In this photo taken in November 1918, a medical nurse is providing care to an ill person at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. This photo was taken by Harris & Ewing and is kept in the Library of Congress’s collection. The Research Brief contains a concise overview of engaging scholarly studies. The major point. In U.S. cities during the 1918 flu pandemic, differences in influenza mortality based on race diminished by 193% as a result of an odd combination of the virus and its effects on the course of history. The latest results from our research printed in Demography insists that social imbalances do not worsen during pandemics. This disagrees with the widely held assumption. In the U.S., prior to the 1918 influenza pandemic, African Americans were dying from respiratory diseases at a much higher rate in comparison to white people, however this particular pandemic was an unexpected outlier. Research uncovered that young and middle-aged white people who lived in an urban setting were particularly apt to succumb to the 1918 infection, with mortality being up to 20 times higher than usual. In urban settings, the mortality rate of African Americans during the 1918 outbreak was lesser than that of the White population, although it did still increase. Generally speaking, the death rate among white people experienced an enhancement of five times while the death rate among Black people experienced an advancement of three times. Even though Black people still passed away at a greater rate than whites during the 1918 pandemic, the gap in death rates between the two groups was significantly diminished in comparison to other eras.
