An article shared more than 60,000 times on Facebook attributes the deadly pandemic in 1918, known as the ‘Spanish flu’, to a ‘massive military vaccination experiment’ in Fort Riley, Kansas. While a trial against meningitis vaccine was taking place, experts contacted by Reuters said a vaccine against meningitis could not have caused the flu pandemic. The H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 flu has been identified and repeated by scientists. The meningitis vaccine is designed to treat a specific bacterium (meningococcus) and a completely different disease.
An article entitled ‘The 1918’ Spanish Flu ‘: only the vaccinated died’ (archived here) has been shared more than 61,119 times on Facebook since its publication on May 29, 2020 (according to CrowdTangle data). It will be shared on social media from 9 April 2021 (here, here ). Some Facebook users have shared a snapshot of the headline of the article, as can be seen here.
It says the initial outbreak of the disease and the subsequent deaths caused by the pandemic, which is estimated to have affected one third of the world population between 1918 and 1920 (here), were caused by a military experiment of a “vaccination against bacterial meningitis “and not by a” flu whatsoever “. This fact-checking article aims to explain why this central allegation is untrue; Other claims made in the article fall outside the scope of this article.
It is true that in early 1918, before the first cases of Spanish flu were reported at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas in March 1918 (here), a trial was made of a vaccine made with inactivated strains of the meningococcal bacterium (here). on military volunteers at the same place.
According to a report published in July 1918 by Frederick L. Gates, First Lieutenant of the Medical Corps, U.S. Army (here), the experimental vaccine created in the laboratory of The Rockefeller Institute was “about 3,700. volunteers “given and the doses” rarely caused more than the mildest local and general reactions “, which include ‘headaches, joint pains and nausea’ and in some cases diarrhea.
“However, there would be no way a vaccine against meningitis could contribute to the onset of a flu epidemic,” Dr. Donald Burke, epidemiologist and former dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (here), said by telephone. told Reuters.
‘Meningitis is another disease caused by a type of bacteria. It is not genetically or closely related to flu “, Burke explained. “Flu is a virus, a much smaller microbe than a bacterium; these are completely different types of microorganisms that cause different types of diseases. ”
Stephen Kissler, a postdoctoral fellow in immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health (here), told Reuters by telephone that the vaccine used at Camp Funston was ‘derived from existing meningitis strains’ that may have been heat is inactivated. He saw no reason to close a vaccine, consisting of existing, inactivated strains of meningitis bacteria from people who had previously been ill with meningitis, “causing a serious epidemic”.
As outlined here, the Office of Medical History of the U.S. Army’s medical department, meningococcal meningitis, which causes inflammation around the surrounding tissues of the brain (here), has always been one of the most serious and important of the various communicable diseases of the brain. human. “It occurs more often when young people are together in closed rooms such as dormitories or barracks,” so “the military had a good reason to test a vaccine against meningitis,” Burke said.
It was also not uncommon to investigate and test vaccinations at this time in history, as it was an ‘early era of microbiology’, Burke added. ‘The Fort Riley meningococcal vaccination experiment was not an unusual scientific undertaking’ and ‘Many [bacterial] vaccine trials took place around 1918 in the USA. ”
The article “The State of Science, Microbiology, and Vaccines Circa 1918” by John M. Eyler provides more context (here). During the flu pandemic in 1918 itself, experimental bacterial vaccines for flu were used in army camps as well as on workers, including 275,000 employees of the US Steel Company (here, here, here). The cause of the pandemic was unknown at the time and explains why bacterial vaccines are being tested in the hope that they could work on this new deadly disease.
The claim shared on social media in the article that ‘post-mortem examination of the war proved that the 1918 flu was NOT a’ flu ‘but that it was caused by the’ vaccination against bacterial meningitis’ is also unfounded. .
This links to an article published in NewScientist entitled: “Bacteria were the real killers in flu pandemic in 1918” (here). As explained earlier by a Reuters fact check here, evidence showed that the vast majority of those who died during the 1918 pandemic died not only from flu but from bacterial pneumonia due to the flu virus (here) .
“People generally would not have died from the bacterial infection if their lungs had not already been attacked by this virus,” Kissler explained. This secondary infection that follows takes advantage of the damage done by the virus.
Finally, experts have pointed out that evidence gathered over decades has conclusively proven that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an H1N1 virus. Further reading on the discovery and reconstruction of the H1N1 virus can be found here.
“The work that Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger and his team have done at NIH (National Institutes of Health) over the past decades has certainly proven that the 1918 pandemic was indeed caused by A / H1N1 flu,” said Alex Navarro, assistant director at the center, said. for the History of Medicine of the University of Michigan, told Reuters by email.
‘They obtained tissue samples from the period and evaluated the genome. Point. It was A / H1N1 that caused the world’s deadliest pandemic in history, ”Navarro added.
Finally, according to Kissler, the evidence is confirmable that the 1918 pandemic was caused by a flu strain. “I see no reason to believe it was anything else.”
VERDICT
Untrue. According to experts, a dissertation for meningitis in Kansas in 1918, where months later the first cases of the Spanish flu were reported, could not have helped start the Spanish flu pandemic. The H1N1 virus that caused the deadly pandemic has meanwhile been identified and repeated by scientists.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.