The Spanish Flu Epidemic and Its Potentially Far-Reaching Implications

A lot of experts have been puzzling over the disappointing failure of the current bird flu scare to bloom into a full-blown pandemic. I think you might find the roots of this puzzling failure in the famous Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.

As we all know, the Spanish Flu Epidemic was so virulent that a guy could feel the onset of the symptoms as he boarded the subway, and be dead by the time he reached his stop. We've all heard that anecdote. Or if we haven't all heard it, I've heard it enough times for all of us. My dad never gets tired of pointing that shit out.

But I was wondering, how exactly were these details established? It sounds a little fishy to me. Who was this apocryphal subway guy? Chances are, they didn't just coincidentally notice he was dead right at his stop. They probably didn't notice until the end of the line, and by then, there's just this dead guy still sitting there. How would they even know which stop was his?

I could see if it was a bus trip. Maybe the driver knows his regulars. But this is an impersonal subway, in the biggest city in the...wait, now that I think about it, I'm not sure that they specified New York. But how many American cities even had a subway, back then? TEN?? Probably not even that many!

Apart from the difficulty of establishing which stop was his, how did they know that he felt the onset of the Spanish Flu just as he got on board? Did he announce it?! "I've just felt the onset of the Spanish Flu! Time me!" This isn't the sort of thing one is likely to publicize in the middle of a deadly epidemic.

But while as you can see, the effects of the Spanish Flu have been greatly distorted and exaggerated, it cannot be denied that a significant number of people succumbed to the reaper over the due course of that fateful plague. It was a disaster the likes of which are on a par with something we can't even compare. And therein lies my original point: exposure and susceptibility. I believe that the Spanish Flu was so widespread, so virulent, and so deadly, that nearly all of the most genetically susceptible specimens within the human population were weeded out. I think it likely that those who were exposed to the flu and survived, were those who had a greater degree of resistance to it - which was then passed on to their descendents. In other words, us. We're like those penicillin-resistant bugs.

Obviously, any degree of genetic susceptibility may not be as important as other factors such as age and overall physical health, when dealing with the flu. Equally obviously, there are different strains of the flu, and probably no one is genetically invulnerable to all of them. But there certainly may be greater or lesser degrees of resistance to the flu, within the general population. If a really awful flu came along and struck down all of the most susceptible, later generations might well be in a sense "inoculated," to a limited degree.

This theory might go part of the way towards contextualizing the puzzling failure of the current avian flu scare to "catch on" in a big way with today's populace.