1396: spanish flu and WWI Oct 7, 2018

It is only due to politics that the Spanish Flu has the name it does. There is no disagreement that the influenza outbreak of 1918 was exacerbated by the First World War, but that even had linguistic impacts. The disease is thought to have been brought over from Northern China to North America, or originated in North America by itself (although there is no real consensus) and in either case could have just remained more localized. However, both America and the British Empire had extremely strict censorship of the press, and no reports of this flu were aloud to be announced for fear that it would lower morale. Even when it had infected most of Europe, most governments censored their presses except for Spain, which was neutral. As a result of this, while the virus was spreading to all inhabited continents and killing millions, the only people that wrote about it were in Spain, so people assumed it began there.

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