What the Arctic reveals about coronavirus
The Arctic preserved samples of the virus that caused 1918 influenza pandemic — and impacts of the outbreak that have lasted until today.
A little over a century ago, the “Spanish” flu spread around the world with an astounding speed as millions returned home from the battlegrounds of World War I. (While the virus likely did not actually originate in Spain, the neutral country’s media was the only one within Europe to cover its outbreak sufficiently, as other countries censored reports). Many young men who had survived gruelling trench warfare succumbed to pulmonary hemorrhage, edema, and other respiratory infections caused by a deadly strain of the H1N1 influenza virus. Between 1918 and 1920, it infected 25 percent of the world’s population, killing between 17 million and 50 million people. Unusually — and unlike with the COVID-19 virus currently ravaging the planet — young people were hit hard particularly hard.
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