Barometer | 3 January 2019

Paths of infection

2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the height of the Spanish flu pandemic which is believed to have killed 3 per cent of the world’s population. But how Spanish was it, and what should it have been called?
Spanish flu: There is little evidence it originated in Spain, but news of the disease first appeared in the Spanish press, because the country was not subject to the wartime reporting restrictions of most European countries, so it was assumed it started there.
French flu: Virologist John Oxford has suggested the disease crossed to humans at Étaples, a transit and hospital site in the Great War. Besides harbouring large numbers of men with weakened lungs, it also had a piggery and poultry farm — animals known to play a role in the development of strains of the influenza virus.
American flu: An outbreak of flu at Fort Riley in Kansas in March 1918 affected soldiers who had not yet travelled to European battlefields.