I just finished an excellent book about the 1918/19 epidemic. My hair still hasn’t uncurled.
Interesting factoid: It’s called the “Spanish flu” because Spain was about the only Western country that wasn’t in the war and therefore the only country without military censorship suppressing reporting of the epidemic. So the news media made it sound like a problem mainly in Spain initially. The epidemic appears to have actually started in the US, specifically Kansas.
With modern medicine a lot fewer people would die. But if we ever get a similar epidemic, the medical system will be utterly overwhelmed and the medical care most will get will be little better than flu victims received in 1919.
I think natural immunity is much weaker than it used to be.
on the other hand detection is faster and the CDC is beefed up to prepare for bioterrorism.
on the other hand diseases can spread much faster because of easier transportation.
on the other hand I don’t have to go anywhere because I can do so much online...
What's the title/author? Sounds like a good read.
My boss in an infectious disease specialist. He says that we won’t be able to handle anything like 1918/19. There aren’t enough respirators in the country to deal with all the pulmonary complications much less negative pressure isolation rooms.
It will happen again. We won’t be much better prepared for it now than in 1918-19. And people will point fingers, “why didn’t you warn us when the first 10 people died.”
My boss in an infectious disease specialist. He says that we won’t be able to handle anything like 1918/19. There aren’t enough respirators in the country to deal with all the pulmonary complications much less negative pressure isolation rooms.
It will happen again. We won’t be much better prepared for it now than in 1918-19. And people will point fingers, “why didn’t you warn us when the first 10 people died.”
Not to mention how folks Globe Trot.
Supposedly, and I don’t have a source for this, the Spanish Flu came from a chicken farm in KS when a man who worked there joined the army in WW1. It spread through the army camps, to Europe, and through the world. Apparently it was a strain of what we now call Bird Flu.
A lot of people who "died of the flu" in 1918/19 were actually weakened by the flu, and died of opportunistic infections -- like bronchitis, pneumonia, staph, meningitis, etc.
Anti-viral drugs are still kinda sketchy. But modern medicine, and modern antibiotics, are much better at treating the symptoms and fighting off the second-tier infections. Give a flu patient air conditioning to keep the fever from cooking his brain and a hard whack of Cipro to keep other infections at bay, and you've got two potent weapons that did not exist in 1919. A lot more patients will survive now than did then.
There is definitely the potential for a global viral pandemic. That's why there's so much surveillance of SARS and the H5N1 "bird flu" virus. Neither is a particularly urgent threat right now, but you don't want to wait until the house catches before paying attention to the fire in the barn.