Spanish Flu Quotes

“The naming of a virus is a controversial matter. In 1832, cholera advanced from British India toward Europe. It was called ‘Asiatic Cholera’. The French felt that since they were democratic, they would not succumb to a disease of authoritarianism; but France was ravaged by cholera, which was as much about the bacteria as it is about the state of hygiene inside Europe and North America. (When cholera struck the United States in 1848, the Public Bathing Movement was born.)

The ‘Spanish Flu’ was only named after Spain because it came during World War I when journalism in most belligerent countries was censored. The media in Spain, not being in the war, widely reported the flu, and so that pandemic took the name of the country. In fact, evidence showed that the Spanish Flu began in the United States in a military base in Kansas where the chickens transmitted the virus to soldiers. It would then travel to British India, where 60 percent of the casualties of that pandemic took place. It was never named the ‘American Flu’ and no Indian government has ever sought to recover costs from the United States because of the animal-to-human transmission that happened there.”
― Vijay Prashad

“After all, the girl actually had faith in something, which was more than most people had in these dark times. It was wrong to destroy it.”
― Chris Womersley, Bereft

“It's just my luck,” he said gloomily. “It's the kind of thing that couldn't happen to anyone but me. Damned fools! Where's the sense in shutting the theatres, even if there is influenza about? They let people jam against one another all day in the stores. If that doesn't hurt them why should it hurt them to go to theatres? Besides, it's all infernal nonsense about this thing. I don't believe there is such a thing as Spanish influenza. People get colds in their heads and think they're dying. It's all a fake scare.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Adventures of Sally

“Live every day as if you might be struck blind--that was the rule I made for myself now. In those first few days after the quarantine was lifted, we went around marveling at the smallest things, as if the Spanish flu had rendered us all blind & we'd suddenly gained our sight again. Every detail seemed suddenly as sharp as if seen for the first time. Life returned to SF, and it had never been more precious.”
― Jasmin Darznik, The Bohemians

“. . . the two families were about to be impacted in a major way as Philadelphia and the rest of the world were slammed with a pandemic so catastrophic that it killed more people than World War I.”
― J.D. Crighton, Detective in the White City: The Real Story of Frank Geyer

“Spain actually had few cases before May, but the country was neutral during the war. That meant the government did not censor the press, and unlike French, German, and British newspapers—which printed nothing negative, nothing that might hurt morale—Spanish papers were filled with reports of the disease, especially when King Alphonse XIII fell seriously ill.
The disease soon became known as “Spanish influenza” or “Spanish flu,” very likely because only Spanish newspapers were publishing accounts of the spread of the disease that were picked up in other countries.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“Obey the laws and wear the gauze, protect your jaws from septic paws.”
― Ellen Marie Wiseman, The Orphan Collector

“The number of deaths (from the Spanish Flu) was estimated to be at least fifty million worldwide, representing as much as 5 percent of the world's population, with about 675,000 deaths occurring in the United States. Society didn’t heed the wake-up call at the time. It is shameful that these teachings in American history have not been emphasized.”
― Donna Maltz, Conscious Cures: Soulutions to 21st Century Pandemics

“The government insists that the many shall not be placed in danger for the few and that EVERYONE SHALL WEAR A MASK. Those who are not doing so are not showing their independence - they are showing their indifference for the lives of others”
― Simon Benson, Plagued

“The small town of Gunnison, Colorado, lies at the bottom of the valley carved by the Gunnison River into the Rocky Mountains. It is now crossed by the Colorado stretch of U.S. Highway 50, but in 1918, the town was mainly supplied by train and two at best mediocre roads. When the 1918–19 influenza pandemic reached Colorado as an unwelcome stowaway on a train carrying servicemen from Montana to Boulder, the town of Gunnison took decisive action. As the November 1, 1918, edition of the Gunnison News-Champion documents, a Dr. Rockefeller from the nearby town of Crested Butte was "given entire charge of both towns and county to enforce a quarantine against all the world".

He instituted a strict reverse quarantine regime that almost entirely isolated Gunnison from the rest of the world. Gunnison became one of the few communities that largely escaped the ravages of the influenza pandemic, at least in the beginning – in an instructive example of the limited human patience for the social, psychological and economic disruption of quarantine, adherence eventually waned and the front page of the Gunnison News-Champion's March 14, 1919, issue reports that the influenza pandemic got to Gunnison, too. Nevertheless, Gunnison had a very lucky escape – of a population of over 6,900 (including the county), there were only a few cases and a single death.”
― Chris von Csefalvay, Computational Modeling of Infectious Disease: With Applications in Python

“The Armless Tics by Stewart Stafford

Never again, the blustering brass said,
Inked in blood, my generation dead,
Human meat carved with lunatic aplomb,
No cowering allowed from gun or bomb.

Lice, rats, and mud—war zeal’s reality.
Trench foot and poisoned-gas lethality,
Churned hellscape, where no man can be,
Scribbling letters home to preserve sanity.

The artillery’s heartbeat, now silent, aghast,
Shells raining on future, present, and past,
On a last keepsake bullet, I etched “11-11”,
Through influenza, faint prayers to Heaven.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford