A guide to vaccinology: from basic principles to new developments
RFK Jr. Has Suggested Vaccines Caused 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic At Least Twice
For years, internet users have shared a rumor about U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Falsely claiming that vaccines caused the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic known as the Spanish flu.
One Facebook post (archived) with around 105,000 reactions at the time of this writing featured a photo of Kennedy with the caption:
This pathetic moron claims the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by flu vaccines. The first flu vaccine was introduced in the 1930s and they weren't widely available until the 50s.
This is the idiot the Orange Buffoon put in charge of our Department of Health and Human Services.
(Facebook page Occupy Democrats)
Examples of the claim also appeared in posts on social media platforms including X (archived), Threads (archived) and Reddit (archived), as well as in reporting by The New York Times and Rolling Stone.
Snopes readers searched our site and wrote messages to the newsroom asking if Kennedy really said vaccines, or vaccine research, caused the 1918 pandemic that killed an estimated 50-100 million people worldwide, according to a 2002 estimate (a more recent estimate in 2018 placed the death toll lower at around 17.4 million).
In short, on at least two occasions — in June 2023 and June 2024 — Kennedy said he had read what he described as "strong" and "good" evidence linking the 1918 influenza outbreak to vaccine research. However, he also noted he did not think the evidence was "definitive" and said that "we'll probably never know" if vaccine research caused the pandemic.
Kennedy did not specify what evidence he meant. However, based on a comment about "testing a new vaccine in Kansas" in one of the instances linking vaccines to the 1918 flu, it seemed likely he was referring to a debunked conspiracy theory about meningitis vaccines — not flu vaccines — supposedly causing the outbreak.
We've reached out to Kennedy to ask for details about the alleged "evidence" and will update this story if and when we hear back.
Here's what Kennedy saidFirst, on June 27, 2023, Kennedy brought up what he described as "very, very strong articles" linking the 1918 pandemic to vaccine research during a health policy-focused Zoom roundtable organized by his 2024 presidential campaign.
Kennedy made the comment around the 31:48 mark in the video embedded below, just after he outlined how, as president, he would prioritize funding research into chronic rather than infectious diseases and end gain-of-function research (research that involves altering how organisms, including disease-causing microbes like viruses, function).
After describing those goals, Kennedy said (emphasis ours):
Everything from Lyme disease to COVID, and many many other diseases, like RSV, which is now one of the biggest killers of children, came out of, you know, a vaccine lab, and we can go down the whole list of diseases. There's good evidence that even Spanish flu came from vaccine research, and you know, we don't know, and we'll probably never know, but, you know, there are very, very strong articles suggesting that now.
Around a year later, Kennedy repeated the notion during a June 15, 2024, appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast. Kennedy's remarks about the alleged "evidence" linking vaccine research to the 1918 pandemic began around the 1:53 mark in the video embedded below, just after he and Rogan discussed their shared belief in the inefficacy of vaccines.
Kennedy said (emphasis ours):
There's good evidence that the Spanish Flu — there's, you know, not definitive but very very strong evidence the Spanish Flu was vaccine-induced flu, the deaths were vaccine-induced. Originally they said it was a flu but when they've gone back and actually they have all the samples from thousands of people, they died from bacteriological (sic) pneumonia.
Kennedy then brought up a 2008 article that Anthony Fauci, who served as U.S. President Donald Trump's chief medical adviser in 2021 and 2022, cowrote. That article, which we'll discuss in further detail below, examined the prevalence of secondary bacterial infections among victims of the 1918 pandemic.
Kennedy returned to the false notion that vaccines caused the pandemic around the 1:54:54 mark in the video above, saying, "The article that I read made a very strong case that the illness came from testing a new vaccine at a military base in Kansas, and again I'm a little hazy on the detail …"
Rogan and Kennedy then went back to discussing the 2008 article by Fauci and his coauthors, which did not mention any theory about vaccines supposedly causing the pandemic.
A debunked conspiracy theoryIn his comments both in the podcast episode and Zoom webinar, Kennedy did not elaborate on the alleged "evidence" supposedly connecting the 1918 flu pandemic to vaccine research.
In other words, it was not clear what type of vaccine he believed may have been responsible for the outbreak. Some internet users assumed he meant a flu vaccine — something that did not exist until decades after the 1918 pandemic, as some social media posts linked above correctly pointed out.
In the Rogan interview, Kennedy's mention of a Kansas military base suggested he was referring to a debunked conspiracy theory involving a vaccine to prevent bacterial meningitis. According to that theory, the 1918 pandemic was the result of a meningitis vaccine that medical officers distributed to soldiers at Camp Funston, a Kansas military camp, in fall 1917.
That conspiracy theory spread in 2020 due to an article by chiropractor Sal Martingano. In that article, titled "The 1918 'Spanish Flu': Only The Vaccinated Died," Martingano claimed that "the 1918 flu was NOT a 'FLU' at all," but that the disease "was caused by random dosages of an experimental 'bacterial meningitis vaccine', which to this day, mimics flu-like symptoms."
It's unknown if Kennedy came across the theory about the 1918 pandemic origin via Martingano's article or another way, but as Reuters and History of Vaccines (a project of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia) have pointed out, Martingano's argument was full of misleading and outright incorrect information.
For example, to raise suspicions about the pandemic's origin, Martingano asserted that autopsies showed the pandemic's victims did not have influenza at all. That was false.
It's true, as Fauci and his coauthors noted in the 2008 article, that many of the people who lost their lives during the pandemic technically died from secondary bacterial infections — a common phenomenon in outbreaks of viral diseases. A press release about Fauci's article quoted him explaining:
"The weight of evidence we examined from both historical and modern analyses of the 1918 influenza pandemic favors a scenario in which viral damage followed by bacterial pneumonia led to the vast majority of deaths," says co-author NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "In essence, the virus landed the first blow while bacteria delivered the knockout punch."
In other words, while many of the pandemic victims officially died from pneumonia, claims that these individuals did not have influenza were false. Over email, Michael Worobey, a professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, described Martingano's theory as "incorrect," writing:
We have remarkably clear evidence that the pandemic was caused by an influenza virus, specifically a subtype H1N1 influenza A virus. In fact genetic material from this virus has been recovered by scientists from numerous autopsy tissues from victims of the 1918 flu.
Researchers first extracted viral genetic material from the remains of a victim in 1997, and scientists have subsequently recovered additional samples of the virus from other victims. That evidence definitively proves the pathogen behind the pandemic was the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus.
Notably, Martingano falsely stated the 1918 pandemic was the result of soldiers at Kansas' Camp Funston receiving experimental vaccines for bacterial meningitis.
It's true, according to a report from an Army medical officer published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in 1918, that some soldiers at Camp Funston voluntarily took meningitis vaccines in October and November 1917, several months before records show people at the camp fell ill with the flu at the center of the 1918 pandemic (that happened in March 1918).
Although researchers continue to debate the outbreak's starting location, there's evidence that the strain of flu that caused the pandemic was already in circulation before the cases at Camp Funston — just not at a level that attracted significant attention at the time.
For example, in 2004, historian and pandemic researcher John M. Barry argued that the real origin site was not Camp Funston but around 270 miles southwest in Kansas' Haskell County, where people suffered from a severe type of influenza in January and February 1918.
Some researchers have suggested that the flu strain was present in the U.S. Or other countries even earlier. In a 2019 article published in the peer-reviewed journal Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, coauthors Worobey, Jim Cox and Douglas Gill cited a February 1918 flu outbreak in New York City that may have been caused by the same viral strain that led to the pandemic.
Other researchers have argued that outbreaks of flu-like respiratory diseases in China, France or other countries in as early as 1915 marked the true beginning of the pandemic. (The exact cause of those outbreaks remains uncertain.)
The rumor about Kennedy suggesting the 1918 pandemic was the result of vaccine research was not his first questionable statement about viruses that we've investigated. We previously looked into the claim that Kennedy said COVID-19 was targeted to "spare" Jewish and Chinese people.
Sources"Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths in 1918 Influenza Pandemic." National Institutes of Health (NIH), 22 Sept. 2015, https://www.Nih.Gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneumonia-caused-most-deaths-1918-influenza-pandemic.
Barry, John M. "The Site of Origin of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Public Health Implications." Journal of Translational Medicine, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2004, p. 3. Springer Link, https://doi.Org/10.1186/1479-5876-2-3.
Check, Reuters Fact. "Fact Check: A Meningitis Vaccine Trial at a U.S. Military Camp Did Not Cause the 1918 Spanish Flu." Reuters, 13 Apr. 2021. Www.Reuters.Com, https://www.Reuters.Com/article/fact-check/a-meningitis-vaccine-trial-at-a-us-military-camp-did-not-cause-the-1918-spanis-idUSL1N2M62BG/.
"Deep Reform: RFK, Jr. To Host Health Policy Roundtable Online Tuesday, June 27, 2023, 7:00PM ET." Kennedy24, https://www.Kennedy24.Com/health-policy-roundtable. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.
Durr, Eric. "Flu Outbreak Killed 45,000 U.S. Soldiers during World War I." National Guard, 30 Aug. 2018, https://www.Nationalguard.Mil/News/Article/1616713/flu-outbreak-killed-45000-us-soldiers-during-world-war-i/.
Frenkel, Sheera. "Where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Delivers His Fringe Views: Not on the Trail." New York Times, 12 Sept. 2023, https://www.Nytimes.Com/2023/09/12/technology/rfk-jr-campaign-vaccines.Html.
From Our Mailbag: Did the Influenza Virus Cause the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic? Https://historyofvaccines.Org/blog/from-our-mailbag-did-the-influenza-virus-cause-the-1918-1919-influenza-pandemic/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.
Gates, Frederick L. "A REPORT ON ANTIMENINGITIS VACCINATION AND OBSERVATIONS ON AGGLUTININS IN THE BLOOD OF CHRONIC MENINGOCOCCUS CARRIERS." The Journal of Experimental Medicine, vol. 28, no. 4, Oct. 1918, pp. 449–74. PubMed Central, https://www.Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126288/.
History of Influenza Vaccination. Https://www.Who.Int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-influenza-vaccination. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.
Johnson, Niall P. A. S., and Juergen Mueller. "Updating the Accounts: Global Mortality of the 1918-1920 'Spanish' Influenza Pandemic." Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 76, no. 1, 2002, pp. 105–15. PubMed, https://doi.Org/10.1353/bhm.2002.0022.
Klee, Miles, and Nikki McCann Ramirez. "RFK Jr. Claims 'Vaccine Research' Likely Responsible for HIV and the Spanish Flu." Rolling Stone, 28 June 2023, https://www.Rollingstone.Com/politics/politics-news/rfk-kennedy-anti-vaccine-panel-conspiracies-hiv-spanish-flu-1234779689/.
Kolata, Gina. "Genetic Material of Virus From 1918 Flu Is Found." New York Times, 21 Mar. 1997, https://www.Nytimes.Com/1997/03/21/us/genetic-material-of-virus-from-1918-flu-is-found.Html.
Morens, David M., et al. "Predominant Role of Bacterial Pneumonia as a Cause of Death in Pandemic Influenza: Implications for Pandemic Influenza Preparedness." The Journal of Infectious Diseases, vol. 198, no. 7, Oct. 2008, pp. 962–70. PubMed Central, https://doi.Org/10.1086/591708.
National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM): Centenary of the 1918 Influenza: Pathologist Is Working To Create New Vaccines. Https://medicalmuseum.Health.Mil/index.Cfm?P=media.News.Article.2018.Centenary_of_1918_influenza. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.
Purple Death: The Great Flu of 1918 - PAHO/WHOPan American Health Organization. Https://www.Paho.Org/en/who-we-are/history-paho/purple-death-great-flu-1918. Accessed 31 Mar. 2025.
Sciences, Board on Life, et al. "Gain-of-Function Research: Background and Alternatives." Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research: Summary of a Workshop, National Academies Press (US), 2015. Www.Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov, https://www.Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov/books/NBK285579/.
Secondary Infections: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. Https://medlineplus.Gov/ency/article/002300.Htm. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.
Spreeuwenberg, Peter, et al. "Reassessing the Global Mortality Burden of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic." American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 187, no. 12, Dec. 2018, pp. 2561–67. PubMed Central, https://doi.Org/10.1093/aje/kwy191.
The Influenza Epidemic of 1918. Https://www.Archives.Gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.
Worobey, Michael, et al. "Genesis and Pathogenesis of the 1918 Pandemic H1N1 Influenza A Virus." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111, no. 22, June 2014, pp. 8107–12. DOI.Org (Crossref), https://doi.Org/10.1073/pnas.1324197111.
Worobey, Michael, et al. "The Origins of the Great Pandemic." Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, vol. 2019, no. 1, 2019, pp. 18–25, https://academic.Oup.Com/emph/article/2019/1/18/5298310.
Wrona, Aleksandra. "The Facts Behind Claims RFK Jr. Said COVID-19 Was Targeted to 'Spare' Jewish, Chinese People." Snopes, 30 Jan. 2025, https://www.Snopes.Com//news/2025/01/30/rfk-jr-covid-19-chinese-jewish-people/.
Xiao, Yongli, et al. "Two Complete 1918 Influenza A/H1N1 Pandemic Virus Genomes Characterized by next-Generation Sequencing Using RNA Isolated from Formalin-Fixed, Paraffin-Embedded Autopsy Lung Tissue Samples along with Evidence of Secondary Bacterial Co-Infection." mBio, vol. 15, no. 3, Mar. 2024, p. E0321823. PubMed, https://doi.Org/10.1128/mbio.03218-23.
Inside The Swift, Deadly History Of The Spanish Flu Pandemic
Scientist Johan Hultin traveled to Brevig Mission, Alaska, a town of a few hundred souls in the summer of 1997. He was searching for buried bodies, and Alaska's frozen ground was the perfect place to find them. Digging through the permafrost—with permission from the town's authorities—he eventually uncovered a woman who died almost 80 years previously and was in a state of excellent preservation. Hultin then extracted samples of the woman's lung before reinterring her. He intended to use this to decode the genetic sequence of the virus that had killed this Inuit woman along with 90 percent of the town's population.
Brevig Mission was just one place that was part of a global tragedy, one of the worst ever to befall humanity: the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. The outbreak of this influenza virus, also known as Spanish flu, spread with astonishing speed around the world, overwhelming India, and reaching Australia and the remote Pacific islands. In just 18 months at least a third of the world's population was infected. Estimates on the exact number of fatalities vary wildly, from 20 million to 50 million to 100 million deaths. If the upper end of that estimate is accurate, the 1918 pandemic killed more people than both World Wars put together. (Get the facts on influenza.)
The first official cases of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic were recorded at the U.S. Army's Camp Funston, Kansas, where this emergency influenza ward held treated patients.
SPL/AGE FOTOSTOCK
War and pestilenceSeveral closely related viruses cause influenza, but one strain (type A) is linked to deadly epidemics. The 1918-19 pandemic was caused by an influenza A virus known as H1N1. Despite becoming known as the Spanish flu, the first recorded cases were in the United States in the final year of World War I. (Explore the memorials of World War I.)
A magnified view of the H1N1 virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic.
SPL/AGE FOTOSTOCK
By March 1918 the United States had been at war with Germany and the Central Powers for 11 months. During that time America's small, prewar army had grown into a vast fighting force that would eventually send more than two million men to Europe. (How the United States entered World War I.)
American forts experienced a massive expansion as the entire nation mobilized for war. One of these was Fort Riley, Kansas, where a new training facility, Camp Funston, was built to house some of the 50,000 men who would be inducted into the Army. It was here in early March that a feverish soldier reported to the infirmary. Within a few hours more than a hundred other soldiers had come down with a similar condition, and more would fall ill over the following weeks. In April more American troops arrived in Europe and brought the virus with them. The first wave of the pandemic had arrived. (What is the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic?)
Deadly speedThe Spanish flu strain killed its victims with a swiftness never seen before. In the United States stories abounded of people waking up sick and dying on their way to work. The symptoms were gruesome: Sufferers would develop a fever and become short of breath. Lack of oxygen meant their faces appeared tinged with blue. Hemorrhages filled the lungs with blood and caused catastrophic vomiting and nosebleeds, with victims drowning in their own fluids. Unlike so many strains of influenza before it, Spanish flu attacked not only the very young and the very old, but also healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 40.
Biologists at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London are analyzing brain and lung tissue from victims of the 1918 pandemic as part of global efforts to understand the virus. Here, wax-mounted tissue samples sit on a list of children's names who fell victims to influenza in 1918.
SPL/AGE FOOTSTOCK
The principal factor in the virus's spread was, of course, the international conflict then in its last phase. Epidemiologists still dispute the exact origins of the virus, but there is some consensus it was the result of a genetic mutation that perhaps took place in China. But what is clear is that the new strain went global thanks to the massive and rapid movement of troops around the world.
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The drama of the war also served to obscure the unusually high mortality rates of the new virus. At this early stage, the illness was not well understood and deaths were often attributed to pneumonia. Strict wartime censorship meant that the European and North American press were unable to report outbreaks. Only in neutral Spain could the press speak freely about what was happening, and it was from this media coverage that the disease took its nickname.
Deadly ContactNative Americans treat patients infected by European diseases in this 1591 engraving by Theodor de Bry.
GRANGER/ALBUM
Epidemics are as old as civilization: Signs of smallpox appear on 12th-century B.C. Egyptian mummies. Increased contact led to the spread of disease. In the sixth century A.D. The Plague of Justinian moved along trade routes, killing 25 million people across Asia, Africa, Arabia, and Europe. Eight centuries later, the Black Death wiped out 60 percent of Europe's population. When Europeans settled in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, they introduced smallpox, influenza, and measles to the native peoples, killing an estimated 90 percent of the population. Here, Native Americans treat patients infected by European diseases in a 1591 engraving by Theodor de Bry.
The second waveThe overcrowded trenches and encampments of the First World War became the perfect hosts for the disease. As troops moved, so the infection traveled with them. The wave that had first appeared in Kansas abated after a few weeks, but this was only a temporary reprieve. By September 1918 the epidemic was ready to enter its most lethal phase.
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Murder or madness: What really killed Edgar Allan Poe?It has been calculated that the 13 weeks between September and December 1918 constituted the most intense period, taking the greatest number of lives. At least 195,000 Americans died in October alone. In comparison, total American military casualties for the whole of World War I came in at just over 116,000. Once again, it was the crowded military encampments where the second wave initially gained a hold. In September an outbreak of 6,674 cases was reported at Camp Devens, a military base in Massachusetts.
As the crisis reached its zenith, the medical services began to be overwhelmed. Morticians and gravediggers struggled, and conducting individual funerals became impossible. Many of the dead ended up in mass graves. The end of 1918 brought a hiatus in the spread of the illness and January 1919 saw the beginning of the third and final phase. By then the disease was a much diminished force. The ferocity of the autumn and winter of the previous year was not repeated and mortality rates fell.
Although the final wave was much less lethal than its predecessors, it was still able to wreak considerable damage. Australia, which had quickly enacted quarantine restrictions, managed to escape the worst of the flu until the beginning of 1919, when the disease finally arrived and took the lives of several thousand Australians.
The Spanish flu did not strike in Australia until 1919. Quarantine camps like this one, in Wallangarra, Queensland, were set up to treat and contain the illness.
PAUL FEARN/ALAMY/ACI
The general trend of mortality, however, was downward. There were cases of deaths from influenza—possibly a different strain—as late as 1920, but by the summer of 1919 health care policies and the natural genetic mutation of the virus brought the epidemic to a close. Even so, its effects, for those left bereaved or suffering long-term health complications, were to last decades.
Lasting impactThe pandemic left almost no part of the world untouched. In Great Britain 228,000 people died. The United States lost as many as 675,000 people, Japan some 400,000. The south Pacific island of Western Samoa (modern-day Samoa) lost one-fifth of its population. Researchers estimate that in India alone, fatalities totaled between 12 and 17 million. Exact data in the number of deaths is elusive, but global mortality figures are estimated to have been between 10 and 20 percent of those who were infected.
In 1997 the samples taken by Johan Hultin from the woman found in the frozen mass grave in Brevig Mission added to scientists' knowledge as to how flu viruses mutate and spread. Drugs and improved public hygiene—in conjunction with international institutions such as the World Health Organization and national bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States—put the international community in a much better position to meet the challenges of a new outbreak. However, scientists know a lethal mutation could occur at any time, and a century on from the mother of all pandemics, its effects on a crowded, interconnected world would be devastating.
Worldwide Flu Pandemic Strikes
Worldwide flu pandemic strikes1918 - 1919
Late in the spring of 1918 the Spanish wire service Agencia Fabra sent cables of an unusual nature to Reuter's news service headquarters in London. "A strange form of disease of epidemic character has appeared in Madrid," it said. "The epidemic is of a mild nature, no deaths having been reported." The illness began with a cough, then headache and backache, fatigue, high fever, racing heart, loss of appetite and labored breathing. It usually lasted about three days. Cases had cropped up over the spring and summer in other countries, too, from Norway to India, China to Costa Rica. But in Spain, suddenly 8 million people were down with the bug. And as the summer of 1918 turned to fall, the epidemic lost its mildness: people started to die.
The influenza commonly called "Spanish flu" killed more people than the guns of World War I. Estimates put the worldwide death toll at 21,642,274. Some one billion people were affected by the disease -- half of the total human population. It came at a time when 19 nations were at war and the disruption, stress, and privation of war certainly aided the flu's transmission. It killed people on every continent except Antarctica, with the most lives lost in Asia and the highest percentage of population killed in India. From August 1918, when cases of the flu started looking abnormally high, until the following July when they returned to about normal, 20 million Americans became sick and more than 500,000 died. In October, 1918, the flu reached its peak, killing about 195,000 Americans. About 57,000 American soldiers died from influenza while the U.S. Was at war; about 53,500 died in battle.
There wasn't much doctors could do. In the course of the epidemic nearly every known therapy was tried -- quinine tablets, bleeding, castor oil, digitalis, morphine, enemas, aspirin, tobacco, hot baths, cold baths, iron tonics, and expectorants of pine tar. Little was known about the virus, except that it was contagious. After deaths from the disease began in earnest, many local governing bodies closed down theaters, churches, and other public gatherings. Ordinances made it illegal to spit, cough, or sneeze in public -- with threat of $500 fines in New York City. When people went out they wore gauze masks over their nose and mouth, often soaked in camphor or other medicinal substances.
After months of terrorizing people around the world, the "Spanish lady" (called "The Naples Soldier" in Spain, and a variety of other names around the world) seemed to withdraw. It had been the most dire epidemic since the Middle Ages, the third worst in recorded history. For all its destruction, it did not get much press at the time. War and then peace monopolized the front pages. And still little is known about the origin or nature of the killer virus. Many believe the modern "swine flu" virus is a descendant of the deadly 1918 flu. Some theorize that its stronger ancestor ganged up with a bacteria to wreak havoc on the human population. In recent years, vaccinations against various strains of influenza have been introduced.
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