Advertisement

Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is focused on a new enemy as the war with Iran rages on: the flu shot.

More

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

#1 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2026-04-21 02:13 PM | Reply

Andrea Junker
@strandjunker.com
4m
WWI Combat: 53,402 deaths
WWI Flu: 45,000 deaths

Pete Hegseth: "Let's make the flu a threat again!"

Apparently, "readiness" now means making our troops as vulnerable as they were in 1918. Bold move.

#2 | Posted by reinheitsgebot at 2026-04-21 04:48 PM | Reply

The Spanish Flu (COVID) hit all the fighting powers during WWI.

The least available data for Western researchers afterwards was Russia and the Ottoman Empire, who suffered COVID losses.

Strangely enough, of the Allied powers, the British suffered much less COVID deaths than the French, US, Italians.

One theory is that many of the British imperial soldiers from all over the world already had been exposed to COVID and therefore developed immunities.

When they got sick, they didn't die like the Allied soldiers.

During the Spanish-American War (1898), less than 400 Soldiers were killed by the Spaniards during that four month conflict, but approximately 15,000 US soldiers died from disease.

#3 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2026-04-21 05:01 PM | Reply

The following HTML tags are allowed in comments: a href, b, i, p, br, ul, ol, li and blockquote. Others will be stripped out. Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

Anyone can join this site and make comments. To post this comment, you must sign it with your Drudge Retort username. If you can't remember your username or password, use the lost password form to request it.
Username:
Password:

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy

Drudge Retort