It seems almost surreal, doesn’t it? What appeared to be an outbreak of disease in a distant country has now become a worldwide crisis.

Bustling cities have come to a standstill, economies are being forced to their knees and the daily lives of millions of people have been turned topsy turvy.

But lest you forget, Covid-19 is just one of many pandemics that have struck terror in humanity; one of which took place just over a century ago.

The 1918 influenza pandemic, also known as the Spanish Flu, remains the deadliest pandemic in modern human history.

Infecting about one third of the world’s population, between 50 and 100 million people lost their lives.

In 25 weeks, the Spanish Flu had killed more people than HIV/AIDS has in the last 25 years.

The outbreak, which took place during the final months of the First World War, counts a death toll higher than the war itself.

So, given the name, you might think that the Spanish Flu came from Spain. This isn’t true.

The reason why the Spanish Flu got its misnomer is due to the fact that Spain, being uninvolved in the fighting, was the first to realise what was going on and raise the alarm.

Because Spain was the only country announcing the pandemic, people thought that it originated from Spain.

Its origins and first victims remain a matter of debate and study, with suspected starting points in the United Kingdom, the United States and China.

Wherever it started, it is known that in a short time, the Spanish Flu had spread throughout continents and infected millions of people, rich and poor alike.

Famous figures including Walt Disney, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Garbo and Woodrow Wilson caught the Spanish Flu but thankfully survived.

The more lethal second wave of the flu affected between 25% to 33% of the world’s population.

The virus’ spread was probably helped by the large movement of American troops to the frontline in Europe.

British and French troops were in turn infected and when the war came to a close and the soldiers returned home, the civilian population was immediately endangered.

While the common flu on its own can be deadly, the Spanish Flu was a far deadlier strain and if a person displayed symptoms, there was a possibility that they would be dead within a day.

It is theorised that the virus was originally found in either birds or pigs, before evolving to infect humans.

Rather unusually and unlike Covid-19, the Spanish Flu left the elderly, as well as children, alone.

Instead, it targeted young and middle-aged adults in seemingly good health.

Similar to Covid-19, the virus attacked the lungs and used the body’s immune response to further damage the infected person’s system.

The immune system of a young adult is particularly strong, so when provoked into overreacting by a virus, it will inflict severe collateral damage to the lungs and the rest of the body.

Once this damage is done, the body will be highly vulnerable to bacterial or viral infections, leading to a strong possibility of death.

The symptoms of Spanish Flu were also disturbingly grotesque.

Symptoms included bleeding from the nose, mouth, eyes and ears, high fever, fatigue, diarrhoea and vomiting.

People drowned on dry land in their own phlegm and there were reports of victims literally falling dead in the streets.

An American army colonel reported how he saw hundreds of previously healthy soldiers streaming into hospitals and filling it to maximum capacity.

“Their faces soon wear a bluish cast. A distressing cough brings up blood-stained sputum and, in the morning, the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like firewood.”

A nurse in Chicago recounted how the exhausted staff eventually started tagging still living patients as dead because there was no hope left for them and it helped save time.

Treatment for the Spanish Flu was also difficult, as antibiotics had not yet been discovered and vaccines were not widely available at that time.

In their desperation, people turned to any and all sorts of remedies for the Spanish Flu.

Some advice was not particularly helpful, as evidenced by people turning to mint drops, cinnamon, soup and wine to cure their sickness.

Some doctors even suggested that patients take up smoking, believing that the hot smoke would kill the germs inside the body.

It also didn’t help that government officials in many countries were downplaying the scale of the pandemic early on, trying to keep the public focused on the First World War that was still raging on.

In Philadelphia, Americans were reading newspapers that claimed there was nothing to worry about as bodies were piling up each day.

British newspapers tried to write off the flu as a product of warm Spanish weather, a suggestion that proved wrong with the eventual death of 228,000 British citizens.

Some advice, however, turned out to be useful, with experts encouraging people to stay away from crowds and to avoid social contact.

This advice remains helpful and is still relevant over a century later.

Covid-19 may be a whole new different beast compared to the Spanish Flu, with different causes and symptoms.

But the painful lessons learnt then may prove useful now in the ever-continuing fight against disease.