Cumal McLaird's family was homesteading in western South Dakota at the time. Her dad hired some boys whose mother had died. Cumal's grandmother wrote from California and recommended that eat-ing a lot of onions would prevent them from catching the virus. Cumal's mother did not put much stock in that folk remedy. Being with people who are cough-ing and sneezing is the easiest way to catch influenza.
Historians think the Spanish flu became such a wide-spread epidemic in part because of the war.
The war got all the headlines and the influenza epidemic received only scant attention. What warnings were given were ignored as people continued to flock to rallies in support of the war ef-fort. Today there are flu vaccines, but a new shot is required every year. You can't be certain which one it is going to be. To determine what kind of flu vac-cine to manufacture, certain parts of the world are watched.