Replies to post #366766 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

!918 flu origin? Covered here - Potential origins

Despite its name, historical and epidemiological data cannot identify the geographic origin of the Spanish flu.[2] However, several theories have been proposed.

United States

The first confirmed cases originated in the United States. Historian Alfred W. Crosby stated in 2003 that the flu originated in Kansas,[61] and popular author John M. Barry described a January 1918 outbreak in Haskell County, Kansas, as the point of origin in his 2004 article.[8]

A 2018 study of tissue slides and medical reports led by evolutionary biology professor Michael Worobey found evidence against the disease originating from Kansas, as those cases were milder and had fewer deaths compared to the infections in New York City in the same period. The study did find evidence through phylogenetic analyses that the virus likely had a North American origin, though it was not conclusive. In addition, the haemagglutinin glycoproteins of the virus suggest that it originated long before 1918, and other studies suggest that the reassortment of the H1N1 virus likely occurred in or around 1915.[62]

Europe

The major UK troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples in France has been theorized by virologist John Oxford as being at the center of the Spanish flu.[63] His study found that in late 1916 the Étaples camp was hit by the onset of a new disease with high mortality that caused symptoms similar to the flu.[64][63] According to Oxford, a similar outbreak occurred in March 1917 at army barracks in Aldershot,[65] and military pathologists later recognized these early outbreaks as the same disease as the Spanish flu.[66][63] The overcrowded camp and hospital at Etaples was an ideal environment for the spread of a respiratory virus. The hospital treated thousands of victims of poison gas attacks, and other casualties of war, and 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp every day. It also was home to a piggery, and poultry was regularly brought in from surrounding villages to feed the camp. Oxford and his team postulated that a precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.[65][66]

A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found evidence that the 1918 virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.[67] Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting the influenza began in Austria in early 1917.[68]

A 2009 study in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses found that Spanish flu mortality simultaneously peaked within the two-month period of October and November 1918 in all fourteen European countries analyzed, which is inconsistent with the pattern that researchers would expect if the virus had originated somewhere in Europe and then spread outwards.[69]

China

In 1993, Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the Spanish flu at the Pasteur Institute, asserted the precursor virus was likely to have come from China and then mutated in the United States near Boston and from there spread to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, the rest of Europe, and the rest of the world, with Allied soldiers and sailors as the main disseminators.[70] Hannoun considered several alternative hypotheses of origin, such as Spain, Kansas, and Brest, as being possible, but not likely.[70] In 2014, historian Mark Humphries argued that the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines might have been the source of the pandemic. Humphries, of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, based his conclusions on newly unearthed records. He found archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China (where the laborers came from) in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.[71][72] However, no tissue samples have survived for modern comparison.[73] Nevertheless, there were some reports of respiratory illness on parts of the path the laborers took to get to Europe, which also passed through North America.[73]

One of the few regions of the world seemingly less affected by the Spanish flu pandemic was China, where several studies have documented a comparatively mild flu season in 1918.[74][75][76] (Although this is disputed due to lack of data during the Warlord Period, see Around the globe.) This has led to speculation that the Spanish flu pandemic originated in China,[76][75][77][78] as the lower rates of flu mortality may be explained by the Chinese population's previously acquired immunity to the flu virus.[79][76][75]

A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found no evidence that the 1918 virus was imported to Europe via Chinese and Southeast Asian soldiers and workers and instead found evidence of its circulation in Europe before the pandemic.[67] The 2016 study suggested that the low flu mortality rate (an estimated one in a thousand) found among the Chinese and Southeast Asian workers in Europe meant that the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic could not have originated from those workers.[67] Further evidence against the disease being spread by Chinese workers was that workers entered Europe through other routes that did not result in a detectable spread, making them unlikely to have been the original hosts.[62]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Potential_origins

Earlier i told DragonBear the origin theory in his was interesting as i didn't recall ever seeing that one before.

[DragonBear]

So I guess you are relying on a flu from China that wasn't nearly as fatal as the one from Kansas

By what documented metric? Were different variants involved globally, and how was that reported, when during that time period science couldn't differentiate variants? Did the Chinese gov of 1917 have the capability to accurately report mortality rates? For any higher mortality rates in E Europe was that due to the virus "variant" or due to starvation, poor hygiene, and displacement due to WW1?

You just can't time warp today's epidemiology standards back to 1918, and claim there was a different more virulent variant virus strain in Kansas. Or that the variant which came to dominate Europe had to be from Kansas.