Posted on 06/04/2006 4:33:03 PM PDT by blam
The Deadly Virus
The Influenza Epidemic of 1918
True or False? The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 killed more people than died in World War One.
Hard as it is to believe, the answer is true.
World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world's population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.
The plague emerged in two phases. In late spring of 1918, the first phase, known as the "three-day fever," appeared without warning. Few deaths were reported. Victims recovered after a few days. When the disease surfaced again that fall, it was far more severe. Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death.
The plague did not discriminate. It was rampant in urban and rural areas, from the densely populated East coast to the remotest parts of Alaska. Young adults, usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases, were among the hardest hit groups along with the elderly and young children. The flu afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population. In one year, the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years.
It is an oddity of history that the influenza epidemic of 1918 has been overlooked in the teaching of American history. Documentation of the disease is ample, as shown in the records selected from the holdings of the National Archives regional archives. Exhibiting these documents helps the epidemic take its rightful place as a major disaster in world history.
My mother used to talk about it all the time.
She lived in rural Canada and was 14 when it hit. She knew several people who died.
You can run but you can't hide.
Both my parents were born in 1925 but all my life I heard of the siblings they never knew - my mother's older sister died and my father lost three siblings to the flu. Gramp always talked about losing his children to the flu. Looks like many of us grew up with those stories. My caousins recently were saying how difficult things are now and how they want to go back to the world of the 1950's when we all were kids. I just started listing epidemics, wars and basically the history of the world to say the 50's were an anamoly (sp.?)
That's just wrong.
"Two German spies, posing as doctors, were caught giving these influenza germs to the soldiers and they were shot last Saturday morning at sunrise."
They should have been given "a dose of their own medicine" and then locked in solitary confinement until their condition... changed.
We did. Flat-out REFUSED to Rx it to us.
You can prepare for the bird flu in a way that they couldn't. If you are concerned, talk to your doctor about a few prescriptions of tamiflu or relenza
It appears that the rationing is already underway. Stocks are reserved for important people, i.e., politicians, government employees, and "those who really matter."
It is indeed.
So, my plan to isolate may be a losing hand, huh?
I better find some Tamiflu, fast.
Here's what I've read the mortality is for the H5N1:
* 2005 = 55%
* 2006 = 70+%
If it's any comfort, I've not read any report where Tamiflu is credited with saving anyones life.
My grandmother, a minister's wife, died in October 1918. She had been tending parishioners that were sick from the flu when she herself became sick. She died within a few days. My father was five when he lost his mother.
(Stolen from a SJ link)
I realize that. It's just that I find it rather telling when I read on the "official documents" that the people in charge of "handing out the cookies" have placed themselves at the front of the line.
I'm also less than pleased with the way they disclose -- yet pussyfoot around -- the fact that they are planning on internal travel restrictions and other trappings of martial law.
For myself, I am planning on relying on home-made Colloidal Silver, which, if it manages to get in contact with the virus, will kill it, period. (It kills everything "microorganismesque", even that wispy mold/fungus/damp-off stuff that will infest plants, i.e. tomato seedlings when they are in the early stages of germination in peat pellets in a covered tray (as well as other stages of growth, but that seems the most prevalent). I spray it on the stuff, and the next day it was as if it was never there. Just amazing to watch! And, of course, totally harmless to the plants. It's essentially inert in that regard.)
I am thinking of rigging up a Rube Goldberg nebulizing ventilator by using my wife's CPAP machine and an ultrasonic vaporizer. I figure that if an ultrasonic vaporizer will put calcium and other minerals into the mist (which it does, judging by the white dust it creates when in use), then it should have no problems putting the Silver portion of the CS "water" into the mist -- and then, the CPAP machine should (hopefully) push it down into the lungs.
Now, to find that vaporizer, and see if it still works... (I can't remember if we replaced it with a "boiler" type because of that fershluggener mineral dust, or, it it was because it gave up the ghost. I do know that I never throw anything away. :)
For giggles: Know Your Rulers ("My Title" :) [PDF]
Get Really Acquainted With Your Rulers [as above]
I'm sure you will to.
Nothing like "full disclosure" to "We, The People", eh? LOL!
I think it's "official". She is already prescribing me enough painkillers to kill several "normal" folks (if someone "opiate-naive" was to take what I take daily, they'd be dead in short order). I'm taking morphine, hydrocodone, etc. (My spine and major joints are decomposing and I cannot take NSAIDs due to internal bleeding.)
Then I would buy it online without the scrip. Or go to another doctor. I hate doctors who are scrip nazis. I won't go to them and give them money.
If's she's willing to Rx those, I have a hard time thinking she would not Rx flu meds unless she was constrained by law. (The morphine requires a special Rx, with one copy going to the State Police for record keeping, to track "doctor-shopping", so I know the government does "get involved" with certain meds.) She mentioned something about them being prepared to test people for bird flu before letting them have Tamiflu.
Take a look at those docs -- there is a massive "bird flu" infrastructure in place. Our Glorious Leaders have spent billions to create it, and IMO it ain't gonna disappear once the Bird Flu situation is history. We've still got a "temporary" phone tax from the Spanish-American war, not to mention the "temporary" taxes put into place for WWII. This kind of thing has a one-way ratchet. They're creating the means for implementing martial law "in all but name".
My grandfather's 22 year old sister did, as well. She had just delivered a baby, and both she and the baby were sick with it.
The doctor basically said the baby didn't have a chance, so he spent all night working to save the new mother. My grandmother just held the baby by the woodstove all night, taking care of it as well as she could.
In the morning, the baby was fine and the mother was dead.
My dad was 9 years-old in 1918. He remembers his entire family, 8 kids & his parents, all getting sick, but they all survived. He doesn't remeber any of the neighbors dying ether. Guess they were just lucky.
Personally, I hope it's a bit genetic. All the siblings lived to be at least 80.
Young people were affected to a large degree by close association in schools, churches, playgrounds, battle conditions, etc. The elderly have compromised immune systems due to advanced age while the middle-aged carry more antibodies and were more isolated in many cases.
The spread to Alaska is the most remarkable aspect of the 1918 flu; a Dr. Johan Hultin was reported in 1998 as having begun a study decades earlier on well preserved tissue from a victim in Brevig Village where 79 of 80 died.
This link dated 2002 is the most up-to-date story I can find concerning his work, it is worth a read: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/17/CM40502.DTL
My father growing up in rural Texas spoke of it several times. He said that you'd see so and so walking down the street one day and the next he'd be dead.
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