Perry kills at least 88 in 1918 pandemic

Today, many of the world and countries are plagued by pandemics that have not been seen for more than 100 years in how rapidly the coronavirus spread, the number of infections, and unfortunately the number that it killed. I am.

COVID-19, respiratory diseases claiming more than 70,000 live in the United States In less than 4 months 250,000 worldwide, Often compared to the 1918 flu pandemic. The main comparison is how quickly both spread across the globe in a short period of time, and their relatively high mortality rates.

However, the 1918 flu is far more deadly because people don’t understand how the virus spreads, how best to treat the infection, and how to prevent recurrence, as it does today. did. The flu killed an estimated 500 million people, about a third of the world’s population at the time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 100th Anniversary History page, 675,000 people were killed in three waves in the United States from March 1918 to the summer of 1919.

“The historian Jeffrey, a founding member of the Perry Historians, said:

In Perry County, at least 88 people died of the flu between 1918 and 19. Linschefar Dam Memorial Park In Elliotsburg.

“It wasn’t at least about three months, at least about three months, from what I found to 1919 after hitting Perry County in August 1918,” Wright said.

He said the 1918-19 flu deaths were higher than the number of soldiers the county lost during World War I, which ended on November 11, 1918. of CDC history Major factors in the rapid and deadly spread of the flu in 1918 included war devastation, crowded living conditions, and lack of knowledge of common illnesses. The deployment of doctors and surgeons due to war efforts was similar, which left many communities in the United States without medical professionals to treat the disease.

However, according to the CDC, COVID-19 mainly affects people over the age of 60 and people with underlying illnesses, but the 1918 flu hit the youngest. Unique to the disease, the predecessor of modern H1N1 flu, is the high mortality rate of healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 40.

It was the same in Perry County.

“The difference was that the flu had a huge impact on young people,” Wright said. “Many of the people who died were under the age of 35 and older, with other underlying conditions.”

He said that influenza killed more people in Perry County. There were no standard tests or regulations on how to track the disease. Therefore, people who die from this disease are classified as deaths from pneumonia, “lagrippa”, tuberculosis, heart attack, etc. The 1918 flu attacked the heart muscle. Many doctors in Perry resisted using influenza as a cause of death until 1919.

The first newspaper reported about the flu, pointing out it wasn’t too bad in the county, but later reports talked about how children were orphaned when their parents succumbed to the flu. ..

Wright is 102 years away and is associated with both pandemics. He had a relative who had the flu in 1919. One was a World War I nurse who died of influenza in western Pennsylvania.

His wife’s uncle was 90 years old and was infected with COVID-19. He is currently recovering, but Wright said the similarities between these two pandemics may be difficult to ignore from a historical perspective. Immunity and subclinical infection were issues discussed in the 1918 flu. And when it struck Perry County, it had many of the same effects we are seeing today: mass cancellations of events and businesses, closures, churches, schools, and public conference suspensions. Even the Perry County Trade Fair was canceled in 1918.

“It really covers many of the issues we are talking about today,” Wright said.

Jim T. Ryan can be contacted via email at [email protected]