Praxis II Citizenship

Answer: D - The close quarters of World War I facilitated the rapid spread of influenza in 1918, resulting in a pandemic that ultimately became one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. It was given the nickname “Spanish flu” because the disease received greater press attention in Spain, which had not been involved in the war. Increased world travel related to troop movement expedited the rate of global infection. A half-billion people contracted Spanish flu between 1918 and 1919. It even reached the more remote parts of the planet; tribes residing in rainforests and on isolated islands in the Pacific weren’t even spared. An estimated 50 million people succumbed to the disease, which amounted to about three percent of the world’s population. More people died during the first year of the Spanish flu than at the four-year height of the Black Death during the Middle Ages. For the countries that suffered extensive infrastructural damage during the war, the punishing illness only added insult to injury, making economic recovery that much harder.