It's 100% due to war time censorship. Unusually, it hit young able bodies people the hardest. ie, young men who were being conscripted into the war. There were

It's 100% due to war time censorship. Unusually, it hit young able bodies people the hardest. ie, young men who were being conscripted into the war. There were huge problems with swaths of people in barracks all getting sick and messing with the deployment process. In every country involved in the war. And it absolutely couldn't be let known that anyone was having problems fielding new recruits. So the news was heavily censored. Spain was neutral, and therefore didn't have tons of people packed into barracks waiting to be deployed. As a result, they suffered the least. Relatively few Spaniards got sick. However, since they weren't at war, there was no wartime censorship, and it was covered by the Spanish press. Therefore the pandemic came to be known as the Spanish flu. Extra credits did a series on it, which is worth checking out IMHO. Six episodes, ten minutes each. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BZ3gQleTk-PJqIejFf4Rh2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BZ3gQleTk-...