It took nearly 80 years to figure out that the most deadly pandemic in recent human history, the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic that is estimated to have took the lives of over 100 million people, was actually so deadly because of bacterial pneumonia.

Now, with all the mask orders in place back then, one natural question is: Could it have been from the masks?

The problem is made worse because this was a pre-antibiotic era.

From 2008 research by Anthony Fauci (NIH) “The pneumonia was caused by bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat.”

“We agree completely that bacterial pneumonia played a major role in the mortality of the 1918 pandemic,” says Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease in Bethesda, Maryland, and author of another journal article out next month that comes to a similar conclusion.”

“Medical and scientific experts now agree that bacteria, not influenza viruses, were the greatest cause of death during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Government efforts to gird for the next influenza pandemic – bird flu or otherwise – ought to take notice and stock up on antibiotics, says John Brundage, a medical microbiologist at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Brundage’s team culled first-hand accounts, medical records and infection patterns from 1918 and 1919. Although a nasty strain of flu virus swept around the world, bacterial pneumonia that came on the heels of mostly mild cases of flu killed the majority of the 20 to 100 million victims of the so-called Spanish flu, they conclude.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14458-bacteria-were-the-real-killers-in-1918-flu-pandemic