Very Interesting - 1918 Flu Pandemic - Killed ONLY those Who RECEIVED Flu Shots - Not those who refu

Implying that Coumadin or Wafarin is a poison, is a misnomer. Unless of course the point is that ALL drugs are poisons, but we know better than that, drugs have many helpful positive uses.

Coumadin is used to kill rodents for the very same reason it can save lives, it thins the blood. If you took too much of it, it would kill you. Not that hard to understand.

As someone whose life was saved by Coumadin, I'm very happy that doctors figured out that there are instances when using an anti-coagulant can aid human health.

I didn't read the whole thread, just the first page.

I see that many people have already said that no flu vaccine was available in 1918. That is absolutely true. The OP's own article clearly states that the first flu vaccine was distributed in 1976. The OP should have referenced the fact that the Swine Flu vaccine killed more people than the Swine Flu was projected to kill without the vaccine. Oops! That was a major setback for the vaccination program.

What I would like to mention about the Spanish Flu is that the major factor in spreading the disease was WWI. In the final months of the war, the Spanish Flu was killing more soldiers than bullets and shells were. It was the Spanish Flu, in fact that drove the Germans to the negotiating table.

Once the war ended, all those soldiers went home and carried the Flu with them. The Spanish Flu had been incubated and concentrated in the close quarters of the trenches. Then those soldiers carried it home to their families who had no resistance to it. I seriously doubt that the Spanish Flu would have killed so many people if it had not been for WWI. It was actually rumored for years that the Spanish Flu was introduced to the battlefield by the Germans as a primitive bioweapon. I remember my Grandmother telling me this. She swore that it was true.

By the way, all of my Grandparents lived through the Spanish Flu pandemic, and so they developed anti-bodies for it. Chances are that I carry those anti-bodies and you probably do too. If the Spanish Flu were accidentially released into the populace, it would probably not be any worse than the Hong Kong Flu, or Swine Flu.

On the subject of flu vaccines though, I am with those who say that they don't take the vaccinations. I have not had a good experience with vaccines in general.

I used to have to get the flu shot each year as part of the Air Force Reserves. Every year I developed the flu about a week after getting the shot.

I have had bad luck with other vaccines as well. I got violently ill from a DPT shot when I was 20 and I developed a fever of 103 for a couple of days.

I had to travel out of the country a few years ago and my travel doctor told me that I had no immunity to Chicken Pox. So, I got the shot. I developed Chicken Pox, even though the odds of that was on the order of 1 in 1000. But hey, now I have immunity to Chicken Pox.

This is disinformation. The thread title should be changed to reflect that. There is plenty of evidence to prove there was no flu vaccine in 1918. I call pandering.

reply to post by Djinnibaba


That would target all the right groups, but it would mostly kill the very old or the very young. Old people are living on borrowed time anyway, and infants aren't old enough to pose a social threat anyway.

But it makes more sense than blaming a flu vaccine that wasn't developed for 12-20 years after the event for causing the 1918 flu epidemic.

[edit on 10-3-2009 by mdiinican]

Originally posted by elfie
I tend to agree with Antar. No vaccines for influenza were available in 1918.


lhncbc.nlm.nih.gov...

Influenza Vaccine: Influenza vaccine was first introduced as a licensed product in the United States in 1944. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus, the effectiveness of a given vaccine lasts only a year or two. Each year researchers must investigate and, to some degree, anticipate changes in the virus in order to produce a vaccine that will be effective against a given strain. In most years, the mutation which occurs does not produce a strain which is drastically different from the strains in previous years. Occasionally, however, major changes occur in the configuration of the virus, requiring significant modifications in the vaccine. Significant changes occurred, for example, in the 1957 Asian Flu and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu.

add: 50 million people were not vaccinated in 1918. The vaccine did not exist.

[edit on 8-3-2009 by elfie]

Now now you're spoiling the party. Next you'll inform people how vaccines work and that after taking one it is entirely possible to feel a little low afterwards, the odd sniffle etc. Which is better than dying.....but hey ho, why spoil a good bitching session.

reply to post by Pimpish
Vaaccinations these days use "killed viruses," in place of live viruses. That's why people don't get a miled case of the flu after a vaccine. The exposure to the killed virus builds up an immunity against that particular strain of flu. To those of you who say you took the flu vaccine, then got the flue anyway, you probably got a version of the flu that you weren't vaccinated against, or, more likely you just got a cold, which involves so many different viruses that we can't just can't identify them all, plus bacteria.
I missed taking a flu shot 3 times. I got the flu 2 out of 3 times. If you have never suffered through the swine flu or the Hong Kong flu, you will take a shot, and put up with a sore arm for a couple of days.

reply to post by lunarminer
The Spainish Flu was especially virulent. Young, healthy soldiers would go to bed feeling fine, wake up the next morning feeling a little under the weather, and would be dead within eight hours, their lungs filled with fluids. Of course, no epidemic hits everyone the same way. Some people will always survive. And their genes are the ones that get passed on. Epidemics are natures way of controlling population, and strengthening the species.

Frankly people who campaign against vaccinations of any kind are dangerous. I would go so far as to remove my children from any school that did not insist on all the standard vaccinations.

Re the Flu; of all the people I know who get the Flu Vaccine each year none have ever caught the flu. One shot seems to last me for about four years (only ever remember about every four years) but since I began getting them I have never had the flu. A lot of people mistake a bad cold for the flu. As someone who used to get the flu regularly they are nothing alike. One is an inconvenience the other makes you feel like death.

I've had the flu one time in the past twenty years and I've never had the flu shot.

You can't always go by your own averages when advising someone else.

You might be on to something. But every year I had never taken the flu shot and every year I had gotten very very sick, I would get the flu 2 or 3 times a year. Last year I decided to take the shot and surprisingly I never got sick yet. So what does this mean?

reply to post by kettlebellysmith


Thanks for your reply.

Yes, it is reported that the Spanish Flu was especially potent. I believe that the reason for that is that the trench warfare practiced during WWI put soldiers in especially close quarters, with poor hygene, and poor toilet facilities. The population density on the front was measured in the thousands per square mile. These conditions acted as an incubator for the virus and caused it to mutate quickly into the very potent strains.

I don't think that a modern day release of the same virus would cause nearly as much destruction as the original. As I already mentioned, the world is populated by people who are the decendents of those who survived the Spanish Flu. We are not living in a concentrated manner. Our hygene is better and our toilet facilities are better. Not to mention that our medical technology is far better.

reply to post by lunarminer

Those soldiers I was talking about died in Kansas. I can't remember the name of the military base there right now. These guys hadn't seen combat, they were new recruits. Their lungs just filled with fluid. One source described it as a "fulminating pulmonary edema."
I do agree with you that trench warfare, poor hygiene, and the close quarters made the death toll higher in Europe, but it doesn't explain the virulence of the Spainish flu.
Not even suggesting a conspiracy, but but you couldn't ask for a better bio-terrorism weapon than something like the Spainish Flu.
Don't put too much faith in medicine when it comes to viral illness. Antibiotics won't work, and are often prescribed by the doctor for secondary opportunistic bacteria, or just because the patient demands it. The irresponsibility of a lot of doctors has caused us to breed bacteria that are immune to a lot of the current antibiotics.
We've made some headway in treating viruses, but it's slow.

[edit on 11-3-2009 by kettlebellysmith]

DAMMIT! I had a DTP vaccination in school last week!

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge



That's what I was going to say when I read the first post. 'Flu shots are fairly recent, and the suggestion that they were around in 1918 sounds utterly ridiculous.

An uncle of my grandmother's died in Melbourne in 1918 from it, and he most certainly never had any immunisation.

Sounds like a 'Scare Con'

This thread title should be changed to reflect that it is a hoax/misinformation. Or perhaps, Lie. I vote Lie.

I don't have a source for what I am about to say, but I guess it could be researched. I thought it was common knowledge that although influenza vaccines were not safely produced unitl around 1930 and not approved for the general public until 1945, soldiers returning from the war were given a botched version of an influenza vaccine in 1918.

These men soon developed strange symptoms which were explained away as 'shell shock' - and of course, many of them died.

Dr McBean's comments on a 'vaccine' that was used in 1918 should not influence the modern use of specific flu vaccines today.

Doesn't explain the people who didn't become soldiers that died. 3 people in my husband's family caught it, and one of them died. He was 28.

'shell shock'

That is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD.

It has nothing to do with flu shots or any type shots except being gun shot in some cases.

Originally posted by hawaiigurl
You might be on to something. But every year I had never taken the flu shot and every year I had gotten very very sick, I would get the flu 2 or 3 times a year. Last year I decided to take the shot and surprisingly I never got sick yet. So what does this mean?

It means you have a really weak immune system. To reslove your problem (and not simply band-aid it), you have to strengthen your immune system. Eat some boogers once in a while. Stop using hand sanitizers. Have someone sneeze on you once in a while. Go play in some trash... anything but taking the stupid shot man.

I am only using logic... something that has been lost these days. I very, very rarely get sick. I do not get shots. When I was a kid, I almost drowned in a vat of cow manure... swallowed a bunch of it and had to have my stomach pumped. As a kid growing up in a post-communist Poland, we didn't have many toys... we would have to use our imaginations (again, something lacking this day and age) and we used the large garbage collector bins to play 'tanks' in. The amount of germs I have been exposed to over my life is impressive. I'm sure lots of travel to many countries had some influence on my immune system as well as I probably picked up germs that my body had never seen before. Point is... if your immune system is strong, you don't need a damned vaccine.

I very rarely get sick.

Asking anyone to trust big pharma is like G.W., the Devil and Alex Jones just saying "Trust me, I wouldn't lie for my own gain... I want nothing but the best for you."

Laughable at best.