Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

by Dr Jeremy Brown

The first explanation is that the virus had a protein on its surface that prevented the production of interferons, which signal to our immune system that our defenses have been penetrated. Healthy lung cells that transfer oxygen into the bloodstream are hijacked by the virus and destroyed by its replication process. Once dead, these cells are replaced with dull fibrous ones that are incapable of transporting oxygen, just like a scar that forms at the site of a cut and never looks the same as the surrounding healthy skin. An autopsy performed within hours on a U.S. Army private named Roscoe Vaughan in South Carolina showed that one of his lungs had this type of pneumonia. It’s possible that the sabotage of interferons allowed the 1918 virus to trigger a lethal viral pneumonia. Second, if the 1918 virus itself didn’t kill you, then secondary bacterial pneumonia probably did. Victims of the pandemic, their bodies weakened and their lungs already ravaged, caught bacterial infections like streptococcus and staphylococcus, which were deadly in this era before antibiotics. We now think that the majority of deaths in the 1918 pandemic resulted from these secondary infections, not from the flu virus itself. The South Carolina soldier’s other lung showed evidence of this kind of infection. He was killed by the one-two punch of the virus and a bacterial infection that swept in as his defenses crumbled. The third explanation for 1918’s lethality is that the flu virus triggered an over...