Influenza is an infectious disease that caused by RNA viruses that belong to the Orthomyxoviridae family.

Influenza is commonly called flu, and it is characterized by chills, sore throat, muscle pain, severe headache, fever, coughing, fatigue and overall feeling of discomfort. Most people suffer from sore throat, fever and cough when they get influenza.Usually it is not fatal and gets cured on its own after a few days. However, influenza can cause pneumonia, which can be deadly, especially among young children and seniors.

If you want to know how did influenza enter the United States, it would be very difficult to answer. Influenza has been around for thousands of years afflicting people. However, influenza has taken many lives, especially the Spanish flu that occurred in 1918. In the United States around 675,000 died due to Spanish flu. This number is more than the number of deaths that occurred in World War I, World II, Korean War and the Vietnam War together. Many pharmaceutical companies tried to find an effective vaccination for the flu, but the virus disappeared even before it could be isolated.

According to researchers, Spanish flu actually started in the United States. The first case was diagnosed at For Riley in Kansas on March 11, 1918. It is believed that unhygienic living conditions and overcrowding cause the virus to multiply, and within a week 522 soldiers were admitted in hospital with Spanish flu. Very soon there were outbreaks in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and California. All the outbreaks were in army barracks. At that point just military personnel were struck down by the flu and not civilians. Even naval ships based in ports along the East Coast reported influenza cases with many crew members getting pneumonia.

By May 1918, the number of cases of influenza reduced in the United States, but the soldiers from Fort Riley were carriers, who were instrumental in taking the virus to France. Once the virus reached France, it infected the Allied forces. Soon, the virus spread to other parts of the world, including New Zealand, India and China.

After 4 months of traveling around the world, the Spanish flu returned to the US in winter of 1918, and it wreaked havoc in the country.

Every year it is estimated that influenza causes 36,000 deaths in the US and another 200,000 people get hospitalized because of the illness.

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