The Spanish Flu

You have probably heard or seen references to the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic in recent days. David Drury, in his excellent overview of its impact on Connecticut, states that “an estimated 675,000 Americans perished, including some 9,000 men, women, and children in Connecticut—nearly 1% of the state’s population.” 

The Connecticut State Department of Health published a monthly bulletin covering a variety of public health matters and turned its attention to the Spanish flu in late 1918 (see right).

Then, as now, health authorities did not fully understand how the virus spread, and issued these general guidelines, which are not dissimilar to the guidelines we are presently being directed to follow (see right).

In April 1919, the Dept. of Public Health published a preliminary statistical analysis of the impact of the pandemic in the state. Their charts bear a stark resemblance to the ones we see today for COVID-19 (see below).  

The report includes the number of deaths for each Connecticut town or city with population of 5,000 and greater, but because South Windsor's population at that time was under 5,000, whatever numbers it had recorded were aggregated in a “Towns Under 5,000” category. 

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