MD Expat in PA wrote: “FWIW some early cases of “Spanish Flu” were misdignosed as menigitis.”
I’ve done quite a bit of reading about the Spanish Flu. It killed my paternal grandmother in the third wave, ie, 1920.
It’s not been exactly established that the flu began at Fort Riley. It’s fairly certain in didn’t begin in Spain. It’s very possible that the spanish flu jumped from pigs in a rather small farming community some distance from Fort Riley. Draftees moving to Fort Riley from that town might have been the source. It certainly wasn’t a pneumonia vaccine that started this.
Spain was neutral in The War to End All Wars.
Every other country regarded the outbreak as a state secret, so that no enemy would know their fighting ability had been degraded.
Spain ‘gets the credit’ because they were honest, the only reports of the outbreak had Spanish datelines. There’s a life’s lesson in there somewhere....
That is my understanding as well. That and bacterial meningitis and bacterial pneumonia are two different things with different symptoms.