Forums: 1918 Flu Pandemic

9 Jul 10 - Fourteen earthquakes have occurred below Iceland's Mýrdalsjökull glacier during the past 48 hours - one within the last 4 hours. Katla Volcano lies beneath the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. Katla Volcano usually erupts every century, says Iceland's President Olafur Grimsson. and the last eruption was in 1918. "The time for Katla to erupt is coming close." "I don't say if, but I say when Katla will erupt," Grimsson says. "We have been waiting for that eruption for several years." "It can create, for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society."

Results from 34 swine flu victims in New York were released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a December 7 bulletin. The swine flu symptoms and effects on the lungs of the victims were similar to the effects of the 1918 Spanish flu, which had an extremely high mortality rate around the world. Other reports of H1N1 infections deep in the lungs have been reported around the world, including Ukraine, China, Brazil, Norway, and the United States, in Iowa and Utah. These infections have been linked to a change in the receptor binding domain of the virus. Swine...

The Great Influenza pandemic killed as many as 100 million worldwide when the global population was less than a third of what it is today. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages in a century. It didn't single out the very young and the very old. Half those who died were young people in the prime of life - in their 20's and 30's. By a bizarre and unprecedented stroke it turned the immune system itself into a killer. Two-thirds...

Officials feared mass hysteria in major cities. Citizens were urged to stay indoors and avoid congested areas.

The devastation of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic is well known, but a new article suggests a surprising factor in the high death toll: the misuse of aspirin. Appearing in the November 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online now, the article sounds a cautionary note as present day concerns about the novel H1N1 virus run high. High aspirin dosing levels used to treat patients during the 1918-1919 pandemic are now known to cause, in some cases, toxicity and a dangerous build up of fluid in the lungs, which may have contributed to the incidence and severity of symptoms,...

The pandemic death toll was about 100 million in a global population less than a third of today's. Yet even that number underestimates the horror of the disease. Normally influenza kills the very young and the elderly, but in the 1918 pandemic half those who died were young men and women in the prime of their life, in their twenties and thirties. The great human existential question is, could it happen again? It can and will in some form. Though the pandemic stretched over two years, two-thirds of the deaths occurred within six months. The deaths were of viral or...

The new H1N1 influenza virus bears a disturbing resemblance to the virus strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, with a greater ability to infect the lungs than common seasonal flu viruses, researchers reported on Monday. Tests in several animals confirmed other studies that have shown the new swine flu strain can spread beyond the upper respiratory tract to go deep into the lungs — making it more likely to cause pneumonia, the international team said. In addition, they found that people who survived the 1918 pandemic seem to have extra immune protection against the virus, again confirming the work...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Associated Press will collect undisclosed damages as part of a settlement of its lawsuit against All Headline News, a site that allegedly misappropriated AP stories online. The AP considered the lawsuit an important test of the "hot news" doctrine, which was established in a 1918 Supreme Court case involving the AP. That principle holds that while facts cannot be copyrighted, news organizations can sue when competitors copy time-sensitive stories.