On this episode, AccuWeather Founder & Executive Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers and AccuWeather Network Chief Meteorologist Bernie Rayno dive into weather's role in the devastating global pandemic of 1918.
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00:00Welcome to Invisible Iceberg! On today's show, we dive into weather's role in the
00:08devastating global pandemic of 1918. Plus, in our What If segment, we explore how life
00:15and wars may have changed if the pandemic never happened. And we examine two of the
00:22most studied phenomena in weather today.
00:31Five hundred million people infected, an estimated death toll between 50 to 100 million. The
00:371918 flu pandemic remains the deadliest plague in modern history. As this unknown virus spread
00:44to a third of the world's population, health officials race to find a cause and a cure.
00:50Could the cooling climate of the time contribute to the worldwide transmission of this insidious
00:55virus? It's just one of the truly fascinating stories in the book, Invisible Iceberg, When
01:00Climate and Weather Shaped History. Joining me now to delve deeper into the 1918 flu pandemic
01:07is Accuwe, the founder and executive chairman and author of the book, Invisible Iceberg,
01:12When Climate and Weather Shaped History, Dr. Joel Myers. Thanks for joining us today, Dr.
01:17Joel.
01:18My pleasure, as always.
01:20Let's talk about it, the 1918 flu pandemic, or as many refer to it as the Spanish flu.
01:27Yeah, it really started developing toward the end of World War I. As you know, the war
01:32started in 1914, and then there was the armistice, November 11th, 1918, when the war was over.
01:40But in 1918, perhaps because of the war and soldiers traveling, the flu developed and
01:46spread rapidly. We don't know the origin of it. Some people think it might started
01:50at an army base in Kansas. Other people, of course, call it the Spanish flu because they
01:55say it must have started in Spain, but probably didn't. It may have started in Europe, where
02:02all the soldiers were gathered together in trenches. There was a lot of trench warfare.
02:07But in any case, it was a deadly flu that then spread around the world. You had 500
02:14million people, one third of the world's population infected, and the death toll, much
02:19higher mortality rate, perhaps a size 50 to 100 million people. We don't have accurate
02:24numbers. If it was 100 million, that's one in 15 people in the world died from that flu.
02:31Of course, you didn't have any vaccines then. You didn't have antibiotics then. You didn't
02:37have modern communications.
02:39If we don't know where it originated, why was it called the Spanish flu? Why was it
02:44given that name?
02:46Well, it's interesting how the press, the influence the press has. Apparently, during
02:53the war, there was a lot of censorship in a lot of countries. And nobody, it was in
02:58nobody's interest, government's interest, let's say not nobody, but the government's
03:01interest to talk too much about it and scare the soldiers and so on. So there was a lot
03:07of censorship. Spain was not in the war. And so they had more of an open press. And
03:13they talked about it because there were cases there and so on. So people, well, that's where
03:18the news was coming from. But it probably did not originate in Spain.
03:24Why did the flu spread so rapidly and universally?
03:28People don't realize, but there have been hundreds of pandemics throughout history.
03:34In China, regional flu outbreaks that were deadly have occurred hundreds of times over
03:42the last 2000 years. So this is a curse on humanity.
03:46It appeared to those that came in waves. Wasn't just one flu, it came in different waves,
03:51correct?
03:52Just like the pandemic, the COVID has come in waves. We're still having waves stretching
03:58over a longer period of time. But the death rate from COVID is much less. Some of that
04:03due to vaccine, some of it due to treatment like Pax Lovitt and other things we know
04:07today and be able to treat the results. But it was a different flu. And in that case,
04:13in the Spanish flu, it was most lethal to people age 25 to 40.
04:19Yeah, that's interesting. People in their prime, not people that are more susceptible.
04:24Yeah. And the COVID age 65 and over. Many of which who perished had a comorbidity. What's
04:33interesting, too, is if you look at life insurance companies today, they're reporting
04:37fewer deaths over the last year and a half because people who had a weakness perished
04:45because of COVID and the ones that survived are living longer. So the average death age
04:53of death has increased since COVID hit its peak.
04:58How did it finally come to an end?
05:01Well, Burn, just everybody who was exposed to it developed the resistance to it, immunity,
05:08I guess. It just wore itself out. And some people probably had some natural resistance
05:14and others didn't get exposed with less travel. Some parts of the world, people just didn't
05:19get the exposure.
05:20Thanks, Joel. We'll speak with you again in just a few minutes.
05:25Here with more perspective on the 1918 flu pandemic is John M. Barry, author of The
05:31Great Influenza, the story of the deadliest pandemic in history. Thank you so much for
05:38joining us here today.
05:40My pleasure.
05:41How did the pandemic originate?
05:45Well, and technically, you know, influenza virus from birds jump species. It may have
05:55gone through another mammal such as a pig. It's possible that it came directly from birds.
06:03There are eight segments of the influenza virus. We know seven of them came directly
06:07from birds. The eighth may or may not pass through another mammal. It adapted to humans
06:14and it spread explosively.
06:17Why did it spread so quickly and universally?
06:21Well, basically, you know, the population had hadn't seen the virus before and therefore
06:30their immune systems couldn't respond to it. Oddly enough, the elderly seem to have
06:37seen a similar virus and they were pretty well protected. Exactly the reverse of COVID.
06:47In terms of lethality, you know, the virus got into the lungs. The immune system overreacted.
06:56In terms of the pathogenesis, it was actually a lot like COVID. There was also probably
07:03a lot of deaths from bacterial pneumonia. The influenza virus largely wiped out the
07:11protections in the respiratory tract. And then bacteria could march pretty easily into
07:17the lungs.
07:18Can we compare how many people died from World War One with how many people that died from
07:24the influenza pandemic?
07:26Well, I mean, the numbers of deaths in the war was horrific, you know. But even with
07:34that, the influenza pandemic pretty much dwarfed it.
07:39Were there multiple waves of the influenza?
07:43There were. There were probably four waves. The last one was in 1920. After that, the
07:51virus pretty much calmed down, partly because people's immune systems had seen it before
07:58and they could adjust to it. I also think the virus itself probably mutated in the direction
08:03of mildness.
08:05Why did the pandemic end and was there ever a drug or vaccine developed to fight it?
08:11Well, there were they didn't even know what a virus was in 1918. So there was no vaccine
08:20or drug. And we still don't have really a drug that's effective against influenza.
08:28There was a tremendous amount of scientific advances that came out of the study and trying
08:36to figure out what happened, ranging from the definition of a virus. Even you can trace
08:42the discovery that DNA carries a genetic code, which is obviously one of the most important
08:48scientific discoveries of the 20th century. You can trace that, actually, to the pandemic.
08:54It would have happened eventually anyway.
08:56How did the 1918 pandemic compare to COVID overall?
09:01Well, again, the lethality, there's no comparison whatsoever. As I said earlier, if you adjust
09:08the population, at least 225 million people would have died had COVID been as lethal.
09:21In terms of impact on other organs. Also, the two viruses were similar.
09:29And was that immunity or the the immunity from the 1918 influenza, was that carried
09:36forward with individuals and have any impact on COVID?
09:42No, I don't think it had any impact on COVID whatsoever. Two entirely different viruses.
09:48So your immune system is is not going to recognize that the immune system is very specific, very
09:57much geared toward a particular pathogen. So I don't think there was any benefit from
10:02an influenza infection in 1918. And of course, that the influenza virus that we still see today,
10:09if you get a case that's actually includes some of the genetic material from the 1918 virus.
10:18But obviously, it's no longer anything like the 1918 virus in terms of severity.
10:25John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza,
10:28the story of the deadliest pandemic in history. Thanks for joining us today.
10:35Still to come, we explore two of the most studied phenomena in the weather today. But next,
10:41it's time for our What If segment. How would life be different if the 1918 flu pandemic never happened?
10:59Welcome back to Invisible Iceberg. I'm Bernie Rainow. It is time for a segment, What If?
11:05And today we're talking about a different look at the 1918 flu pandemic. Joining me again is
11:12Ackie with the founder and executive chairman and author of the book Invisible Iceberg,
11:16when climate and weather shaped history, Dr. Joel Myers. All right, let's talk about the flu.
11:21Absolutely. I mean, so the war already taxed a lot of the countries because of the expense of war.
11:28And then you had the flu, which significantly impacted in a negative way, the GDP and the
11:34economy. So both those things happening at once. And maybe you can talk a little bit about the
11:41flu and how it affects the economy. I mean, how does it affect the economy?
11:46Well, I mean, you know, it was a tremendous impact on the world population, and it was much
11:55worse overall than what we experienced with COVID. About eight billion people, only one-tenth of one
12:02percent died in COVID. And that's a lot of people. So it was a tremendous impact on the world
12:08population. And it was much worse overall than what we experienced with COVID. About eight billion
12:12people, only one-tenth of one percent died in COVID. As many as three to five percent of the
12:19world's population died in the Spanish flu. Of course, the weather did play a big role
12:27in the spreading of the 1918 flu. We know that a virus thrives on low humidity. It may just be the
12:36opposite of what people think, because mold and other things spread in high humidity. But low
12:42humidity is favorable for the virus itself. So in a dry environment, which you normally have inside
12:50buildings in the wintertime, particularly in 1918, think about it, when it's cold outside,
12:57that means the dew point's low. And as the air comes into the buildings heated up, the relative
13:03humidity falls and can fall dramatically. On a cold day, the humidity inside can be 10 or 15
13:09percent. That's one of the reasons we developed, in the most recent COVID, the idea of indoor
13:14humidity. We invented that and we added it to our app so people knew when it was particularly dry.
13:20You want to keep the humidity inside your building between 30 and 60 percent. That caused the spread.
13:26We did, people didn't know that then. We were better at it in COVID. And then, of course,
13:31the weather patterns also contributed. There was La Nina and then El Nino, which caused a
13:38disruption and changed the weather. Some parts of the world's very cold. There was a severe drought
13:43in India. The monsoons never set in. So there was crop failure, starvation and weakening. People
13:51weakened so they're more susceptible to the virus. So the death toll in India, one of the world's
13:58most populous countries, could have been as high as five or six or seven percent of the entire
14:04population. Were there any changes after it came to an end that to help track and prevent
14:11future pandemics? Yeah, of course. Think about in 1980, there was a lack of communications.
14:17There wasn't modern media like we have today. There were no world health organizations to
14:22cooperate and share numbers. There was no vaccines. We didn't have antibiotics. A lot
14:28of progress has been made over the last hundred years, as we've seen with the COVID. Let's compare
14:34the two. Let's compare it again. The 1918 flu compared to our recent pandemic COVID.
14:42Well, there are estimates, and we don't have accurate numbers, that the death toll globally
14:46could have been as high as three to as much as five percent. Five percent, one in twenty people,
14:53could have died globally from the 1918 flu. In the most recent, the pandemic,
15:01one in a thousand people died. What I find interesting is how quickly the 1918 flu spread
15:09when you didn't have the mass transportation, you didn't have the amount of travel
15:14that you certainly have today. Yeah, much more travel in 2020, 2021, compared to 103 years
15:22earlier. That just says that the Spanish flu must have been extremely contagious,
15:29extremely contagious. And of course, it was lethal to ages 25 to 40, which is a lot different
15:36compared to COVID, which attacked more of the people who were more susceptible, were generally
15:41a little, were older, or had underlying health conditions. Yeah, that's a big difference. Did
15:48the 1918 flu pandemic have any impact on future events? Well, it might have. It's pure speculation.
15:58But we do know that the seeds of World War II, which was the deadliest war in the history of
16:05humanity, came out of World War I by the reparations and the penalty on Germany to pay
16:14for the damages from the winners said they caused. And as a result, we had the wild inflation
16:25in Germany because they couldn't afford it. And that wild inflation caused most of the people to
16:30lose everything. So they were mad as heck. And that allowed Hitler to come to power without that
16:36wild inflation and the terrible losses of the economy that they suffered. We might not have
16:42had Hitler or World War II. The pandemic might have contributed to that because it's estimated
16:49400,000 people in Germany died out of a population of about 60 million. It's less than 1%. But still,
16:57remember, the age is 25 to 40, where most of the people died. They were productive,
17:03so a big impact on the economy. At the same time, they had to pay these war reparations.
17:09So the productivity of the economy after the war negatively affected contributing and accelerating.
17:15So we can speculate if the pandemic had not occurred, then perhaps the damage to the German
17:23economy and the wild inflation that wiped everybody out would not have occurred. Certainly
17:28was a pandemic that is not going to be forgotten over 100 years ago. And we're still talking about
17:34it. Now, I want to thank AccuWeather founder and executive chairman and author of the book
17:38Invisible Iceberg When Climate and Weather Shaped History, Dr. Joe Myers, for joining us today.
17:43My pleasure, Bernie, as always. After the break,
17:46we'll examine two of the most studied phenomena in weather today.
17:53Welcome back to Invisible Iceberg. I'm Bernie Rainow. The rapid spread of the 1918 flu pandemic
18:09was aided by a climate anomaly known as La Nina. While not much was known about La Nina in the
18:15early 1900s, La Nina and its counterpart El Nino are two of the most studied phenomena today.
18:23La Nina refers to the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the Central
18:27and East Central Equatorial Pacific. La Nina represents the cool phase of the El Nino Southern
18:33Oscillation Cycle, while the warm phase is known as El Nino. These episodes typically last from one
18:41to three years. During typical conditions in the Pacific Ocean, trade winds blow west along the
18:47equator, taking warm water from South America toward Asia. To replace that warm water, cold
18:53water rises from the depths, which cools the waters along the west coast of South America.
18:59During La Nina events, trade winds are even stronger than usual, pushing more warm water
19:05toward Asia. Off the west coast of the Americas, even colder, nutrient-rich water rises to the
19:11surface. Now, depending upon the strength of La Nina, its impact differs from continent to
19:17continent and season to season. In North America, the jet stream during the winter months is
19:22forced farther north, often resulting in drought across the southern U.S., while heavy rains and
19:27flooding occurs in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Winter temperatures are warmer than
19:33historical average in the south and cooler than normal in the north. La Nina has less impacts
19:38during the summer, but usually results in a more active Atlantic hurricane season. That's our show
19:45for today. For more information and get your copy of the book, Invisible Iceberg, When Climate and
19:50Weather Shaped History, by Dr. Joel Myers, go to InvisibleIceberg.com. And a big thanks to all of you
19:58for watching.