Survivors remember 1918 global flu pandemic
Plague could teach lessons about how to prepare for future flu outbreak
Dec 17, 2006
CHEVY CHASE, Md. -
At the height of the flu pandemic in 1918, William H. Sardo Jr. remembers the pine caskets stacked in the living room of his family’s house, a funeral home in Washington, D.C.
The city had slowed to a near halt. Schools were closed. Church services were banned. The federal government limited its hours of operation. People were dying — some who took ill in the morning were dead by night.
“That’s how quickly it happened,” said Sardo, 94, who lives in an assisted living facility just outside the nation’s capital. “They disappeared from the face of the earth.”
Sardo is among the last survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic. Their stories offer a glimpse at the forgotten history of one of the world’s worst plagues, when the virus killed at least 50 million people and perhaps as many as 100 million.
More than 600,000 people in the United States died of what was then called “Spanish Influenza.” The flu seemed to be particularly lethal for otherwise healthy young adults, many of whom suffocated from the buildup of liquids in their lungs.
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