History The CDC uses the infographic approach for other infectious diseases, such as polio, to reach a broad audience and make a complex problem more understandable. Red Cross volunteers fighting against the spanish flu epidemy in United States in 1918. Photo of a group of people wearing masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Photo of hospital ward filled with polio sufferers in iron lungs. Photo of a woman standing and reading a book to a little girl in an iron lung machine. Newspaper article from the 1918 influenza pandemic describing confrontations at the meeting of an anti-mask group.