Pandemics: 1918

Jesse Boulton, 93, of Woods Cross remembers the winter of 1918 as a season of sorrow.

As a 7-year-old growing up in Granger, Wyo., she didn't know why day after day, week after week, people in her town were dying.

"There was a family across the tracks. They buried two children, I believe, just small babies," Boulton said.

Her mother kept her and her siblings home and away from their friends. When she was older, she learned that she had lived through one of the greatest disease pandemics in modern history.

The year of 1918 was filled with both tragedy and celebration. World War I saw the introduction of chemical warfare and aerial bombardment. But what proved to be even more deadly for soldiers was influenza, which swept through Europe. Although Americans were relieved to see the troops come home, those soldiers brought the deadly disease with them. And when Utahns joined the world on Nov. 11 in celebrating the end of "the war to end all wars," the community activities renewed a flu outbreak that previously had been somewhat controlled.

Dubbed the "Spanish flu" by some, this worldwide flu pandemic during the winter of 1918-1919 was blamed for more than 500,000 deaths in the United States and an estimated 20 million to 50 million deaths worldwide — all in a matter of months.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the Spanish flu caused the highest known number of flu deaths in modern history. The two next largest flu outbreaks don't even come close. The "Asian flu" of 1957-58 caused an estimated 70,000 deaths in the United States while the "Hong Kong flu" in 1968-69 caused an estimated 34,000 deaths.

Unlike flu outbreaks before, or since, half the people who died of the Spanish flu during the 1918 outbreak were in their prime.

Cases were first reported in Boston and Bombay on the same day, but as fast as the Spanish flu had spread, it then disappeared just as mysteriously.

But in those few months communities in Utah and all over the world were profoundly changed: They faced quarantines, masks, fear and death.

Utah health statistics estimate that the flu killed one of every 25 Utahns who were infected. The late historian Leonard Arrington put the scope of the pandemic into perspective in his history of the influenza outbreak in Utah, published in the Utah Historical Quarterly.