1920 Spainsh-Flu History Interesting Universal Facts

1920 Spainsh-Flu History Interesting Universal Facts

History

Using data from the 1895–1945 Statistical Abstract of Taiwan (9), we compared monthly deaths during the 2 waves of epidemics in 1918 and 1920 with deaths during corresponding nonpandemic periods of the adjacent years. For example, we compared monthly deaths for November and December 1918 with the mean deaths for November and December 1916–1917 and 1919–1922. Statistically significant excess deaths were computed by detecting the data points at which the all-cause deaths exceeded the mean of the adjacent years +2 SDs (6,10). Excess deaths, computed from the mean number of deaths at these data points, were then used to ascertain the effect of the pandemic on deaths during these periods. During 1918–1920, population data were divided into 3 major groups: Taiwanese (95.2%), Mainland Chinese (0.57%), and Japanese–Korean (4.2%). However, only records of all-cause deaths for Taiwanese and Japanese were available and used in our analysis.