100 years ago, another epidemic terrorized the city Boston’s reaction to a dangerous virus hasn’t changed much in a century: A narrative of the Spanish flu in the city where it began.

Boston Globe ^ | ,Updated March 14, 2020, | Dugan Arnett

[daniel1212]

As August 1918 wound to a close in Boston and summer’s dog days gave way to fall, the city was awash in optimism...So when, in late August, a handful of sailors stationed at Commonwealth Pier in what is now the South Boston Seaport fell terribly ill, no one in the city paid much mind..The new flu arrived quickly at Camp Devens in Ayer...a bustling barracks of some 45,000 soldiers...with as many as 1,543 soldiers reporting ill with influenza in a single day...

It wasn’t until Sept. 15, roughly three weeks after the first soldiers reported ill, that the influenza epidemic reached the front page of The Boston Post. “Spanish Grip Claims Nine..”

Any hopes that the flu might pass quickly had been extinguished by mid-September. Though some communities had remained relatively unscathed — ..such places were increasingly rare...The flu ripped through workplaces, particularly large businesses. At one point, the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company reported that 800 of its 4,000 employees were out sick, nearly all with the flu. Many businesses locked their doors..

Almost from the start, hospitals struggled to keep up...On Sept. 26, almost a month to the day after the first case surfaced, Boston’s newly appointed health commissioner, William Woodward, a Georgetown-educated physician who’d been instrumental in the fight against typhoid fever a decade earlier, imposed a so-called “gathering ban," closing down all theaters, soda shops, and saloons until the epidemic could be controlled. Many schools had already been shuttered, and most churches, if they hadn’t already, soon followed suit....

By the time September wound to a merciful close, the virus had proven so deadly, taking 700 lives in the final week of the month alone, that it was being discussed much in the same way as an enemy army.

[daniel1212]

Story is necessarily excerpted and is behind a paywall (I opted for a 1.00 subscription good to two months). Note that it spread quickly in condensed communities, while some rural areas were spared.

And this account is not provided to promote hysteria, but perspective. Over 80,000 Americans Died of Flu in 2018... 90 percent of those deaths were in people over age 65 (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/health/flu-deaths-vaccine.html) A four-week stretch saw the flu kill older Americans at a rate of 169 people a day, or seven people per hour. (https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2018/older-flu-deaths-rising.html)

About 90 people die each day in the US from crashes (https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.html)

[A_Former_Democrat]

Wikipedia has a good article on the Spanish Flu, but it claims the flu started in SW Kansas (a big avian flyway + pig farming area) and was spread by infected young men heading to military camps during WWI

From thence, around the world

Interesting read

[bitt]

p

[daniel1212]

Yes, the Globe article also states,

Just a few months earlier, the US military had faced a wave of influenza that struck a base in Kansas, now believed to be an early incarnation of the Spanish flu — so-called because of an assumption, at the time, of its country of origin. It had spread rapidly but was mild, resulting in relatively few deaths before petering out.

[DeFault User]

One of my mother’s sisters was one of the 675,000 Americans killed by the Spanish flu in 1918. At the time she lived in South Dakota and was 18 years old.

[catman67]

The 1918 flu was widespread in Europe, but reporting of it was suppressed as “detrimental to the war effort”. It was not until the flu reached neutral countries, ie. Spain, that that reports began to emerge. Thus it came to be knownas the Spanish Flu.

[SkyDancer]

In 1918 at the height of the Spanish flu, Philly decided to NOT cancel a parade, but St. Louis did cancel their parade. In the end, over 12,000 died in Philadelphia and 700 died in St. Louis. So, stop complaining about cancellations

[Boomer]

What is old is new again.

[daniel1212]

In 1918 at the height of the Spanish flu, Philly decided to NOT cancel a parade, but St. Louis did cancel their parade. In the end, over 12,000 died in Philadelphia and 700 died in St. Louis. So, stop complaining about cancellations

Source please, and without details such as cases before the parades, population age and density, crowd size, temperature, health care, and more, then your proffered correlation=causation is specious, as is this comparison with Covid-19. Yet with the Spanish flu, which unlike Covid-19, caused extensive deaths among young and fit persons, although the est. deaths have been reduced, and malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu)

And in such a case, I support cancellations of crowed outside gatherings, besides gatherings in enclosed areas, which I noted as fostering infection, and which should be shunned in the case of Covid-19, while those quarantined need sun and fresh air each day if possible.

[Vision]

The damage done by the Spanish Flu was magnified by poor nutrition of people at the time.

[SkyDancer]

Let your lazy fingers do the walking.https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/us/philadelphia-1918-spanish-flu-trnd/index.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

[daniel1212]

That was also referred to in the Globe article, but I had a 300 word count.

Meanwhile, a debate goes on:

a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic[16][17] found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.

In 1993, Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the 1918 flu for the Pasteur Institute, asserted the former virus was likely to have come from China. It then mutated in the United States near Boston and from there spread to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, Europe, and the world with Allied soldiers and sailors as the main disseminators.[32] He considered several other hypotheses of origin, such as Spain, Kansas and Brest, as being possible, but not likely. Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting the influenza had earlier origins, beginning in Austria in early 1917.[33]

When an infected person sneezes or coughs, more than half a million virus particles can spread to those nearby.[37] The close quarters and massive troop movements of World War I hastened the pandemic, and probably both increased transmission and augmented mutation. The war may also have increased the lethality of the virus. Some speculate the soldiers' immune systems were weakened by malnourishment, as well as the stresses of combat and chemical attacks, increasing their susceptibility.[38][39]

Estimates vary as to the total number who died. An estimate from 1991 says it killed 25–39 million people.[49] A 2005 estimate put the death toll at probably 50 million (less than 3% of the global population), and possibly as high as 100 million (more than 5%).[50][51] But a reassessment in 2018 estimated the total to be about 17 million,[3] though this has been contested.[52] With a world population of 1.8 to 1.9 billion,[53] these estimates correspond to between 1 and 6 percent of the population.

This flu killed more people in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 24 years.[54] However, the Black Death killed a much higher percentage of the world's then smaller population.[55] The disease killed in every area of the globe. As many as 17 million people died in India, about 5% of the population.[56] The death toll in India's British-ruled districts was 13.88 million.[57]

[SoCal Pubbie]

That article provides little of the data the other poster was seeking.

[SkyDancer]

So? Maybe the poster is too afraid to say anything and you jump in as his paladin? Some jokes explain themselves to those that live in safe rooms.

[Calvin Locke]

Ironically, Camp Devens (becoming Ft. Devens along the way) is now FMC Devens (Federal Medical Center) for specialized/long-term care for [Federal] BOP inmates.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.”

The problem is see here is that during the second round of the pandemic, when the young and healthy were the hardest hit, many victims fell ill in the morning and died by the afternoon.

I also don’t see how Boston could be the source of the outbreak if it begin there in August 1918 when the first case at Fort Riley in Kansas was in March of that year. Recent investigations have also pointed to a British army camp in Étaples, France as the possible source. Soldiers there experienced very similar symptoms I believe as far back as 1917.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Maybe this is a discussion forum and I’ll respond to whatever I damn well please.

[daniel1212]

Let your lazy fingers do the walking.https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/us/philadelphia-1918-spanish-flu-trnd/index.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

It is the job to the one making the assertion to substantiate it (and as you could tell from my many postings, i provide much of that), and while you now have a source for the report, yet it does not provide much re. the factors needed to support your premise.

Except it somewhat does as regards population make up, as it reports,

The virus spread to Philadelphia on September 19, 1918, through the Philadelphia Navy Yard, In a matter of days, 600 sailors had the virus....the parade went on as scheduled on September 28, bringing 200,000 Philadelphians together.

Other factors contributed to the flu's spread, including high population and poor working and living conditions.

St. Louis, for example, canceled its parade while Philadelphia did not. In the end, the death toll in St. Louis did not rise above 700, according to the CDC - https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/15/us/philadelphia-1918-spanish-flu-trnd/index.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

And as for pop. size, in 1920: Philadelphia 1,823,779 vs. 687,000 for city of St. Louis, Missouri in 66 sq mi .

And there is more to be considered in this dissimilar comparison.

[daniel1212]

“This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.” The problem is see here is that during the second round of the pandemic, when the young and healthy were the hardest hit, many victims fell ill in the morning and died by the afternoon.

It is a case of "typically " vs. "many."

I also don’t see how Boston could be the source of the outbreak if it begin there in August 1918 when the first case at Fort Riley in Kansas was in March of that year.

That is one of many debatable postulations.

[SkyDancer]

Giggidy!