90 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • APRIL 2018
REAR VIEW
RUNAWAY FLU
Not when, but if: Could a century-old enemy return?
By ANNIE WILKINSON
It was sociable, tenacious, and
adaptable. When it tired of torture,
it turned to murder.
The Spanish flu of 1918-1919 first
targeted soldiers training to support
America’s allies during World War
I. At Suffolk’s Camp Upton Army
base, 6,131 men were hospitalized.
To prevent panic, the press, the
military, and the government
downplayed it. But the pandemic
infected 500 million globally within
15 months.
A typical flu kills less than one
percent of those infected. This one
killed up to 100 million, including
675,000 Americans — 5 percent of
the world’s population.
EXTRAORDINARY VIRUS
In January 1918, farmers in dusty,
flat Haskell County, Kansas received
wartime subsidies for hog backs.
So, the farmers raised pigs. Flying
above the pigs, birds navigated major
flyways. Avian viruses can infect hogs,
especially in crowded conditions.
When a bird virus and human virus
infect a pig cell, they can produce a
virus that’s lethal to humans.
Suddenly, pig farmers were falling
down in the fields. Then, others
sickened. America needed troops to
fight in the “War to End All Wars,”
including Haskell recruits exposed
to the flu. Within weeks after
entering nearby Camp Funston,
1,100 soldiers were hospitalized and
thousands more sickened.
THE CAMP UPTON
KILLER
Brookhaven National Laboratory
now occupies the land where
Yaphank’s Camp Upton opened in
1917. In spring 1918, the flu’s first
non-fatal wave hit. Troops who
survived the virus transported it to
France and every European army.
Soon, a deadlier mutation decimated
upper respiratory systems and lungs
with viral or bacterial pneumonia,
sometimes suffocating victims in
bodily fluids.
In September, Upton closed to
check the virus’ spread. The New
York Times reported, “There had
been no deaths and no serious cases
of influenza,” but by October 1918,
Upton had 3,050 cases. The gauze
masks everyone wore offered little
protection: One sneeze broadcasted
500,000 virus particles, and viruses
survived on hard surfaces for 24
hours.
MAKING IT WORSE
Every few weeks, new brigades joined
the front, providing fresh bodies for
the virus. Physicians’ requests for
clean, uncrowded barracks were
ignored.
Surgeon General William C.
Gorgas admitted, “We can control
pneumonia absolutely if we could
avoid crowding the men, but it is not
practicable in military life …”
The “Spanish Lady” devastating
the European camps, trenches’
close quarters and international
seaports hadn’t actually originated
in Spain. Because Spain was neutral,
its relatively uncensored press
reported influenza statistics. That
made infections seem worse than in
France, Great Britain, and America,
who suffered more deaths from
influenza than war, but suppressed
facts to avoid encouraging enemies.
With no effective vaccines or
anti-viral treatments in that preantibiotic
era, the runaway death
toll likely ended the war earlier
than predicted. While other viruses
favored children, the elderly, and
those with weakened immune
systems, the 1918 strain ravaged
healthy victims like soldiers,
turning their immune systems
against their own bodies.
DISASTER-MOVIE
SCENARIO
New York churches, businesses, and
saloons closed. People starved, fearing
shopping for food, and nobody would
visit. “Healthy” people boarded the
Coney Island subway and died before
reaching Columbus Circle. In one 10-
week siege, 20,000 died.
But officials held that battling on
foreign soil trumped surviving in
the homeland. President Woodrow
Wilson rejected policies that might
weaken America’s role in the conflict.
U.S. Surgeon General Rupert Blue
described “mild cases of influenza.”
If the 1918 flu recurred today, it
would kill more Americans in a
year than die annually from heart
disease, cancers, strokes, chronic
pulmonary disease, AIDS and
Alzheimer’s disease. It’s possible:
Type A avian flu influenza viruses
that adapt best to vaccines spring
from the 1918 virus. A severe strain
could mutate this year (Northern
Hemisphere pandemics usually
hit in late spring or early summer).
New cases may have peaked, but the
season lasts through May.
Researchers recently found that
simply breathing without coughing
or sneezing spreads the virus. They
advocate staying home, vaccination,
and hand washing.
Jonathan Quick, M.D., Global
Health Council chair, takes it a
step further, saying, “We have
inadvertently developed a powerful
way of helping influenza to kill us,
100 years on,” citing the crowding
of thousands of pigs or chickens in
poor conditions, creating the ideal
lethal virus environment.
Despite our 1918 influenza genome
sequencing and global systems
tracking emerging strains, a new
pandemic could collapse global
economies, disrupt food and
medical supplies, and worse.
Quick says this “disaster-movie
nightmare” is “waiting to come
true, thanks to the most diabolical,
hardest-to-control and fastestspreading
potential viral killer
known to humankind.”
The trenches at Camp Upton were breeding grounds for the Spanish flu
a century ago.