Origin of 1918 flu pandemic

[Capsid]

Further to this thread in which the possible source of the flu pandemic virus of 1918 was vaccines, this article suggests that the close proximity of soldiers of the Great War to ducks, pigs, horses etc. is a possible and more likely explanation.

The most virulent flu strains such as the recent H5N1 are caused by recombination with avian flu as a consequence of close proximity of humans to domestic fowl.

 

[Chris Haynes]

Hmmm... this seems to have a more complete explanation:
The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History ... I have about 150 more pages to finish. It goes deeper into the politics and medical education of that day. It is a fascinating read, as it shows WHERE medicine was in the latter part of the 19th century and in the first part of the 20th century (it also has some scathing remarks on Tamminy Hall's Royal Copeland). The other book on influenza by Gina Kolata concentrated more on the search for the particular virus... also a good read (there was another book, but Kolata's was better).

It actually does not speculate on whether it was proximity to pigs... but a chance that it started in a farm community which sent some of their young men who were drafted to the first camp to get the first wave of the influenza (it came in a couple of waves, the first one being milder than the uber-killer close to Armistace day).

There is no real evidence that vaccinating for a bacterial infection like typhoid caused the influenza created by a virus.

In the January 2005 of Scientific American (which I have sitting in front of me, the articles are not on their website yet) there is an article called "Capturing a Killer Virus" about the 1918 pandemic. One of the authors is Jeffrey K. Taubenberger (a scientist who worked on tissue samples from victims who were in the US Army and some retrieved from Alaskan permafrost). In the Overview box the last bullet says: "Known bird and mammal influenza hosts are unlikely sources of the pandemic virus, so its origin remains unsolved".