1918 flu pandemic. A lot like the COVID 19/Coronavirus

[jgoodguy]

Discuss.

 

[jgoodguy]

Influenza 1918 | American Experience | PBS

It was the worst epidemic in American history, killing over 600,000 — until it disappeared as mysteriously as it had begun.

www.pbs.org

 

[jgoodguy]

Bottom-line business as normal kills

 

[jgoodguy]

Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Flu Pandemic Was So Deadly | HISTORY

The first strain of the Spanish Flu wasn’t particularly deadly. Then it came back in the fall with a vengeance.

www.history.com

 

[jgoodguy]

Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Flu Pandemic Was So Deadly | HISTORY

The first strain of the Spanish Flu wasn’t particularly deadly. Then it came back in the fall with a vengeance.

www.history.com

Lack of Quarantines Allowed Flu to Spread and Grow



A nurse checking on a patient at the Walter Reed Hospital Flu Ward during the influenza pandemic, circa 1918.
Harris & Ewing/Underwood Archives/Getty Images
Harris believes that the rapid spread of Spanish flu in the fall of 1918 was at least partially to blame on public health officials unwilling to impose quarantines during wartime. In Britain, for example, a government official named Arthur Newsholme knew full well that a strict civilian lockdown was the best way to fight the spread of the highly contagious disease. But he wouldn’t risk crippling the war effort by keeping munitions factory workers and other civilians home.

According to Harris’s research, Newsholme concluded that “the relentless needs of warfare justified incurring [the] risk of spreading infection” and encouraged Britons to simply “carry on” during the pandemic.

The public health response to the crisis in the United States was further hampered by a severe nursing shortage as thousands of nurses had been deployed to military camps and the front lines. The shortage was worsened by the American Red Cross’s refusal to use trained African American nurses until the worst of the pandemic had already pass

 

[jgoodguy]

 

[jgoodguy]

100 years ago, 'Spanish flu' shut down Philadelphia – and wiped out thousands

Some 12,000 people died after the city held infamous Liberty Loan parade

www.phillyvoice.com

 

[jgoodguy]

Construction Worker Finds 1918 Flu Pandemic Mass Grave | HISTORY

A Pennsylvania construction worker has discovered a mass grave thought to contain victims of the 1918 flu pandemic.

www.history.com

According to Reuters, research by Pennsylvania Department of Transportation archaeologist Kevin Mock found a connection between the Bachmans’ meadow and its earlier use as an unmarked burial ground during the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which claimed an estimated 50 million lives—3 percent of the world’s population. In the dying days of World War I, the dying came to eastern Pennsylvania as the flu swept through in October 1918 and caused schools, shops and even hospitals to close. According to the Pottsville Republican-Herald, approximately 17,000 residents in the region around Schuylkill Haven fell ill. Close to 1,500 of them died, leaving as many as 3,000 children orphaned.
Death was so prevalent that casket makers could not keep up with demand. Many victims were buried without coffins, particularly the impoverished whose bodies were thrown into unmarked burial grounds such as the one unearthed in Schuylkill Haven. “They could not make caskets fast enough, and they used to bring bodies in here, dig holes, lay the bodies in and put lime down,” Schuylkill County Deputy Coroner Joseph Pothering told local television station WFMZ.

A warehouse converted to treat influenza victims. (Credit: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)
The day after the discovery, cadaver dogs arrived at the scene to sniff for human scents while forensic archaeologists from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, excavated the embankment and screened the soil for bone fragments. Authorities said the exposure of the mass grave is no threat to local residents as the lime buried with the bodies made it unlikely that active flu pathogens could exist nearly a century later.

The excavated remains were taken to Mercyhurst University for medical examination and possible DNA extraction. It could take several weeks for the results of forensic tests to come back. Once that work is complete, there are plans to give the victims a proper burial in a county cemetery. “They are going to take the bones, do some DNA work and give these proper burials and hopefully we get some information from them, who, when and why and notify families,” Pothering told WFMZ.
Although hundreds of flu victims could be buried beneath the field, the county coroner’s office decided it would be best to remove only the remains in the exposed area near Route 61 and leave the remainder of the bodies undisturbed. The landowners agree. “What is there, I think they should leave there, not to go back any farther. They have been there for 100 years,” Joan Bachman told WFMZ.

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[jgoodguy]

How U.S. Cities Tried to Halt the Spread of the 1918 Spanish Flu | HISTORY

How U.S. city officials responded to the Spanish flu played a critical role in how many residents lived—and died.

www.history.com

In the late summer of 1918, the devastating second wave of the Spanish flu arrived on America’s shores. Carried by World War I doughboys returning home from Europe, the newly virulent virus spread first from Boston to New York and Philadelphia before traveling West to infect panicked populations from St. Louis to San Francisco.

Lacking a vaccine or even a known cause of the outbreak, mayors and city health officials were left to improvise. Should they close schools and ban all public gatherings? Should they require every citizen to wear a gauze face mask? Or would shutting down important financial centers in wartime be unpatriotic?

When it was all over, the Spanish flu killed an estimated 675,000 Americans among a staggering 20 to 50 million people worldwide. Certain U.S. cities fared far worse than others, though, and looking back more than a century later there’s evidence that the earliest and most well-organized responses slowed the spread of the disease—at least temporarily—while cities that dragged their feet or let down their guard paid a heavier price.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Woodrow loved golf

too--a more recent form of social-distancing--as well as separating folks from their jobs, in his case those of color.

p.s. I like golf, when I hit em' straight or curve 'em when needed.