utenzi

In 1918 there was an outbreak of influenza. That's not unusual. Most winters see a flu going around. That's been true ever since British trading ships began circulating from China back to Europe and the Americas in the late 1700s. You see, birds are the main reservoir for the flu virus and since many birds are migratory, seasonal patterns of flu transmission occur. Many of the flus we experience have their root in shallow Siberian lakes where ducks spend their summer. When the weather turns cold, the ducks migrate to China and infect people with the flu virus, which in turn is transmitted to British sailors and then those sailors would bring it back to Europe with them. Year after year. Most years not many people died but occasionally the virus would be particularly deadly and hundreds of thousands would die in a pandemic, sometimes, like in 1889, over a million would die. But never in human history has there been as deadly a pandemic as the 1918 flu, often called the Spanish F...