Miso soup with tree she loves. Yeah, that's for Mimi
Bailey of Greenville. Siggy Holmgren, who also has a wonderful name,
sent us some glass jewelry for our ladies and glass

(54:56):
art by Siggy on Etsy is where you can find
that stuff. Thanks Siggy. Cameron Henley sent me I've been
talking a lot about my love for Australian rules football,
specifically the Melbourne Football Club, so he sent me a
Melbourne Football Club calendar. While those hunky men, I'm gonna
get out on the wall right. Uh, let's see our

(55:17):
buddy Sweetwater Dave who has now become Badger Dave, who
has now become new Hampshire Representative Dave. Did we ever
say that Dave won his his UM his election. I
think we did, But if they're saying again he won
his election, congratulations Dave. Uh. He sent us some olive
oil from Spain. That Badger, which is a company he
works for, UM uses in some of their products and

(55:39):
they also sell the olive oil straight up and he
says it's great and Dave is right, So thanks Dave,
hope you're doing well. We also got tiny Tabasco bottles
from Nikki Carl and Jackson Russell. Nice nice family. Who
else Alison Gallagher who uh is also a movie crusher
and stuff you should know listener who recently moved to Atlanta.

(56:00):
So welcome Allison. Oh, yeah, welcome. She sent a shirt
that says, with great beard comes great responsibility to me
and a little iPhone plug in fan because I gets
so hot. You know, you literally just plug it into
where you charge your iPhone and it spends a fan
blade because and I shall never be hot again. It's

(56:23):
it's ear piercing everybody. It's loud. Laura Stewart sent some
very nice gifts. She adopted an elephant in your daughter
Ruby's name, Chuck from the World Wildlife Foundation. That's right.
And she also adopted a honey bee in mine and
Yumi's and Momo's name. So thank you very much, Laura.
That was very kind of you. That was very sweet.

(56:45):
This one came with an elephant plushy. Uh and my
kid loves this thing, named it Navy. We we didn't
get a plushy. She said that she looked for a
plush honey bee forest but couldn't find one, so she
just sent us a dead bee. Oh well, that's nice.
I'm just getting a stinger still intact, right right, with
a post it note with you written on it. Thanks Laura.

(57:07):
I'm just teaching well and thanks to everybody. That's all
we have for now. The slate is clean. If we
did forget you, then uh bother us on email and
we'll get you in the next round for sure. And
if you want to get in touch with this, you
can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and
check out all of our social links. You can also
find me at the Josh Clarkway dot com and you
can send me Jerry Chuck and everyone involved an email

(57:30):
to stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff Works dot com.