By Greg Swinden
The world is currently combatting the Coronavirus 19 (COVID 19) which originated in China and has now spread throughout the globe. Australia has fortunately been spared, so far, the worst of the outbreak but this is not the first pandemic to reach our shores.
In 1918, towards the end of the First World War, the world began suffering the worst pandemic since the Black Death (Great Bubonic Plague of 1346-1353 which killed an estimated 75-200 million). The 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic killed more than 50 million people worldwide and was erroneously called the ‘Spanish Influenza’; as it was neutral Spain that first reported the outbreak which is now widely accepted as having originated in the United States in late 1917. The disease was taken to Europe by US troops where it spread throughout Britain and France during 1918 1 . There were three waves of the virus as it mutated and these became more and more virulent as the disease spread world-wide 2 .
