UC Irvine

The effect of the 1918 influenza pandemic on other diseases is a neglected topic in historical epidemiology. This paper takes up the hypothesis that the influenza pandemic affected the long-term decline of tuberculosis though selective mortality, such that many people with tuberculosis were killed in 1918, depressing subsequent tuberculosis mortality and transmission. Regularly-collected vital statistics data on mortality of influenza and tuberculosis in the US are presented and analyzed demographically. The available population-level data fail to contradict the selection hypothesis. More work is needed to understand fully the role of multiple morbidities in the 1918 influenza pandemic.