Why was the 1918 flu short-lived?

Question

um the real question is why the 1918 flu only lasted a year? hell europe was devastated by war, famine, political instability, debt, and other diseases, why didnt it continue a couple of more years? I can understand the quarantines, other measures but it just disappeared so quickly. did it suddenly disappear bcuz it was a short-bang type diseases?

Answer 1

For all the prevention governments tried to implement, there is one real answer to this question. The perfect parasite does not kill its host, it just sits inside it reproducing at the expense, but not the life, of the host.

The 1918 flu was too deadly to be long lived. It killed people too quickly for them to pass it on to a lot of people. For example: If someone has a disease and is contagious for two weeks, then they could infect say, 100 other people. If however, they died after a week, they could only infect 50 people. Hope that explains it: Kill the host too quickly and you get a short lived disease.

Answer 2

The public health departments were very strict and distributed gauze masks that had to be worn in public. Stores could not hold sales and funerals were limited to 15 minutes. Some towns required a signed certificate to enter and railroads would not accept passengers without them. Those who ignored the flu ordinances big fines.
The public accepted these rules because WW1 was just ending and they had lived through some horrible years where they had a lot of restrictions placed on them by government. They were used to following rules and they obeyed the health department.
Nowadays, people would not follow the health department rules so meekly.

Answer 3

it was done because of a mutation of the virus. it changed and became worse. there's more info:

The 1918 flu pandemic was a category 5 influenza pandemic between 1918 and 1920 caused by an unusually severe and deadly Influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. By far the most destructive pandemic in history, it killed some 50 million to 100 million people worldwide in just 18 months, [1][2] dwarfing the bloodshed due to World War I (1914-1918). Many of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. The disease was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas, U.S.. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish Flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention in Spain than in the rest of the world, as Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.


In the event of another pandemic, US Navy researchers have proposed reusing a treatment from the deadly pandemic of 1918 in order to blunt the effects of the flu. Some military doctors injected severely afflicted patients with blood or blood plasma from people who had recovered from the flu. Data collected during that time indicates that the blood-injection treatment reduced mortality rates by as much as 50 percent. Navy researchers have launched a test to see if the 1918 treatment will work against deadly Asian bird flu. Results thus far have been inconclusive. Human H5N1 plasma may be an effective, timely, and widely available treatment for the next flu pandemic. A new international study using modern data collection methods, would be a difficult, slow process. But many flu experts, citing the months-long wait for a vaccine for the next pandemic, are of the opinion that the 1918 method is something to consider.[18]

In the world wide Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, "[p]hysicians tried everything they knew, everything they had ever heard of, from the ancient art of bleeding patients, to administering oxygen, to developing new vaccines and sera (chiefly against what we now call Hemophilus influenzae—a name derived from the fact that it was originally considered the etiological agent—and several types of pneumococci). Only one therapeutic measure, transfusing blood from recovered patients to new victims, showed any hint of success

i hope it helps!