Brain Dump

A study was made of the 1918 Spanish influenza. Most deaths, as in more than 90%, were not caused by the flu but by bacterial pneumonia. The flu is a virus; antibiotics don't work with viruses. Bacterial infections can be treated by antibiotics. Why so many deaths in 1918? No antibiotics. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. Ten years after the Spanish flu. Some history accounts state that it was ten years before penicillin was implemented, in 1938. Others say that the first use of penicillin for infections was in 1942. However, I did a little more research and discovered that penicillin wasn't used in hospitals until the late 1950s. If I had been born 10 years earlier, I would have died, like my great grandfather and his youngest son. I survived because of penicillin. How many in 1918 would have survived if they'd had penicillin?