Posted on 10/13/2014 10:50:00 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
A deadly illness took hold as WW1 ended and killed an estimated 50 million people globally. But the horror made the world aware of the need for collective action against infectious diseases, says Christian Tams, professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow.
On Armistice Day, 1918, the world was already fighting another battle. It was in the grip of Spanish Influenza, which went on to kill almost three times more people than the 17 million soldiers and civilians killed during WW1.
Dangerous diseases only reach the headlines if there is a risk of a pandemic, like the current Ebola outbreak. Other than that they are the largely ignored global killers, but every year they kill many more people than wars and military conflicts.
In 1918 the world faced a pandemic. Within months Spanish Flu had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history. It struck fast and was indiscriminate. In just one year the average life expectancy in America dropped by 12 years, according to the US National Archives.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Another Flu outbreak like that would sure cut pension costs in the public and private sectors.
Maybe that is exactly what the progressives want. To reduce the population and then create their version of Utopia.
If President Wilson had just delayed the deployment of troops to Europe during that initial outbreak of the Spanish flu in Kansas during World War I, the death toll would have been a tiny fraction of the 50 million that subsequently died, according to what I’ve read online.
I lost an uncle and his wife (both of whom I never met) to that killer flu. They were in their early twenties and had never been sick in their lives besides a couple of common colds.
They visited my Dad while he was in a hospital recovering from serious injuries as a young soldier. About a week later they died. Their surviving family wisely asked for them to be placed in coffins and sealed with no viewing at the funerals or goodbyes from the survivors in the funeral home.
This is within the living memory of people I knew growing up.
It was not a joking matter. I knew old men and women who would still shudder talking of it, when they talked. My grandfather talked of people dropping dead over night. He was a hard man, and did not flinch from much, but memories of that time would leave him quiet and haunted.
If something like this hits, you would see society shutting down. We were much more independent then, and being cut off for weeks was considered normal. Now people will riot if they lose wifi.
My wife and I normally get our flu shots the first week in November.
We will be dropping by our doctor’s office this afternoon for yearly flu shots.
Later there might not be room for flu patients in hospitals if there are hospitals.
Wonder how many Progressives will eventually choke and croak from this.
Interesting factoid on Wilson - hadn’t heard that one before so I guess I need to do a little research. Thanks for the info...
It was not uncommon in the cemetary to see entire families wiped out within a few days of each other. A couple were from the Spanish flu, a double handful more, Dad said, were from smallpox and cholera.
At the time, things were much more isolated. Were something that virulent to come along now.....I'd rather not contemplate it.
My mothers older sister died of it in 1918.
I think in my family 3 people died of this, which is kind of astonishing.
Here is a current article on Spanish flu and it’s origins.
“Writing in the January issue of the journal War in History, Humphries acknowledges that his hypothesis awaits confirmation by viral samples from flu victims. Such evidence would tie the disease’s origin to one location.
But some other historians already find his argument convincing.
“This is about as close to a smoking gun as a historian is going to get,” says historian James Higgins, who lectures at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and who has researched the 1918 spread of the pandemic in the United States. “These records answer a lot of questions about the pandemic.””
Actually the second go around that was really deadly killed younger, healthier people by kicking the immune system into overdrive and overwhelming the body from within. It’s called a Cytokine storm. Older people don’t have such a good immune system so it wasn’t as virulent.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
So tragic. I have an aunt and uncle in my family tree, who died from this on the same day. Can’t begin to imagine the heartbreak my Grandmother endured. They were babies :(
The problem with this theory is that Britsh soldiers in France were getting sick before those Chinese laborers were sent across Canada. Of course the origin may still have been China but it may have reached Europe by other means.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5222069
My grandpa came home from World War I and his three younger sisters had all died. They were teens IIRC.
No kidding...the wife and I are going to accelerate our prepping actions this week; stockpile more food, water and fuel. We have a whole-house generator, powered by natural gas and the means to defend our home as well. If necessary, I can do my job by tele-commuting. My goal is to be able to hunker down for at least six weeks, or a bit longer.
Trust me, there are plenty of foreign governments (and terror groups) that are actively tracking the spread of Ebola and enterovirus across the U.S., and our refusal to take basic precautions. The current strain of enterovirus came into the country via the “illegal corridor” (I-35) and spread from there. Ebola is as close as the next international flight landing at any American airport.
Last week’s comments by General Kelly (SOUTHCOM/CC) should have been an alarm bell for anyone with a brain. Start an Ebola outbreak in central America and it will be (as he observed) “Katie bar the door.” Very easy to envision ISIS (or a hostile government) sending hundreds of human vectors across the border, with their arrival time for maximum transmission rates.
50 million in a century? Pfft. Collectivist governments have killed twice that in the same amount of time, and yearn for more.
Many years ago I worked with a gentleman who at that time in 1918 had a job making coffins.
He told me how wide spread the deaths were and how they came so fast.
It was hard for me to grasp it at that time (circa late 50s)-Tom
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