[Genuine Realist]

As Mark Twain once said, "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes"

As we are looking at a "third wave" of COVID, it is worth looking at what happened with influenza, 102 years ago.



You can see what happened, with a spike in deaths in the summer (peaking in early July), not unlike what happened with COVID-19 in the US (peak in cases was mid-July; peak in deaths was early August), and of course, we are now having a worrying rise in COVID-19 cases, not unlike what happened in the "second wave" of influenza back in the fall of 1918.  Back then, there was a peak in cases in early November; if past is prologue, we are looking at a massive and very disconcerting peak in COVID-19 in late November.

BC

I've been reading 'The Great Influenza', John Barry's book about the 1918-1919 pandemic. I believe that's the one that Bush read, that caused him to create the ignored pandemic task force. It is certainly one of the most frightening histories I've ever read. 

The book's account is a tad more complicated. The first wave, in March-June 1918, was a relatively benign form of influenza. It did spread rapidly; but it was very much a flu. People caught it, and got over it.

The second wave, however, was anything but benign. The virus had mutated. The mutation was ferocious in a way the first version was not, and a killer. Death rates soared. September 1018 was as bad a month as the US has ever had. It's amazing to me that the phenomenon disappeared from the public consciousness. That may be because 1919 was such a horrible year in every way - the repercussions of the War still unfolding, the collapse of governments all over Europe, etc. 

The statistics are staggering. The conservative estimate of the dead is 20 million, this in a global population of 1.5 billion. But that's almost certainly too low. Better estimates are 50 million and the death toll may have been as high as 100 million. That's one in every 15 people in the world. Wow. Unlike covid and most flu's, the Spanish Flu did not target the weakest and most infirm of the population, but the healthiest and strongest. And yet the world endured. We have become softies.

Incidentally, though not targeted at him, the book is another nail in the coffin of the diminishing reputation of Woodrow Wilson. His atavistic racism has already been exposed. But when he put the US on a war footing in 1917, he instituted measures of censorship, economic regulation, propaganda machinery, and an all-encompassing draft. In relation to the flu, that had the consequence of crowding young men together into recently erected, primitive camps, where the contagion spread like wildfire. I mentioned September 1918. You might recall that World War I ended only five weeks later, on November 11th. Peace feelers were already extended. But the Wilson Administration continued to call for draftees, even though the housing was barely built and concerned health officials were urging him to call it off. The callousness added greatly to a completely unnecessary body count - young men pulled out of rural America and the slums of the inner city, and sent into the teeth of the epidemic for no good reason except Emerson's foolish consistency.

Woodrow Wilson has become the front runner for the worst President in US history, and I am including You-Know-Who. The more you learn about his administration, the more appalling it was. He sowed disaster almost everywhere he turned. His idealism masked a humorless self-righteousness and a massive ego.

[Genuine Realist]

As Mark Twain once said, "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes"

As we are looking at a "third wave" of COVID, it is worth looking at what happened with influenza, 102 years ago.



You can see what happened, with a spike in deaths in the summer (peaking in early July), not unlike what happened with COVID-19 in the US (peak in cases was mid-July; peak in deaths was early August), and of course, we are now having a worrying rise in COVID-19 cases, not unlike what happened in the "second wave" of influenza back in the fall of 1918.  Back then, there was a peak in cases in early November; if past is prologue, we are looking at a massive and very disconcerting peak in COVID-19 in late November.

BC

I've been reading 'The Great Influenza', John Barry's book about the 1918-1919 pandemic. I believe that's the one that Bush read, that caused him to create the ignored pandemic task force. It is certainly one of the most frightening histories I've ever read. 

The book's account is a tad more complicated. The first wave, in March-June 1918, was a relatively benign form of influenza. It did spread rapidly; but it was very much a flu. People caught it, and got over it.

The second wave, however, was anything but benign. The virus had mutated. The mutation was ferocious in a way the first version was not, and a killer. Death rates soared. September 1018 was as bad a month as the US has ever had. It's amazing to me that the phenomenon disappeared from the public consciousness. That may be because 1919 was such a horrible year in every way - the repercussions of the War still unfolding, the collapse of governments all over Europe, etc. 

The statistics are staggering. The conservative estimate of the dead is 20 million, this in a global population of 1.5 billion. But that's almost certainly too low. Better estimates are 50 million and the death toll may have been as high as 100 million. That's one in every 15 people in the world. Wow. Unlike covid and most flu's, the Spanish Flu did not target the weakest and most infirm of the population, but the healthiest and strongest. And yet the world endured. We have become softies.

Incidentally, though not targeted at him, the book is another nail in the coffin of the diminishing reputation of Woodrow Wilson. His atavistic racism has already been exposed. But when he put the US on a war footing in 1917, he instituted measures of censorship, economic regulation, propaganda machinery, and an all-encompassing draft. In relation to the flu, that had the consequence of crowding young men together into recently erected, primitive camps, where the contagion spread like wildfire. I mentioned September 1918. You might recall that World War I ended only five weeks later, on November 11th. Peace feelers were already extended. But the Wilson Administration continued to call for draftees, even though the housing was barely built and concerned health officials were urging him to call it off. The callousness added greatly to a completely unnecessary body count - young men pulled out of rural America and the slums of the inner city, and sent into the teeth of the epidemic for no good reason except Emerson's foolish consistency.

Woodrow Wilson has become the front runner for the worst President in US history, and I am including You-Know-Who. The more you learn about his administration, the more appalling it was. He sowed disaster almost everywhere he turned. His idealism masked a humorless self-righteousness and a massive ego.