Legacy

Despite the high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the epidemic, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness over the decades until the arrival of news about bird flu and other pandemics in the 1990s and 2000s. This has led some historians to label the Spanish flu a "forgotten pandemic".

There are various theories of why the Spanish flu was "forgotten". The rapid pace of the pandemic, which, for example, killed most of its victims in the United States within less than nine months, resulted in limited media coverage. The general population was familiar with patterns of pandemic disease in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: typhoid, yellow fever, diphtheria and cholera all occurred near the same time. These outbreaks probably lessened the significance of the influenza pandemic for the public. In some areas, the flu was not reported on, the only mention being that of advertisements for medicines claiming to cure it.

Additionally, the outbreak coincided with the deaths and media focus on the First World War. Another explanation involves the age group affected by the disease. The majority of fatalities, from both the war and the epidemic, were among young adults. The high number of war-related deaths of young adults may have overshadowed the deaths caused by flu.

When people read the obituaries, they saw the war or postwar deaths and the deaths from the influenza side by side. Particularly in Europe, where the war's toll was high, the flu may not have had a tremendous psychological impact or may have seemed an extension of the war's tragedies. The duration of the pandemic and the war could have also played a role. The disease would usually only affect a particular area for a month before leavingcitation needed. The war, however, had initially been expected to end quickly but lasted for four years by the time the pandemic struck.

In fiction and other literature

The Spanish flu has been represented in numerous works of fiction:

• Katherine Anne Porter's novella, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider", published under the same title in a 1930 collection of three works
• 1918, a 1985 American drama film.
• The Last Town on Earth, a 2006 novel.
• Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen, a 2009 British television series.
• Downton Abbey, a 2010 British historical drama television series.episode needed
• Vampyr, a 2018 video game..

In addition, Mary McCarthy referred to it in her memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), as she and her three brothers were orphaned by their parents' deaths from the flu.

Comparison with other pandemics

This flu killed more people in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 24 years. But, it killed a much lower percentage of the world's population than the Black Death, which lasted for many more years.

Major modern influenza pandemics

Name	Date	World pop.	Subtype	Reproduction number	Infected (est.)	Deaths worldwide	Case fatality rate	Pandemic severity
1889–90 flu pandemic	1889–90	1.53 billion	Likely H3N8 or H2N2	2.10 (IQR, 1.9–2.4)	20–60% (300–900 million)	1 million	0.10–0.28%	2
1918 flu	1918–20	1.80 billion	H1N1	1.80 (IQR, 1.47–2.27)	33% (500 million) or >56% (>1 billion)	17–100 million	2–3%, or ~4%, or ~10%	5
Asian flu	1957–58	2.90 billion	H2N2	1.65 (IQR, 1.53–1.70)	>17% (>500 million)	1–4 million	<0.2%	2
Hong Kong flu	1968–69	3.53 billion	H3N2	1.80 (IQR, 1.56–1.85)	>14% (>500 million)	1–4 million	<0.1%	2
2009 flu pandemic	2009–10	6.85 billion	H1N1/09	1.46 (IQR, 1.30–1.70)	11–21% (0.7–1.4 billion)	151,700–575,400	0.01%	1
Typical seasonal flut	Every year	7.75 billion	A/H3N2, A/H1N1, B, ...	1.28 (IQR, 1.19–1.37)	5–15% (340 million – 1 billion) 3–11% or 5–20% (240 million – 1.6 billion)	290,000–650,000/year	<0.1%	1
Notes ^ Not pandemic, but included for comparison purposes.