BY BECCY TANNER
\nThe Wichita Eagle<\/p>\n
Ground Zero in one of the world\u2019s deadliest influenza pandemics started quietly, inconspicuously.<\/p>\n
It was winter, 100 years ago. And it was here, in Kansas.<\/p>\n
The virus began on the windswept Kansas prairie, where dirt-poor farm families struggled to do daily chores \u2014 slopping pigs, feeding cattle, horses, and chickens, living in primitive, cramped, uninsulated quarters.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not known whether it started in the pigs or chickens or birds flying overhead. But it spread to young farmers who, drafted for World War I, reported for duty at Fort Riley.<\/p>\n
The virus mutated along the way as men coughed and sneezed, spreading germs in Army barracks, then on trains across the nation and on ships to Europe. Within six to nine months, the 1918 influenza pandemic had killed at least 20 million people worldwide. Some reports said 40 million.<\/p>\n
No one knows for sure what farm, what family may have first fallen ill. The community was most likely Santa Fe, now a ghost town in Haskell County, says Darlene Groth, curator at Haskell County Historical Society in Sublette.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
What is known is that a Kansas country doctor \u2014 Dr. Loring Miner, who practiced in Haskell County \u2014 became concerned when he noticed this three-day flu wasn\u2019t typical. It was an \u201cinfluenza of the severe type,\u201d he wrote, and hit young, strong and otherwise healthy people the hardest. He was the first to report to Public Health Reports \u2014a publication of the U.S. Public Health Service \u2014 that this flu was a killer.<\/p>\n
Dr. Miner could not have known that a perfect storm of circumstances was developing to rapidly spread the virus around the world. At any point, it could have lost its potency. But it didn\u2019t \u2014 it kept building in strength like a wildfire each time large groups of people were forced into crowded situations in geographic centers around the world.<\/p>\n
Camp Funston, at Fort Riley, was the largest training facility in the Army, full of makeshift non-insulated barracks, housing 250 soldiers each. It teemed with soldiers from all over the Midwest, training for duty in France.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey trained over 50,000 troops at a time who all lived in close quarters. The Army was cognizant that it needed to help our French and British Allies out, so there was no questioning, they were sending troops out \u2014 soldiers were being sent that had flu-like symptoms,\u201d said Robert Smith, supervisory curator for Fort Riley Museums.<\/p>\n
Troops traveled by train from the Midwest to ports, then boarded ships bound for the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecruits were being shifted from camp to camp by the thousands and they were taking with them fatigue and it made for easy exposure. The infections and disease followed,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
Along the way, the virus mutated, many times. It hit people in waves, becoming more virulent each time.<\/p>\n
The first wave in the winter of 1918 was serious. The second wave \u2014 during the summer, when many of the soldiers were on the Western Front \u2014 was deadly, Smith said. The third wave came during the fall, when troops were returning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gave it to our Allies and they gave it to our enemies,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
It was one of the greatest pandemics the world has seen, Smith said, even greater than the bubonic plague during the Middle Ages. It was nicknamed the Spanish Flu, the Spanish Lady and the Blue Death. Old-timers called it the grippe. German soldiers called it Flanders fever.<\/p>\n
One in every four Americans caught it, and 12,000 Kansans died of it or its complications. There are few Kansas cemeteries that don\u2019t hold victims of the 1918 flu.<\/p>\n
Like other places, Kansas tried to stop it.<\/p>\n
In early October of 1918, Dr. Samuel Crumbine, secretary of the state board of health, issued a statewide shutdown order to stop the spread of the disease. Visitors were barred from all state institutions, movie theaters were closed, and local authorities were told to discontinue public meetings. People were advised to keep their feet dry and try not to get chilled. Churches, schools, theaters were closed.<\/p>\n
In Goessel, members of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church held funeral services outside the building for the flu victims in an attempt to avoid spreading the disease.<\/p>\n
The Wichita Eagle published homework assignments from teachers and sermons of local ministers.<\/p>\n
The Eagle reported that nearly 200 people died during October \u2014 more deaths in the city than had ever before been recorded in a single month.<\/p>\n
Could it happen again?<\/p>\n
The short answer is yes.<\/p>\n
What helps now \u2014 say medical historians \u2014 is that we have flu shots. They didn\u2019t exist in 1918.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe military takes the health of its soldiers very seriously and the civilians who work with them,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThey make flu shots available to us. But the problem with the flu is that it mutates very rapidly and so while it can be one virus now, in a few months, it can mutate to a totally different type of flu.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 1918 flu was a strain known as H1N1. This year\u2019s dominant strain is H3N2.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompared to the 1918 flu, this year is not that bad,\u201d Amy Seery, Via Christi pediatrician and assistant professor at the KU School of Medicine Wichita. \u201cCompared to 2009, this feels a little like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The swine flu pandemic in 2009 was a hybrid of the H1N1.<\/p>\n
Other significant flu years include the Asian Flu of 1957, H2N2, and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968, H3N2.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe differences between 1918 and now is that there are immunizations now. There were none in 1918,\u201d said Dr. Frederick Holmes, professor emeritus at the KU Medical Center and professor emeritus in the history of medicine. \u201cViruses mutate all the time. Most of the time the changes don\u2019t mean anything. You can build an immunity to influenza if you have had it before \u2014 to some extent.\u201d<\/p>\n
In normal flu years, Seery said, the flu is tough on the elderly and very young. In more aggressive flu years, the flu wreaks more havoc in young people, causing what is known as a cytokine storm \u2014 an overproduction of immune cells.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a hyper immune response where the body almost becomes overly aggressive and causes more harm than good. Your body can sicken very rapidly and become unresponsive to normal routine treatments,\u201d Dr. Seery said. \u201cThere can be a severe inflammation of the lungs and bleeding into the lung tissues. It becomes very difficult for us to reverse.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is what happened in 1918.<\/p>\n
And it all started on the Kansas prairie.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unthinkable that it would be in Kansas,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cBut if you think of Dodge City as fairly remote \u2014 and this occurred west of Dodge City, west of there \u2026 well, good gravy, that\u2019s at the end of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n