Many people were affected by the Influenza pandemic. In 1918 there was no vaccine for influenza until 1945. So, people were getting sick very fast. Especially people who did not have access to clean or sanitary things, such as people who lived in poverty lived in dirtier and more unclean areas and in closer proximity to others. So, influenza spread faster and among more people, a lot of the people who lived in poverty in 1918 were more minority groups.
In this project they looked at how the people saw influenza and what they thought about it from how it was portrayed in newspapers and in media back then. They looked at a lot of different newspaper titles and the wording of them. Depending on where you lived you got a different newspaper also some people couldn’t afford a newspaper so they went off of what they heard from others or by word of mouth.
In the project they only looked at newspapers but couldn’t go off of what people were actually talking about during that time. Also, some people did not have access to the newspaper or even some people might have not been able to read the newspaper. But they were getting sick or people around them were getting sick and all they had to go off of was what they were hearing and seeing.
So, they did not account for minority groups or those living in poverty and what type of media they were recieving and how they were percieving influenza.