“Carry On”: State Censorship and Denial of Spanish Influenza in Great Britain (1918-19)

Abstract

In the final year of the “war to end all wars”, the world would be plagued by a new universal enemy: Spanish Influenza. Considered the largest pandemic of all time, in terms of infection and death rates, the 1918-1920 virus is estimated to have affected half of the world’s population and killed 50-100 million. However, for as cataclysmic as this disease was, it has often been forgotten by both academia and society as a whole. Using Great Britain and Ireland as an example, it is argued that the Spanish Flu has largely been forgotten as a result of state official denial and press censorship in a time when the country could not afford to look weak in the final year of World War I and its immediate aftermath. Parallels are drawn to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Department: Interdisciplinary Dialogue Project

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aidan Forth