Ive spoken to survivors in years past, they all were children at the time, all went through hell, all lost friends and family. One of them was 10 years old at the time, and his parents were told to leave some water and close the door on the bedroom and do not open the door for 5 days. And if he was alive at the end of it they were to be lucky. Obviously he survived it but that’s how it went for him . He said his hair was completely white and it took almost a year for his natural hair color to come back. It really did kill many.
Look up the PBS documentary on youtube.. the survivors stories are shocking.
I just watched that documentary the other night.
Very sad stories from the survivors. I particularly remember the older gentlemen who recalled losing almost all of his childhood friends during the second wave, which hit in October and caused daily deaths by the hundreds in major urban areas.
I also took note of the question, why does history tend to gloss over the pandemic, or even forget it? The answer, and the one that I subscribe to, is that the pandemic was so frightful and tragic that people wanted to forget about it and move on.
My parents were born in 1915. They were obviously just barely old enough to remember those times, and I never really spoke with them about it much. I’ve read a lot of material on it within the past decade or so. As I’ve posted here before it’s morbidly fascinating because it was like a real life zombie apocalypse. Literally calling to “bring out your dead” like in the Middle Ages.
It’s amazing how few know of it today. I think there was so much misery between WWI and the pandemic it became something of a taboo subject during the heady days of the Roaring Twenties.