The Spanish flu and historical amnesia

From 1918 to 1919, the Spanish flu is thought to have killed at least 30 million people and perhaps up to 100 million, at a time when the world population was roughly 1.5 billion. This compares to the current COVID-19 death toll of approximately 3.3 million people with a 7.6 billion population. While the Spanish flu has recently become a subject of interest due to its parallels with the current pandemic, it has largely not been given its due in the history books and been absent from our general awareness. This is surprising, given that it’s a disaster many of our grandparents or great-grandparents were alive for (but probably never talked about). The Spanish Lady, as it was sometimes called, caused more deaths than the First World War, which happened approximately the same number of years ago and looms larger in history and in our consciousness. University of London’s Dr. Mark Honigsbaum (PhD), in his book Living with Enza: The Forgotten Story of Britain and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918, quoted The London Times from December 1918, which wrote: “Never since the Black Death has such a plague swept over the face of the world ... (and) never, perhaps, has a plague been more stoically accepted.” Honigsbaum also noted that in 1935, Major Greenwood, who co-wrote Britain’s official report on the pandemic, was similarly perplexed, remarking that “there is some psychological interest in the fact ... that actually the emotional impression created (by the pandemic) was fainter than that produced by much less grave epidemiological happenings.” American historian Dr. Susan Kingsley Kent (PhD) wrote the book The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: A Brief History with Documents. Subsequently, in a 2020 interview with the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, she said: “The emotional traumas produced by the influenza pandemic of 1918/19 had a long-term impact, I would argue, on the capacity of societies to keep it within collective consciousness. The pandemic disappeared from popular memory . . . following its devastating impact. Certainly individuals wrote about their experiences, but public consciousness of this extraordinary event vanished.” Kingsley Kent explains that the destruction and dislocation of war itself and other global developments, including the Russian Revolution, may have upstaged the consequences of the pandemic, rendering it relatively insignificant. She also notes that widespread anxiety may have played a role: The Spanish flu laid bare the inability of nations and people to prevent, control and treat an everyday illness. Science, medicine and government had essentially failed and the public were too frightened and “freaked out” to acknowledge this vulnerability and lack of safety. “Faced with such disturbing information, societies may have unconsciously determined that historical amnesia was the easier option,” she said. Fortunately, it appears COVID-19 will not have a death toll anywhere near that of the Spanish flu. Nonetheless, it has created widespread suffering and will undoubtedly leave scars. Perhaps our propensity in 2021 to talk about our individual and collective traumas will serve us better than the stoicism and “historical amnesia” of the post-Spanish flu period.

The Spanish flu and historical amnesia

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