Contagion and Disease: Spanish Flu
And How Medical Research Can’t Seem to See Past the Germ Theory
The Spanish flu of 1918 through 1920 has been called the deadliest epidemic in history. It was believed to be caused by a microbe that was being passed between people around the world, especially by soldiers carrying it back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean during World War I.
But, try as they might, researchers at the time were unable to show that this flu was contagious. Dr. Milton Rosenau, director of the public health agency that was precursor to the National Institutes of Health, conducted numerous experiments exposing healthy individuals to patients who were seriously ill with this flu. Other researchers also attempted to show that what was making people sick was highly contagious. In most of their experiments, not one single person became sick.
However, these researchers were so steeped in the paradigm of the germ theory that they were unable to correctly interpret the failure of their experiments. Their results show that their assumption about the contagiousness of this illness was incorrect. But they could not see that their experiments had falsified their hypothesis, and that the next logical step would be to develop a new hypothesis to test. They needed a hypothesis that something else besides a contagious microbe was the cause of Spanish flu, but they couldn’t go there. So we still have the narrative of a viral flu pandemic at the end of World War I, a narrative that was disproven over a century ago.
What Could the True Cause Have Been?
The germ theory has taught us, like Rosenau, to understand mass-illness events like the Spanish flu as having one cause: a single microbe that infected everyone who had symptoms and everyone who died. Yet there are many possible circumstances that could have caused the same set of symptoms that was named “Spanish flu.”
Most of them are obscured and even invisible when we look through the germ theory lens. So if it wasn’t a contagious microbe, what may really have caused so many people to die during the so-called Spanish flu? And was there only one cause for all the sickness and death, or could many factors be in play?
Conditions of War
Independent journalist Michael Bryant has pointed out that World War I created toxic conditions in a variety of ways for both soldiers and civilians throughout Europe. Bryant argued that warfare is known to make everyday life much more challenging in many health-related ways. He noted,
A look at history books and statistics shows that epidemics always developed where human biological systems had been weakened, primarily due to lack of food and water, poor sanitary conditions, toxic overload, and immense social stressors. This description defines the world of 1918 and the social conditions of “The Great War.”[1]
One such condition was soldiers’ exposure to harsh and unhygienic conditions of warfare itself. For one thing, over a million horses, mules, and donkeys were transported and utilized as part of the fighting, as well as dogs, carrier pigeons, and even farm animals such as pigs. The concentration of many animals in difficult conditions resulted in soldiers being exposed to manure and animal carcasses when the unfortunate creatures died from overwork, malnutrition, or injuries from artillery or poison gas.
According to one account, “Veterinary hospitals were built to help horses recover from shell shock and battle wounds, but thousands still died and lined the roads of the Western Front.”[2]
Pack horses transporting ammunition to the 20th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery in Neuville St. Vaast, France, April 1917. Photo by William Ivor Castle, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
Ill health was common in overcrowded cities from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. Streets sometimes ran with human waste, and animals lay and decayed where they died. This created the conditions for epidemics of diseases like yellow fever, cholera, and smallpox. Soldiers at the front in World War I and people living in nearby villages suffered similarly from rotting waste and decomposing animal bodies.
The Trenches
The trenches themselves, a distinguishing feature of World War I, were also a source of soldiers’ exposure to unclean and stressful conditions that are known to make people sick. The men spent most of their time outdoors in the narrow trenches, in cold and damp conditions, exposed to rain, fog, and snow. The expectation of being under attack at any moment made their days and nights unrelentingly stressful.
Their food was not of high quality, and there was little clean water to drink. Bryant described the diseases and painful conditions the soldiers experienced.
Soldiers fighting in close proximity in these unsanitary conditions were commonly subject to diseases such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever. Soldiers in the trenches were plagued by sore throats, colds, flu, lice-infested clothing (which caused ‘trench fever’ and typhus) and suffered from exhaustion and sores as regular aspects of their lives.[3]
Chemical Warfare With Poison Gas
Another source of environmental toxins during World War I was the extensive chemical warfare conducted by all armies. Poison gas was a significant factor in illness and death among soldiers and civilians. The artillery bombardment which frequently came at the same time as the chemical attacks made the gases more airborne so they spread across the countryside, affecting local residents as well as soldiers and animals.[4] For those who survived the gas attacks, lung damage could easily have looked like respiratory conditions such as influenza and pneumonia.
Many of the unfortunate soldiers who perished from the gas attacks had an unusual blue color to their skin when they died. In addition, many died rapidly, within hours to days of showing symptoms, their lungs full of fluid. Blue skin and rapid death from internal suffocation were not typical symptoms of influenza, but they were the known effects of poison gas.[5] Yet these deaths were counted in the Spanish flu totals.
Tellingly, both British and German soldiers called it the “Flanders flu,” after a major battle location in Belgium where many soldiers became ill.[6] Chemical weapons were used extensively in all three battles that took place near Flanders.
A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles resting in a communication trench early in the Battle of the Somme, July 1916. Photo credit: Royal Engineers No.1 Printing Company, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
Another peculiarity of Spanish flu links it to the fighting in World War I: this flu, unlike the familiar influenza, affected mostly people between 20 and 40 years of age. It also killed far more men than women.[7] Typically, when large numbers of people have influenza symptoms, it is the very young and the very old who are more likely to perish, while the strong and healthy individuals between 15 and 60 recover. Usually males and females died in approximately equal proportions. Wikipedia says this about the unusual demographic of Spanish flu: “…the most vulnerable people were those like the soldiers in the trenches—adults who were young and fit.”[8] Soldiers were prime victims of this disease.
The preponderance of deaths attributed to the Spanish flu among men of the age of military service suggests that poison gas deaths on the battlefield may have been counted as flu deaths. There is no record of how many American and other soldiers died from poison gas as compared to those who died from battle wounds, so it is impossible to know the true figures.
About one third of the US soldier deaths attributed to Spanish flu happened in France; these may have been due to battle conditions, including the toxic gas. The other two thirds were on military bases in the US.[9] The 53,400 US soldiers killed on the battlefield amounted to 54% of soldier deaths, while Spanish flu was responsible for 46%.[10] Some portion of both of these figures was likely due to asphyxiation from poison gas.
While many World War I battles are noted in history books for the number of deaths during the fighting—battles such as the deadly Meuse-Argonne Campaign, which took the lives of 26,277 American soldiers—the flu is reported to have killed more US soldiers than any single one of these notorious battles.[11]
Pneumonia
Another question about soldier deaths that were attributed to Spanish flu is raised by autopsies conducted at the time. A National Institutes of Health study in 2008 (of which Anthony Fauci was one of several authors) looked at autopsy results of 58 soldiers whose causes of death were classified as Spanish flu. They found that 92% likely died not from flu, but from bacterial pneumonia―a respiratory condition with similar symptoms. While 58 is a small sample, it is not unreasonable to extend these results to army personnel as a whole, including soldiers from all the nations that fought.
The researchers at NIH concluded that the Spanish flu virus had destroyed cells in the bronchial tubes of these victims, allowing bacteria to enter and make them ill with pneumonia.[12] However, it seems more likely that their symptoms and their deaths resulted directly from having their nose, throat, and lung tissue severely damaged by toxic, corrosive mustard gas. It appears that the NIH researchers did not consider this possibility. For them, it had to be a microbe.
Experimental Vaccines
A third possible cause of flu symptoms and deaths that is also not visible through the germ theory lens is the experimental vaccines that were given to US soldiers and to the public as fear of the Spanish flu increased. The experimental nature of vaccines at this time and the numbers of soldiers and civilians who received them supports a plausible alternative to the germ theory explanation for the Spanish flu.
The US Army has always supported vaccination, and the Spanish flu era was no exception.[13] An experimental meningitis vaccine produced by the Rockefeller Institute was given to several thousand soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas. Many became ill with symptoms similar to those of influenza—sore throat, chills, fever, headache, and body aches and pains, mostly within a day or two of receiving the injections. Their symptoms were interpreted as “early-stage meningitis” induced by the vaccine as their bodies developed immunity. This is what vaccines are claimed to do.[14]
However, these are also the commonly understood symptoms of influenza. Numerous other soldiers at US bases also received the meningitis vaccine. There is no data on how many of them died from the influenza-like symptoms that they experienced after these injections. However, we do know that two thirds of the US soldier deaths in World War I that were attributed to Spanish flu, approximately 30,000, happened on American bases, not European battlefields.
The Rockefeller Institute experimental meningitis vaccines were also given to soldiers from other countries during World War I. Even before the US entered the war, the Institute had sent its meningitis vaccine by request to England, France, Italy, Belgium, and other countries.[15] Writing in 1935, teacher and social critic Annie Riley Hale said, “As everyone knows, the world has never witnessed such an orgy of vaccination and inoculation of every description as was inflicted by army-camp doctors upon the soldiers of the [First] World War.”[16]
On the home front, although there was no vaccine for influenza at this time, there were other vaccines already in use that were often marketed as effective for the flu.[17] There is no record of how many people took these vaccines, but undoubtedly there were many, as fear levels were high.
Exceptionally Cold, Damp Weather
One additional possible cause of Spanish flu that does not follow the germ theory paradigm is a climate anomaly that brought cold, wet air to Europe from 1914 through 1919.[18] The notion that the cold can cause influenza goes back many centuries, as people observed respiratory illness following exposure to cold, damp air. “Influenza di freddo” is the full name of this condition, meaning “influence of the cold.”
And cold it was in Europe during the years of World War I. Temperature and precipitation studies, including ice core samples, show that these six years were a time of exceptional cold and incessant rainfall.[19] These conditions would, according to the prior understanding of “influenza,” undoubtedly lead to influenza symptoms in people throughout the continent, especially the soldiers in the open trenches of the battlefields.
Although this understanding of the human respiratory system’s susceptibility to being compromised by the cold is not acknowledged by Western medicine, researchers who conducted a weather study of the World War I years suggested it may have been a factor in the prevalence of Spanish flu.
Image source: Freepik.com
The researchers documented the extended period of unusually cold and rainy weather from 1914 to 1919 in Europe as a “once-in-a-century” event. They noted that the onset of Spanish flu directly followed these dreary years, suggesting that these conditions “set the stage” for the Spanish flu pandemic to take off just as the war was ending.
“Mortality data from all causes show increases in times of worsening weather, precipitation, and temperatures, a factor in many of the major battles of WWI, as well as a possible exacerbating factor for the virulence of the pandemic,” they wrote.[20] The researchers, locked in the germ theory narrative, framed the weather as setting the population up for the microbial flu epidemic. What actually happened, from a terrain perspective, is that the cold and damp were themselves the actual cause of widespread symptoms identified as flu: no bacteria or virus needed.
High-wattage Radio Waves
Finally, it may not have been only material conditions such as weather, lack of hygiene, vaccination, or poison gas that could have caused so many people around the world to experience similar symptoms. Another potential factor is heavy use of radio waves, especially for military communication during the war.
Photo by Susie, sourced from Pixabay.
Tall towers broadcasting high wattages of powerful radio waves were rapidly set up by the armies of many nations. These waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the towers were spewing such frequencies over the land as they sent communication signals to distant towers.
We are so used to radio waves that it may seem odd to us that people would become ill and die from them. However, if we consider the fact that our bodies are electrical, it stands to reason that unnatural electrical impulses could disrupt our internal field and potentially make us sick. (If you don’t think we have electricity in our bodies, remember that electrocardiograms—EKGs—and electroencephalograms—EEGs—are only possible because of the electromagnetic field around us and within us.)
The fact that so many people fell ill around the world just as radio waves were proliferating is not proof that the two are related. But it is a strong enough correlation in timing that it deserves to be investigated as a possible reason for the Spanish flu.
Arthur Firstenberg in his book The Invisible Rainbow[21] has done a deep investigation into electricity, both what is in our bodies and all the forms of artificial or man-made electrical and magnetic frequencies that permeate the earth. Firstenberg documented the flu pandemics coinciding with each new development of man-made electricity: telephone and telegraph lines strung everywhere in the 1880s (unnamed flu epidemic), radio waves in 1918 (Spanish flu), radar in 1957 (Asian flu), and satellites launched into orbit in 1968 (Hong Kong flu). Could the activation of 5G networks in places like Wuhan, northern Italy, and New York City have been a factor in the flu-like illness that showed up in March 2020? (You remember its name.)
Single-Minded Investigation
It seems plausible that any and all of these possible causes of influenza symptoms had something to do with the tragically high number of deaths and illnesses during that time. Yet these external and internal circumstances and conditions have mostly been ignored by mainstream researchers and historians investigating what was going on with the “Great Influenza.” This is a noticeable pattern in any research that relates to the disproven germ hypothesis.
Rosenau and the others found that their experiments failed to document their belief that the influenza of 1918 was caused by a contagious microbe. Virologists repeatedly failed to find viruses that they were looking for yet continued to forge ahead with the same methodology. Epidemiologists and medical historians also have not looked outside the narrow lens of the germ theory to find out what it was that was making people sick in 1918 or any other “flu pandemic.”
It seems that the germ theory model has blinded people in these fields so that they can’t even imagine that the source of illness could be anything except a virus or bacteria that passes between people.
This blindness to other possibilities is still very much with us today, as we tend to assume that viruses are responsible for the illnesses that we experience. Having looked at some plausible alternative explanations for the Spanish flu pandemic, it may be easier for us to see the limitations of the previous century’s scientists and researchers with their narrow focus on the germ theory.
Can we apply the same investigative questioning to our understanding of our own disease and health?
Thanks for reading!
[1] Michael Bryant, “Exploding The Spanish Flu Myth,” Health Freedom Defense Fund, July 22, 2024. https://healthfreedomdefense.org/exploding-the-spanish-flu-myth/
[2] School History, “Horses in World War I,” 2025. https://schoolhistory.co.uk/notes/horses-in-world-war-i/
[3] Bryant, “Exploding The Spanish Flu Myth.”
[4] Bryant, ”Exploding The Spanish Flu Myth.”
[5] Bryant, “Exploding The Spanish Flu Myth.”
[6] “Spanish Flu,” Wikipedia, (2025). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
[7] Bryant, “Exploding The Spanish Flu Myth.”
[8] “Spanish Flu,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
[9] Harry Thetford, “Flu Killed More World War I Troops Than Any Battle” (Greensboro News and Record, January 21, 2018). https://greensboro.com/life-entertainment/harry-thetford-flu-killed-more-world-war-i-troops-than-any-battle/article_f36cacb2-c09a-5833-9b4a-2fd3cf275ba5.html
[10] Eric Durr, “Flu Outbreak Killed 45,000 US Soldiers During World War I,” National Guard, August 30, 2018. https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article-View/Article/1616713/flu-outbreak-killed-45000-us-soldiers-during-world-war-i/
[11] Thetford, “Flu Killed More World War I Troops Than Any Battle.”
[12] National Institutes of Health, “Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths in 1918 Influenza Pandemic,” news release, August 19, 2018. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneumonia-caused-most-deaths-1918-influenza-pandemic; David Morens et al., “Predominant Role of Bacterial Pneumonia as a Cause of Death in Pandemic Influenza: Implications for Pandemic Influenza Preparedness,” Journal of Infectious Diseeases 198, no. 7 (October 7, 2008): 962‒970. https://doi.org/10.1086/591708
[13] Silvia Ratto-Kim et al., “The US Military Commitment to Vaccine Development: A Century of Successes and Challenges,” Frontiers in Immunology, 9 (2018). https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2018.01397/full
[14] Frederick L. Gates, “A Report on Anti-Meningitis Vaccination and Observations on Aglutinins in the Blood of Chronic Meningococcal Carriers,” Journal of Experimental Medicine, 28 (1918): 460. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2126288/pdf/449.pdf
[15] Bryant, “Exploding The Spanish Flu Myth.”
[16] Annie Riley Hale, The Medical Voodoo (Gotham House, 1935), 14.
[17] John M. Eyler, “The State of Science, Microbiology, and Vaccines Circa 1918,” Public Health Report, 125, no. S3 (2010): 27–36. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00333549101250S306
[18] “Spanish Flu,” Wikipedia.
[19] Alexander F. More et al., “The Impact of a Six-Year Climate Anomaly on the ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic and WWI,” Geohealth, no. 9 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GH000277
[20] More et al., “The Impact of a Six-Year Climate Anomaly on the ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic and WWI.”
[21] Arthur Firstenberg, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020).
Suggested Reading
Check out Mike Stone’s new Going Antiviral Series where he presents condensed nuggets of his research in short videos. Great for friends and relatives who want a quick take.
Dawn Lester continues her great podcast called Dawn of Discernment with fascinating interviews. Here is her most recent.
Dr. Marizelle Arce, author of Germs Are Not Our Enemy, has a Substack where she explores health issues from a terrain perspective.
I wonder if they found even one of those deadly "Spanish" microbes in any of the dead? Germ theory is a no go. What really happens to cause illness and disease (what the germists call disease) is toxicity.
There are so many holes in germ theory that it looks like a piece of Swiss Cheese pulverized by Elliott Ness using a Thompson machine gun. With all the thousands of toxic chemicals floating around, it is no wonder that humans become overly intoxicated with this garbage.
The body can only do so much to get rid of the poisons. It's when the systems designed to dispense with toxins become overwhelmed that the real trouble begins. With the unconscionable belief in germ theory, the cure of course is vaccines and big pharma drugs...all poisons themselves.
Germs are the good guys...the modern medical mafia are the bad guys. But false germ theory keeps 19% of the US economy humming, the doctors rich, the hospitals flowing with money, the coffin makers happy and the graveyards full. That is why no one with any power challenges it with any gusto.
The 5g idea of Wuhan sickness is dumb.
Past radios were much higher power and in wider frequency bands because the technology of the time was not as accurate. Older analog cell phones for example used way more power than your smartphone which can last a day+ on a small battery.
Also, Wuhan has issues because of pollution.
I'm not saying emf is not a problem but it's a much smaller issue than it was in the past when everyone was blasting many watts to get their signal to go far.