A Mild Type of Flu

The winter flu flurry was on. The Army had already started giving the needle to all troops in Korea and those in the U.S. who had orders for overseas. Here & there across the U.S., civilian health authorities reported outbreaks of "respiratory infection," which some called grippe and some called influenza. The chances were that in most cases the disease was caused by the same virus that the Army's laboratories had isolated: influenza, type A' (pronounced, and often written "A prime"). If no other strain of flu virus shows up, there should be little occasion for alarm, since this variety of A' is one which rarely causes serious illness.

However, there were plenty of cases. At Indiana's DePauw University, 230 students out of 1,800 reported sick within 24 hours. The university shut down for a week. While state health officials labored to confirm the disease's identity, students were in no doubt. They dubbed it "gaumboo" and sometimes added a coughed syllable for emphasis.

New Mexico was as hard hit as anywhere. In Espanola, the schools were closed because 472 pupils were absent and 325 more had to be sent home because they started running fevers. Many another town closed its schools. In Santa Fe, nearly every family had at least one victim of the fever. But doctors (many of them ill too) agreed that everybody was getting better fast.

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