“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“But this was influenza, only influenza”
- John M. Barry. “The Great Influenza.”
In 1951 John Hultin, a twenty five year old Swedish microbiologist and PhD student , was traveling across the vast Western plain of Alaska. It was summer and the territory was still not a state in the union. Despite the summer there was still snow on the ground. The young scientist team had to travel across the tundra by dog sled.
They were trying to reach Brevig Mission, a small Inuit village clinging to the coast of Western Alaska. Only around 200 people lived there. There were no other human settlements around for hundreds of square miles. Why did he travel to such a barren and distant place?
He and his team were hunting for a killer. Here they hoped to isolate the virus that was responsible for the deaths of over 50 million people world wide. Then, it just disappeared.
They were looking for the H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish Flu.
It was dubbed “The Spanish Flu” because Spain, who was neutral in World War 1 had a press that was not censored. The country first reported about the epidemic and although the virus did not originate there, the moniker stuck.
Incredibly in 1918 the virus had spread so far world wide that it made it to tiny Brevig Mission. In November 1918, during 5 days that month, the virus engulfed the village in death, killing 72 of the 80 inhabitants here. They were buried in a mass grave and Hultin hoped the frozen earth would preserve the bodies enough that the virus could be isolated.
After obtaining permission from the village elders the team begun their hunt. Trying to dig in permafrost is no easy task. From a few inches to several feet below the top soil you will find the permafrost layer. The soil is frozen and is as hard as stone. Hultin had to set up campfires to thaw the soil enough to allow them to reach the bodies below.
After two days of back breaking work they came across the body of a small girl. The body was still preserved and she was wearing a blue dress with red ribbons in her hair. Carefully they gently open the chest cavity to reveal to perfectly preserved lungs. Here they obtained samples of the tissue.
Using the technology of the time, they were unsuccessful in isolating the murderous organism.
The story did not end there though
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In 1918 few places in America were more benign and ordinary than Haskell County, Kansas. Cars were still not common. This was an agricultural community. People lived and died here without ever leaving the county.
Then, America reversed its position of neutrality, and joined the allies in World War I.
President Woodrow Wilson, the man who founded the United Nations, was a Puritanical tyrant. A modern day Malvolio, once the decision was made to join the war, Wilson approached it with a religious fervor. He nationalized every business from factories to family farms. It became a crime to speak ill of the country. The press sheepishly was compliant with only printing stories “to help morale”. Neighbors would report a neighbor for ‘suspicious activity’ and if you were of German heritage, you were routinely jailed as a possible spy.
Personal rights and civil liberties were abolished to protect the call of the war effort. The USA became a tyrannical state all in the name of patriotism.
It was in this environment that a serial killer slipped into the country unnoticed.
Genetic and epidemiological studies show that the Spanish flu first appeared in Haskell County Kansas. Young men from all over the country were being called up to join the army. Boys that never left the family farm were now traveling farther than they ever dreamed of going. Men from this small town were put into trains and sent to Camp Funston, a huge army cantonment with tens of thousands of other young soldiers. There they were placed in close quarters together.
The fuse was lit.
An explosion followed.
**********
The influenza virus is a remarkable thing. It is an RNA virus that is zoonotic, meaning that the host is an animal, most likely a bird. There are 4 types - A, B, C, & D. Type A and B are the variants that most often cause disease in humans. Each type has sub variants. It is exceptionally virulent and efficient in causing disease.
In modern times we think of the Influenza virus as a cause of a bad cold. In fact, it is much more than that. Symptoms are often much more severe and, even today, can be fatal.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Antilles in 1492, a member of his crew had influenza. Although Europeans had developed some resistance, the indiginous people had not. Almost the entire native population was wiped out.
Influenza is not a benign nuisance. Despite modern medicines we do not have a cure for the infection. We do have a vaccine that is very effective but the virus constantly mutates and that is why we need a new vaccine each year.
In the fictional Stephen King classic “The Stand” the world is wiped out by a pandemic. The virus was an influenza.
The next time someone says, "It's only the flu" show some respect. It is not a organism to be trifled with because it can and will kill you.
In 1918 an incredibly lethal Influenza virus found its way to Kansas.
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The world was engulfed in “The War To End All Wars”. In less than 40 years it would be consumed by the even larger cataclysm of World War II. Millions of young men were being transported thousands of miles from their homes to fight. The spaces were cramped, claustrophobic, with the poorest hygiene imaginable. It was a perfect breeding ground for an aerosolized invisible assassin to hunt.
The war effort consumed everything. All resources, including medical personnel and supplies were diverted to the cause. Around 1/4 of all Physicians and Nurses in the US were drafted into the Army. Civilians were left to fend for themselves.
Modern medical training in America was in its infancy. Many “Physicians” in the country hardly had any formalized training at all and professionals that used rigorous scientific method were rare. A Scottish researcher names Alexander Fleming would not discover Penicillin for another decade. Bleeding as a treatment was still employed in some communities.
The science of microbiology was being revolutionized but still far from complete. Viruses were discovered about 20 years earlier as “agents that could be filtered out of serum”. But we had no way of visualizing them and a poor understanding of how they caused disease
Unlike other influenza viruses, the Spanish Flu had an incubation period of less than 48 hours. Its main victims were young people at the peak of their health. It killed quickly. A person could feel fine in the morning only to die in a cyanotic coma by the evening. The virus would attack many parts of the body but most often the respiratory system. The immune system, in a desperate attempt to save healthy cells would flood the lungs with white blood cells creating debris and purulent exudate in the lungs tubes. Whole lobules of the lung would be blocked in hours. The patient would develop blue patches of cyanosis and the skin desperate for oxygen. Sometimes the entire head would turn black as the patient would succumb gasping for breath.
The speed of the disease was startling. In one day a few patients would show up to a medical clinic, the next day thousands would try to get in. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Bodies were stacked in hallways like cordwood. Grave diggers refused to bury bodies for fear of acquiring the unknown disease. Nurses were in particular demand. Due to their close contact with patients they would often become ill and many died.
Since the army was using so many resources, cities had little to offer citizens. Like today, government officials downplayed the significance of the pandemic and offered little guidance of leadership. Unlike today, they had a willing accomplice with the press who printed story after story about how the flu was nothing to worry about and you should go on with your lives as normal. But as the virus stalked neighborhoods killing in every house, it became obvious that the government and press could not be trusted. People would have to take matters in their own hands. There was little volunteer spirit in the heaviest hit cities. Few would reach out and help a neighbor for fear of the disease.
The government and the press over and over again would say, “We have control over the sickness. Do not be afraid.”
It was a lie. Such proclamations only made the terror worse.
Officials advocated the preposterous notion that “Worry makes you weak and more vulnerable to the disease”. “You must be mentally strong”
The summer of 1918 was a nightmare with people dying in a World War and thousands more dying from influenza back home.
The epidemic came in 3 waves. The 2nd wave in October was by far the most lethal. One third of the entire population of the world was infected. Before it was over, 675,000 Americans would be dead. Some 50 to 100 million died globally.
Then, in the early Winter of 1919 it disappeared. No one knows why. Perhaps the virus had burned out the number of victims available to it or enough immunity had developed in the populations. We don’t know.
**********
The coronavirus is not an influenza virus. They are different organisms; their structure and genes are different. But there are many things they share. Both the Spanish Flu virus and Coronavirus are ‘novel’. This means we have not seen them before. Both are highly infectious viruses that are spread by airborne transmission. Both infections can be lethal.
Both pandemics share a history of incomplete or poor response by government leaders. Both pandemics also share a history of rebellion by portions of the population that refused to practice good hygiene measures and social distancing.
And both episodes have a population that refused to wear masks to prevent spread.
It was a different world 100 years ago. We did not have the level of medical expertise we enjoy currently. The first flu vaccine did not show up until the 1940’s. Basic hygiene was far worse. The world was at war and medical systems were not only dealing with the pandemic but also the casualties of battles. The population of the world was 1.8 billion. Around 8 billion inhabit the earth today. It is difficult to compare the two epidemics.
Yet there are things we can learn from the numbers. The Spanish flu killed between 1% to 2.7% of the entire population of the world. The data is incomplete but the global fatality rate for Covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, is around 5%. Currently the fatality rate in the US with Covid 19 infection is between 1-2%. This number is 10 to 20 times higher than seasonal flu. In a country like the US with over 300 million people, if the virus continues unabated, millions will die.
As of today there are 12,910,537 Covid 19 cases in the world. 529,128 people have perished. The country with the largest amount of cases and death from the virus by far the USA. We have 3.37 million infected here. 137,482 Americans are dead.
Today, in Florida, more cases were diagnosed in one day than all of the cases in Europe combined. It is also the same day Disney World reopened in Orlando.
We have no treatment and no vaccine. Although our medical system is vastly superior to 100 years ago, the only care we can offer is supportive at this time. This fact makes us similar to what doctors were doing with the Spanish Flu.
So if you cannot treat the disease now, it is common sense to try to avoid acquiring the infection. We know how it transmits. We know how to slow down the transmission. We know how to save lives.
Avoid crowds, wash your hands, and wear a mask.
That’s it. It couldn’t be more simple. It was the same then. It's still true now.
Yet despite the deluge of warnings and information now available to us many don’t take these basic steps . At the recent Trump rally in Tulsa, members of the campaign went through the stadium removing the social distancing stickers, commonly seen today, in the stadium before they let the small crowd in. The President, for the first time since the pandemic started, wore a mask in public 2 days ago.
Words matter, actions matter. People will follow what you do. His poor example has had devastating consequences.
Wearing a mask has become a political statement instead of a public health issue.
The same thing happened all over the country during the Spanish Flu epidemic all those years ago.
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Forty six years later after his first attempt, John Hultin returned to Brevig Mission in Alaska. He was 72 years old now and he took a new team with him. It was now 1997 and technology had advanced enough that Dr Hultin hoped he would at last be able to find the elusive killer virus form all those years ago.
Brevig Mission had grown slightly. The population of Inuits in 1997 was around 400. The elders again gave permission for Hultin’s team to dig into the grave sites.
Seven feet down in the rock hard permafrost Hultin found “Lucy”, a 20 year old Inuit woman who died from pneumonia. Her lungs were perfectly preserved. Samples were taken and sent to a lab.
Ten days later he received the news. They found the virus.
The virus was taken to the CDC in Atlanta and stored in the level 4, the most dangerous, bio-containment vault. Research followed over the years and the discoveries were remarkable.
Spanish Flu virus was an H1N1 influenza virus. That serotype exists today and we have had annual outbreaks over the decades. While the flu annually leads to the death of 30-40,000 people in America annually, it has not been nearly as lethal as the Spanish variety.
What was different?
Only 3 genes.
Just 3 genes separated this monstrous killer from our annual flu season. A simple mutation made the Spanish flu virus more likely to infect, damage, and kill a host.
Each year we receive a flu vaccine to prevent illness. The reason we have to repeat it is antigenic shift or mutation. The virus changes slightly to make it less vunerable to the immune system as a process of evolution.
As we have come to know the coronavirus these last 6 months it has shown no mutations.
At least not yet.
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A poem by Lynn Ungar from March 11, 2020
Pandemic
What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down. And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart. Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful. (You could hardly deny it now.) Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. (Surely, that has come clear.) Do not reach out your hands. Reach out your heart. Reach out your words. Reach out all the tendrils of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch. Promise this world your love— for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, so long as we all shall live. —Lynn Ungar
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