I have been fascinated with the 1918 flu all my life, because I suppose my great grandmother Paralee died of it, nursing the rest of my father’s family who all nearly died of it.
Except for no insulin or penicillin, basic medical science in 1918 was highly advanced. If you took insulin and modern antibiotics out of the bag of a modern doctor there would not be a huge difference.
Doctors in 1918 thought they had encountered a super bacteria.
They developed a vaccine, that seems to have helped with the secondary pneumonia that killed a lot of victims, but of course didn’t prevent the virus.
Like today, they had quacks and charlatans promoting worthless remedies. Since just like Covid, over 95% of those that caught the Spanish flu survived, the survivors swore their remedy worked.
Like today, they tried hand washing and cleanliness. Like today, people didn’t faithfully wash themselves, probably worse then than now.
They had mask mandates, with the same results as today, except then there was a war on so they weren’t as tolerant of resisters.
The only measure they took that definitely worked was isolation, what we called social distancing.
Over the fall of 1918, an old man named Alva Rains was 13 then and a live in hired hand told me my great grandmother Paralee arranged and enforced an effective quarantine on the household. While the flu raged around them their home was spared.
Then the war ended and the family wanted to go to Humansville, for Armistice Day bonfires.
She stayed at the residence of my Uncle Elmer who was in France and had a wife and little child at home. The spot was a half mile west. They hadn’t caught the flu yet either.
Guess what happened?
They all caught it.
They called a doctor but none would come.
Elmer’s wife Cora didn’t have a phone.
Finally my Aunt Eva sent Alva, who was the least sick, over to fetch her mother Paralee.
Alva would tell the story and say he’d never been as sick, but he was sure the others would all die, and he might live.
Paralee heard him coming and stood out in front of Elmer’s home with a shotgun, and said that will be close enough, Alva.
Alva told the story of deathly sickness and they weren’t able to cook, and she said hitch my horse on my buggy and I’ll be along shortly.
She alone, died of it, the others lived.
When Elmer returned from France he hated Eva for killing his mother the rest of his life.
Paralee’s husband, my great grandfather Alvin, was left an invalid for the two more years he lived.
And two years later, perhaps every soul on earth caught the virus and it utterly disappeared.
And every book I own about the 1918 flu remarks how ten years later hardly anyone remembered, there was no mention of it. The flus that still circulated mainly killed those about to die, anyway.
That looks like that will happen with Covid as well.
We will forget.
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Globally, the number of new cases decreased by 44% during the past 28-day period of 5 February to 3 March 2024 compared to the previous 28-day period (8 January to 4 February 2024), with over two hundred and ninety-two thousand new cases reported. The number of new deaths decreased by 51% as compared to the previous 28-day period, with 6200 new fatalities reported. As of 3 March 2024, over 774 million confirmed cases and more than seven million deaths have been reported globally.
During the period from 5 February to 3 March 2024, COVID-19 new hospitalizations and admissions to an intensive care unit (ICU) both recorded an overall decrease of 35% and 64% with over 78 000 and 500 admissions, respectively.
SARS-CoV-2 PCR percent positivity, as detected in integrated sentinel surveillance as part of the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) and reported to FluNet was around 11% as of 3 March 2024. Globally, JN.1 is the most reported VOI (now reported by 115 countries)...
www.who.int
Xxxx
But unlike a century ago, medical literature will tell doctors the best way to combat the next global pandemic. Todays epidemiologists will study this for another century until we all die, even the babies born today.
Minus the politics, it will fascinate people a century from now, that it ever was political.
