The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger). People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths. One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the
most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate," (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth," (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza. In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme (Crawford):

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.

Jesus Said
" ...and there shall be FAMINES, and
        pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers
        places." (Matthew 24:7)

The colour of the fourth horse is given as deathly pale or sickly, yellowish green. Again comparing the Revelation with the Master's Olivet prophecy we find that the sickly pale horse symbolises pestilence: deadly disease epidemics and plagues that so quickly lay low millions of humans engulfed in war and famine. When the pale horse breaks into a gallop it will appear as though the finely tuned forces of nature have become dislodged. Disease epidemics of all kinds will sweep across the globe bringing death to millions of people and their crops. The rider on the pale horse has begun to ride below and death is following closely at his heels.

1. Link to a PBS Special on it

2. "Nothing else -- no infection, no war, no famine -- has ever killed so many in as short a period. And yet it has never inspired awe."

3. Info from Standford University on 1918 Flu

4. The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It