Posted on 05/10/2020 7:08:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Yes, I remember Woodstock when I was in high school. Worse than that, I have the 3-disc L.P. somewhere in a box. I listened to it one time and wished I had sought a refund.
Woodstock was awful in more ways than one. It was dirty, and people behaved very strangely.
My mother, who turns 91 today on Mother's Day, looked at the TV news back then and said in Spanish that all of those people were going to get sick so close to each other.
Then she added that it was a natural place for some pandemic to break out.
Well, it turns out that there was a pandemic in 1969. This is a fascinating report from Jeffrey Tucker:
In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so, though we shall have to wait to see.
"In 1968/69," says Nathaniel L. Moir in National Interest, "the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the U.S. than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars."
And this happened in the lifetime of every American over 52 years of age.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
It would be interesting if it were possible to do a study of those who attended Woodstock and compare them to age matched controls that didn’t attend. Wonder if those that attended have a higher overall mortality rate over the years.
Should be easy to find them. Everybody I've ever met who was old enough to have been at woodstock has told me that they were at woodstock.
I suspect you would need to control for the war in Vietnam too. Might have had an effect on mortality rates of one of those groups...
Polk Salad Annie bump
I graduated from high school in 68. I really don’t recall being worried about the Hong Kong flu. I was busy with graduation, going out with friends and working backstage for a community theater group. A friend of mine was at the Chicago convention and told me about the riots. He was a Humphrey volunteer and thought the McCarthy were a bunch of creeps.
So, lifespan was on average 8 years less, but it was a healthier population.
Maybe obesity was lower then because everyone smoked like a coal fired plant.
That might have had something to do with the flu mortality too.
I remember some newspaper and maybe some radio news reports on the Hong Kong flu. I was 13 at the time and probably just thought, “the flu, what’s the big deal.” I don’t know if I contracted it or not.
I didn’t watch nightly news on television (and have managed to keep that habit my whole life).
I was more interested in the top 40 hits of the day and making sure not to miss Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In on Mondays.
First, the Chinese hid the facts about Covid until it was already spreading around the world. Further, their secrecy AND that they reacted so dramatically, in a panic, building hospitals and welding the doors shut so people couldn't leave their buildings, led to worldwide concerns that this was the ‘mother of all viruses’, and had the capacity to kill millions and millions. (Personally, I see the Chinese government's response to this as a consequence of them knowing that this was a novel virus that had ‘escaped’ their national virology lab). Otherwise, they would have likely treated this like any other coronavirus outbreak - most of which cause a ‘common cold’. They were doing gain of function research in Wuhan, and were afraid this virus had the capacity to be a ‘super pathogen’).
Second, though the majority of people who get sick enough to die of coronavirus are older people, many with pre-existing co-morbidities, this isn't the case for all those who have died. It is this arbitrary nature of Covid infections that also led to marked concern in the medical community and the populace. Twenty and thirty year olds without pre-existing conditions have died of Covid (I can personally attest to this). Why this happens to a small percentage of people, but doesn't in the majority of people, is currently unknown. As a new/novel virus, the ‘unknown’ factor affects how people think of this pandemic. They are worried that for whatever reason, they will be one of the unlucky ones - and will die, no matter how low the odds. The media has perpetuated this fear, as have many politicians and some medical professionals.
Third, this virus does some ‘funky’ things - such as promoting thrombosis. People are presenting with pulmonary emboli, stroke, and myocardial infarctions. Of course, this happens routinely in the absence of Covid, but there is something different about these Covid patients. They often present with the typical Covid symptoms, and then as the infection progresses they develop these thrombotic complications. Lots of hospitals have been prescribing anticoagulants for Covid patients, and discharging the survivors on anticoagulants. These poorly understood aspects of Covid, and the severity of hypoxia and lung involvement in those who wind up with advanced viral pneumonitis and/or ARDS have added to fears about Covid.
Fourth, overestimation of mortality rate. Covid appears to be highly contagious/infectious. As the antibody data are now suggesting, the number of people infected with Covid (including asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic people) is probably markedly higher than what the PCR testing-based data have suggested. This obviously makes the denominator of the mortality calculations much higher - and thus the mortality rate much lower. There were some early data suggesting the rate was 10% or greater - and this also led to the fears and concerns.
Fifth, and very important, is that too many politicians see this pandemic as a political opportunity. The amount of political posturing around Covid is disgusting.
Anyway, my long-winded morning FR comments.
And I’ve been that if you remember being at Woodstock, you weren’t having a good time.
Yeah, I’ve heard that the amount of people who claim to have been at Woodstock is way higher than the amount who were there. Obviously a lot of people are just saying it to look cool. Or maybe they were home getting high and just hallucinated that they were there.
I was honestly at Woodstock, 17 yrs. old and new to the “culture”. Good experience, great music live and later on vinyl and DVD. Was straight the whole wknd and don’t recall getting the flu then or after. I do recall the rain and mud. Only made it to Sat nite.
This article seems like a waste of words to criticize a then seminal event. Give me an “F”
RE: I do recall the rain and mud.
Dirt has some strange way of waking your immune system, causing it to activate itself on the lookout for foreign pathogenic invaders.
I’m not telling people to get dirty, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that isolating yourself in a virtual bubble doesn’t “train” your immune system to harden itself.
My 69 year old brother in law was at Woodstock with his brother. Health is fine. The kids all laugh as he tells us stories. Crazy times. He is fairly conservative.
I was 16 and on vacation in Florida during Woodstock. Dad got one of the local papers from home. There on I think the cover page was photo a girl from my homeroom class. So yes some people really did attend or know someone who did attend.
The democRATS from the get go decided to take advantage of this virus pandemic and turn it into their last opportunity to get rid of Trump. Overplay their hand, over-estimate the death rates, force states to lockdown, killing businesses, jobs, livelihoods, prosperity and hope.
It was obvious to anybody who stood back and watched them try to fund all of their pet programs and then stall the efforts to get money in the hands of the people who had become unemployed because of the mass hysteria that they and the media had created, that they weren't concerned with people dying, except so far as it hurt Trump's image and poll numbers.
Until they saw the chance to destroy Trump's booming economy and realized they had no candidates who could beat him, especially the multi-tainted Joe Biden, they all of the sudden were "worried" about people dying. Lots of them. Millions we were told. What are we up to now? 60-some thousand? A long ways from millions.
This is right out of their democRAT Alinsky playbook. Destroy something that's not broke and then act like they can come in and save the day but installing their wet-dream socialist economy without much opposition.
All the rest your "facts", numbers and rationale are immaterial to their quest for greed and power and control over the population.
This is their chance to kill two birds with one stone. Finally get rid of Trump and implement their socialist economic revolution.
I compare it to their global warming scam. All of the talk about fossil fuels and carbon dioxide and saving the planet is hogwash. Their real goal is the same there as it is here now. Destroy capitalism and install socialism in its place. Instead of using global warming as the culprit, they are using the corona virus.
We had gone on vacation in Rhode Island that year and got caught up in the massive traffic jam on the way back. We had no idea what had happened until we heard news reports on the radio after the jam had cleared up.
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