Epi 2

For class, we had to watch a documentary on the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.  It was shocking to see how many people died from the disease and how quickly it was spreading.  In the video, it stated that Influenza killed more people than all of the wars in the past century.  I cannot imagine how it would feel to run out of supplies, such as caskets, because of the mass amount of people dying.  When watching this video, I learned that they started to develop several vaccinations around this time for diseases, such as rabies, small pox, anthrax, diphtheria, and meningitis.  It was surprising to find out that they were not able to even identify what disease this was with the mass amount of people dying.  For an example, when the soldiers in a camp get sick all with the same symptoms forty three of them ended up dying, but they ruled their cause of death as pneumonia.  The disease would disappear as fast as it came and affected people, which made it hard to identify the disease.  Camp Devon’s is another example of how quickly the disease would spread and how many people were being affected.  Since this form of Influenza had different symptoms than past experiences with the disease, it made it more difficult for the medical professionals to diagnose the disease.  With all of the advances in medicine that we have developed over the years, it is reassuring to know that we can control most diseases from developing into pandemics.