Posted on 07/30/2009 8:32:31 PM PDT by T.L.Sink
The pandemic death toll was about 100 million in a global population less than a third of today's. Yet even that number underestimates the horror of the disease. Normally influenza kills the very young and the elderly, but in the 1918 pandemic half those who died were young men and women in the prime of their life, in their twenties and thirties. The great human existential question is, could it happen again? It can and will in some form. Though the pandemic stretched over two years, two-thirds of the deaths occurred within six months. The deaths were of viral or bacterial pneumonia which mutated so rapidly and complexly that science couldn't isolate a pathogen in time. The most shocking reality was that the immune system of young adults (the strongest in a population) filled the lungs with fluid and debris. THE IMMUNE RESPONSE KILLED.
My Mom survived 1918 and the Asian Flu she is 95. She never gets a flu shot.
Sh*t happens. In time, a great flu can overwhelm the ability of humans to deal with it. Far greater probability of hitting soon than asteroid hits, alien invasion or global warming. Some caller on Hannity’s radio show was saying the government is preparing for millions of casualties this winter.
Apologies to everyone! For some reason the video didn’t post. All who would like to see it go to YouTube under “John M. Barry”. Thanks.
My grandfather contracted influenza in 1919 and survived. But, as a typical (albeit anecdotal) response his own mother never visited him during his illness. I suppose, in retrospect, this was smart!
Whole families died of the flu in the small town my dad grew up in. Lots of children became orphans in a matter of days. Many of their neighbors, including my granddad, just took the lost children in as a matter of course, and raised them as thier own.
Very interesting. In his book, Barry points out that even in those days Philadelphia had a population of 2 million but had literally become a ghost town. This was typical. He also says that not only had many doctors and nurses been conscripted into the army but many had died from influenza themselves. I imagine your dad’s experience was common in that influenza was so deadly and spread so fast that many doctors developed a fatalistic attitude.
Bump for later reading
Whenever it was in the 70’s-80’s and government was predicting a swine flu epidemic and pushing swine flu shots, my mom (who was born Nov. 1918) told us that her mom had made all her siblings drink a bitter tea made from ‘yarrow’ every night and no one in her family got ill although many in their small town did die of it. So she had gathered and dried some for our use if the swine flu did come around. My memory says it was a yellow flower herb but also seem to remember that her swine flu jar contained white dried flowers. Wish I would have paid more attention.
Thanks a million for posting the video link!
No doubt it was bad.
It was not unusual for a person to appear totally healthy in the morning, and end up dead by midnight.
BUT... from the stories I’ve read and the history, the black death in Europe was worse, IMO.
Yeah, I think one thing we’ve learned is not to laugh at old herbal remedies. Even modern medicine says that some of them have some positive health benefits!
That’s what I thought too. But let me give you a quote from Barry from the dust jacket of his book: “Over the next year it flourished, killing as many as 100 million people. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century.” To me, one of the most remarkable (and alarming!) things about the book is that it forces us to totally rethink our assumptions about previous plagues and epidemics and come to terms with the deadliness and catastrophic nature of the modern pandemic.
Pneumonia kills over 75K people a year in the US alone! I had it two times and was hospitalized twice 10 years ago. I was really sick. That was when I found out there is a pneumonia vaccination that would prevent most of those deaths. When your lungs fill up with fluid, it’s really scary. You can’t breathe. People really should get the shot!
bump
I agree. I’ve never had pneumonia but I’ve had bronchitus which is related to it and can turn into pneumonia. Not being able to get your breath is horrible. The big challenge to medicine is how quickly viral and bacterial pneumonias mutate. By the way, Barry says in his book that although many died of influenza quickly many of the influenza deaths were bloody, excruciatingly painful, and victims literally turned so black or blue that one couldn’t even determine their race!
And an asteroid *will* hit the earth, and there *will* be another 9/11, and there *will* be another Hurricane Katrina.
My point being that there is no reason to become obsessed about the imminence of any such potential disasters, because the wait will likely extend beyond one's lifetime.
I don’t think it’s healthy to become “obsessed” with anything, especially by imagining an outer space scenario (’asteroids’) over which we have no control in any case. But we do have a responsibility to be concerned about potential future disasters for ourselves or future generations when we can take positive steps now to ameliorate the consequences of them should they occur. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” - St. Francis
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