The Forgotten Epidemic

I guess this is what you might call a teaser. Although considering the tone of the following passage combined with the picture above teasing might not be the right word... Enjoy?

All over the country, men returned from combat and were greeted with huge parades and fanfare. Little did they know, they were carrying a disease so contagious and so deadly that in little more than a year, close to 100 million people worldwide (one-fifth of the world’s population) would have to be buried. The disease killed more people than any other disease in history. The disease would leave entire cities decimated, families devastated, and workforces wiped out. It was a disease so horrible and so deadly that history has tried to forget that it ever happened. What scared people the most was that this killer disease was nothing more than the common flu, hardly something to worry about. Many at the time recalled the last outbreak of influenza in 1889-90 but none were prepared with the ferocity of this new strain of flu. They called it Spanish Influenza because at the time of discovery it was very prevalent in Spain but historians today often refer to it as the Purple Plague because of the color it left its victims. Men and women were liliterally being drowned by their own bodies. Spanish flu brought entire continents to their knees. Historians compared the city scenes to that of European cities during the Black Plague. Carts rode through the cities beckoning citizens to bring out their dead and mass graves were dug wherever there was room. Central Park in New York City was the site of one of the largest of these mass graves. Every town and every city in the world was affected by Spanish flu.