Philadelphia Parade Worsens Spanish Flu Outbreak

On September 28, 1918, a parade of the Liberty Loan in Philadelphia triggered a huge epidemic of Spanish flu in the city. By the end of the pandemic, an estimated 20 to 50 million people had died worldwide.

The flu is a very contagious virus that attacks the respiratory system and can mutate very quickly to avoid being killed by the human immune system. Usually, only the very old and the very young are at risk of dying from influenza. Although a pandemic of the virus in 1889 killed thousands of people around the world, it wasn’t until 1918 that the world discovered how deadly the flu can be.

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