Originally Posted by
Legion
He covered it up, as did all the combatant nations in WWI, because they were afraid that publicizing it would hurt wartime morale.
Spain was neutral, so their newspapers broke the story because they had no reason to censor the news.
That's why it's called the "Spanish Flu".
Spain was neutral during World War I and unlike its European neighbors, it didn’t impose wartime censorship on its press. In France, England and the United States, newspapers weren’t allowed to report on anything that could harm the war effort, including news that a crippling virus was sweeping through troops. Since Spanish journalists were some of the only ones reporting on a widespread flu outbreak in the spring of 1918, the pandemic became known as the “Spanish flu.”
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
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