# Talk:Spanish flu

Can we change the name of this article to the "1918 pandemic"? Briaboru (talk) 07:20, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

This would require a formal move discussion. The previous discussion was in November 2022 and came out in favour of keeping the current title, although there was some support for 1918 flu pandemic.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
I support this, someone looking for the virus would probably go to Spanish Flu, not 1918 flu pandemic or Influenza A virus subtype H1N1. SeaDragon1 (talk) 17:17, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
I've just looked for '1918 flu', and was surprised to find it labelled 'Spanish flu'. I was aware of the term 'Spanish flu' but vaguely thought it referred to one variant among many, and didn't know that it was associated with the 1918 pandemic in particular. Just one view. (British, if that's relevant.) Snugglepuss (talk) 14:23, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

In Malcolm Gladwell's 1997 New Yorker article about the 1918 flu outbreak, (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/09/29/the-dead-zone) he points out that the virus mutated to a more severe form in the trenches of WWI. As he put it, evolutionary forces usually favor a mild strain, but the evolutionary forces were reversed in the trenches. This also explains why the second wave tended to attack people were young and fit — in the trenches the virus had adapted to infect the young, fit soldiers. I think this article needs a section explaining this point. Let's discuss this. Here's part of what Gladwell wrote:

As the Amherst College biologist Paul Ewald argues in his brilliant 1994 book, “Evolution of Infectious Diseases,” under normal circumstances the mildest offspring of any flu family will always triumph, because people who are infected with the worst strains go home and go to bed, whereas people infected with the mild strains go to work, ride the bus, and go to the movies. You’re much more likely, in other words, to catch a mild virus than a nasty virus because you’re more likely to run into someone with a mild case of flu than with a nasty case of flu. In 1918, Ewald says, these rules got inverted by the war. The Spanish flu turned nasty in the late summer in France. A mild strain of flu spreading from soldier to soldier in the trenches stayed in the trenches because none of the soldiers got so sick that they had to leave their posts. A debilitating strain, though, resulted in a soldier’s being shipped out in a crowded troop transport, then moved to an even more crowded hospital, where he had every opportunity to infect others. Wars and refugee camps and urban overcrowding give the worst flu strains a huge evolutionary advantage. If there were ever again a civil war in China, flu-watchers would be on full alert.
— MiguelMunoz (talk) 04:10, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

The reasons why the second wave was so deadly are somewhat speculative. It is not disputed that troop movements and cramped conditions in WW1 helped to spread the virus, but it would be wrong to give this theory undue weight based on a single source.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:50, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since 1997!! Among other things, the virus genome has been completely sequenced and reproduced. Bob (talk) 20:54, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
And what have they learned?
This explains why the second wave was far more deadly and mainly infected people who were young and fit. Is there now an alternate explanation? MiguelMunoz (talk) 10:02, 29 May 2025 (UTC)

Was Australia shielded only from the second/following waves even if the first wave reached Australia, or is there some conflicting information? At the moments the following is somewhat confusing, after the first wave is explicitly described as having reached Australia:   
"Influenza entered Australia for the first time in January 1919 after a strict maritime quarantine had shielded the country through 1918." 82.100.203.227 (talk) 11:42, 11 August 2025 (UTC)