Free Outbreak! Plagues That Changed History by Bryn Barnard

British suffered from “three-day fever.” The Italians complained of “sand fly fever.” The Americans came down with “knock-me-down fever.”
    Mild it might have been, but the first wave arrived at a critical time for Germany. When General Erich Luden-dorff first heard that the enemy was suffering from what the Germans called
Blitzkatarrh
(“lightning flu”), he in-formed Kaiser Wilhelm II that it might help the war effort. But when German soldiers started coming down with the very same complaint, General Ludendorff blamed the failure of his July
Friedensturm,
or “peace offensive,” on the disease. This decisive battle had been Germany’s last real chance at victory. Afterward, American soldiers poured into Europe, ensuring victory for the Allies. Though the conflict would rage on for many more months in 1918, the outcome was essentially decided.

Gauze, laws, and paws
    By July 1918, the first mild wave of the epidemic had faded around the world. In August, the second lethal wave of the disease appeared simultaneously among troops in Sierra Leone, France, and Massachusetts. It quickly spread. In the United States, though thousands started dying every week from the flu, Americans were more interested in war than illness. They took many actions that unwittingly spread the disease. Thousands of soldiers were shuttled around the country from base to base. Tens of thousands of men lined up to register for the draft. Hundreds of thousands packed together for Liberty Loan Bond parades to raise money for the war. By September, nearly every major American city was infected. In most cities the epidemic lasted for a month or so.Some cities had two or three waves of illness.
    San Francisco had ample warning to prepare for the worst. The height of the West Coast epidemic lagged about a month behind that on the eastern seaboard. Officials were able to read newspaper accounts from unprepared cities like Philadelphia. Understaffed hospitals there had been flooded with patients. The city morgue (capacity thirty-six) had overflowed, with hundreds of decomposing bodies stacked four deep in the halls. The bereaved were made to dig the graves of their dead, and funeral homes doubled their fees. In preparation for the inevitable, San Francisco ordered extra coffins and prepared the cemeteries. In order to slow infection, a “mask ordinance” required all citizens—even babies—to wear gauze masks in public at all times. This rhyme was a reminder: “Obey the laws / And wear the gauze / Protect your jaws / From Septic Paws.”

     
    At the Philadelphia morgue during the flu epidemic, bodies were stacked four deep in the halls.
     
    To meet the demand for masks, merchants offered several fashion options. There was the classic hospital-style mask (a half yard of gauze folded over like a triangular bandage), a more comfortable extended-muzzle version that gave the wearer a piglike appearance, or a veil that hung loose below the chin. All would prove essentially useless: in homes, where people congregated closely, masks were not required; they could also remove them to eat. Moreover, as the flu virus was as yet undiscovered, no one understood that millions of the tiny pathogens could slip through a single hole in the coarsely woven gauze. People died at about the same rate in San Francisco as in other cities. City services were unable to cope. Still, it must have been a surreal sight: thirty thousand masked San Franciscans singing, dancing, and waving flags in the Civic Center on November 11 to celebrate the armistice that marked the end of the war.

Losers and winners
    The flu had numerous repercussions. Many people who caught the flu and survived later developed
encephalitis lethargica,
an illness that caused victims to fall into an around-the-clock sleep punctuated bycomas. About five million people died from this ailment before it disappeared in 1928. Those who survived never fully recovered—they were aware of their surroundings