With all the take about how deadly the swine flu is, it is hard not to remember the flu pandemic of 1918. This flu spread to nearly every part of the world and at a time when vaccines, air filters and hygiene were not quite as good as they are today.

This flu was also a subtype of H1N1 (as is the swine flu). Most of its victims were young healthy adults as opposed to children, the elderly and weakened patients as it is with other flu strains. The pandemic lasted for March 1918 to June 1920. It spread to even remote places likes the Arctic and Pacific Islands. The best estimate for the number of deaths is 50 million, but could be as high as 100 million. At the time, this was 3% of the world’s population. Approximately 500 million people were infected. About 10 – 20% of those infected died.

Today, we have much better medical resources and this flu may not have caused as many deaths today.