The Liberty Loan parade that took place on Broad Street in Philadelphia September 28th, 1918.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSymptoms of this strain of influenza began as soon as a day after exposure. On September 30th and October 1st the city hospitals found 466 new cases on their hands. Twenty-four hours later, on October 2nd, the Inquirer reported an additional 635 cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin seventy-two hours after the parade\u201d writes John Barry, in The Great Influenza,\u201cevery single bed in each of the city\u2019s thirty-one hospitals was filled. And people began dying. Hospitals began refusing to accept patients. \u2026 On October 3, only five days after Krusen had let the parade proceed, he banned all public meetings in the city-including, finally, further Liberty Loan gatherings\u2014and closed all churches, schools, theatres. Even public funerals were prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n
As World War I drew to a close in November 1918, the influenza virus that took the lives of an estimated 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919 began its deadly ascent. The United States had faced flu pandemic before, in 1889-90 for example, but the 1918 strain represented an altogether new and aggressive mutation that proved unusually resistant to human attempts to curb its lethality. The devastating effects of the virus, known today as H1N1, were first felt in late summer 1918 along the eastern seaboard in a military encampment outside of Boston. From there, influenza propagated ruthlessly across the country, claiming nearly 700,000 lives before running its course in the spring and summer of 1919.<\/p>\n
While the country celebrated the end of World War I, the onset of the influenza virus would take the lives of 50 million people over the course of the year worldwide; 12,200 succumbed to the virus and its complications in Philadelphia alone. In October and November hospitals were overrun and were faced with a shortage of medical staff and volunteers; throughout the city men and women turned parishes, armories, garages and any empty space into emergency hospitals. By the middle of November, deaths from the influenza virus had dropped significantly from the week before and continued to fall. Although the Influenza claimed thousands of lives throughout the country, Philadelphia suffered the greatest losses at approximately 407 per 100,000 people.<\/a><\/p>\nBetween October and November of 1918 thousands were sick and dying from what was coined the \u201cSpanish Influenza\u201d and the city all but shut down.The influenza came as quickly as it went; vaccines arrived to Philadelphia on October 19th and by that time the disease already started to slow down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918: Philadelphia Influenza tore through Philadelphia at a ferocious pace in October and early November. During the second week of October 2,600 people succumbed to the flu, and the following week saw that number nearly double.The devastating effects of the virus, known today as H1N1, were first felt in late summer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/influenza.digitalwcu.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}