ping
And we only have one facility that makes vaccines...
Wasn't it originally thought to be swine flu?
Could make resurrecting the dinosaurs look like a romp in Jurassic Park.
I asked the mod. to pull the dupe.
Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas.
Officers and nurses, X Section, Base Hospital, Camp Jackson, S.C. Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic, Sept. and Oct. 1918.
Tent settlement, influenza patients
http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum/collections/archives/agalleries/1957%20flu/1957flu.html
From a letter written by a WWI soldier:
Camp Devens is near Boston, and has about 50,000 men, or did have before this epidemic broke loose. It also has the Base Hospital for the Div. of the N. East.
This epidemic started about four weeks ago, and has developed so rapidly that the camp is demoralized and all ordinary work is held up till it has passed. All assembleges of soldiers taboo.
These men start with what appears to be an ordinary attack of LaGrippe or Influenza, and when brought to the Hosp. they very rapidly develop the most viscous type of Pneumonia that has ever been seen. Two hours after admission they have the Mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the Cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white. It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate. It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day, and still keeping it up.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a new mixed infection here, but what I dont know. My total time is taken up hunting Rales, rales dry or moist, sibilant or crepitant or any other of the hundred things that one may find in the chest, they all mean but one thing here -Pneumonia-and that means in about all cases death.
The normal number of resident Drs. here is about 25 and that has been increased to over 250, all of whom (of course excepting me) have temporary orders-"Return to your proper Station on completion of work". Mine says "Permanent Duty", but I have been in the Army just long enough to learn that it doesnt always mean what it says. So I dont know what will happen to me at the end of this.
We have lost an outrageous number of Nurses and Drs., and the little town of Ayer is a sight. It takes Special trains to carry away the dead. For several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce, we used to go down to the morgue (which is just back of my ward) and look at the boys laid out in long rows. It beats any sight they ever had in France after a battle.
An extra long barracks has been vacated for the use of the Morgue, and it would make any man sit up and take notice to walk down the long lines of dead soldiers all dressed and laid out in double rows.
Excellent thread. Thanks.
What would stop Al-Queida from getting their hands on this once it becomes epidemic? The terrorists would go to any lengths to obtain a sample, then spread it around the US by infecting "Suicide carriers". The uses of this virus as a bioweapon is infinate to an enemy of this country, especially if the leg work was done by nature.
Maybe I am being paranoid here, but to me it seems rather risky to 'resurrect' the virus as recently happened. The spanish flu is basically death incarnate, and having it back from the void just makes the world a more dangerous place.
Aren't all living humans descendants of survivors of the 1918 flu. So shouldn't it's effect be attenuated this time if the new H5N1 flu is mutating to be similar to the 1918 flu?
"Then Dr. Taubenberger got a third sample, from a woman who had died in Alaska when the flu swept through her village, killing 72 adults, leaving just 5. The dead were buried in a mass grave in the permafrost, and a retired pathologist, Johann Hultin, hearing of Dr. Taubenberger's quest, traveled from his home in San Francisco to the gravesite in Alaska at his own expense, dug up the grave with the villager's permission, extracted the woman's still frozen lung tissue, and sent it to Dr. Taubenberger."
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Natives of the americas, Australia, South Pacific, etc. were the hardest hit. The "Spanish Flu" inflicted an especially searing legacy on Alaska. Inuit and Indian culture never recovered, so many of their elders were wiped out, leaving a generation of orphans.
As an aside, the Discovery channel did an interesting special on this quest to find the virus in permafrosted remains. Dr. Hultin's story was almost heartwarming in a way and a hilarious contrast to a massively funded and ballyhooed expedition to Spitzbergen to dig up the frozen corpses of miners who also died in the pandemic. One little old man working on his own accomplished what this other pompous three-ring circus (with it's own PR flack and matching outerwear, no less) could not.
Dr. Hultin politely addressed the village council and explained what he was trying to do and why. They simply couldn't refuse him. Several locals even volunteered their assistance. Proper courtesy was observed and the remains were carefully reinterred. Very diplomatic.
alas...
Scientists: 1918 Killer Spanish Flu Was a Bird Flu
Fox News | October 05, 2005 | Daniel J. DeNoon
Posted on 10/05/2005 11:20:11 AM PDT by stm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1497138/posts
If anyone wants to read up on the subject of the 1918 influenza, an excellent book on the subject.....
The Great Influenza, by John M Barry
Interesting info also in the book relatng to the politics of the time.
Ping to an old list...(Thanks, neverdem!)
Ping to an old list...(Thanks, neverdem!)
ping
Nurse Edna E. Place - Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital
Nurse Marie Louise Hidell - Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital
Nurse Lilian M. Murphy - Hampton Roads Navy Base Hospital