Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

[Susan]

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
page 284 of the Dover edition of Reason in Common Sense




The onset of illness for those battling the flu of 1918 was quite sudden. In a matter of mere hours, a person could go from strapping good health to being so enfeebled they could not walk. Victims complained of general weakness and severe aches in their muscles, backs, joints, and heads. Often enduring fevers that could reach 105 degrees, the sick fell prey to wild bouts of delirium. Innocent objects--pieces of furniture, wallpaper, lamps--would adopt wicked manifestations in the minds of those consumed by fever. When the fevers finally broke, many victims fortunate enough to have survived now endured crushing post-influenzal depression.


This flu was a great leveler of men; it recognized neither social order nor economic status. It struck with impunity among the rich and famous, as well as the lowly and the meek. Among its more well-known victims: Silent screen star Harold Lockwood, swimmer Harry Elionsky, "Admiral Dot," one of PT Barnum's first midgets, Irmy Cody Garlow, the daughter of Buffalo Bill Cody, General John Pershing*, Franklin Roosevelt*, actress Mary Pickford*, and President Woodrow Wilson*.
*survived the flu

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influen...e/victims.html

[Susan]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: February 12, 2006
TO the pantheon of social arbiters who came up with the firm handshake, the formal bow and the air kiss, get ready to add a new fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the "elbow bump."




If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is "social distancing," which is the new politically correct way of saying "quarantine."
But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators — and the bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us.
It has happened before, and not just in medieval Europe, where plague killed a third of the continent's serfs, creating labor shortages that shook the social order. In the United States, the norms of casual sex, which loosened considerably in the 1960's with penicillin and the pill, tightened up again in the 1980's after AIDS raised the penalty.
But influenza is more easily transmitted than AIDS, SARS or even bubonic plague, so the social revolution is likely to focus on the most basic goal of all: keeping other people's cooties at arm's length. The bump, a simple touching of elbows, is a substitute for the filthy practice of shaking hands, in which a person who has politely sneezed into a palm then passes a virus to other hands, whose owners then put a finger in an eye or a pen in a mouth. The bump breaks that chain. Only a contortionist can sneeze on his elbow.
Dr. Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has done the bump a few times already. When Ebola breaks out in Africa, he's usually on the team sent to fight it.
"I'll arrive on the tarmac and stick out a hand to say hello," Dr. Bell said, "and someone from the W.H.O. team will say: 'No, no, no, we don't do that. We do the elbow bump now.' "
In truth, he said, they do it mostly to set a good example. To stop an Ebola outbreak, visiting doctors must persuade villagers in Angola or the Congo basin to refrain from washing dead bodies and using their bare hands when nursing family members dying of hemorrhagic bleeding.
Those distancing measures would be easy to enforce in a pandemic in New York City. But other likely steps will strike at things New Yorkers are loath to give up. Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, the deputy city health commissioner in charge of avian flu preparation, said his first move would probably be to ban Major League Baseball games, Broadway shows, movies, parades and other large gatherings.
Closing schools or shutting the subways might be even more effective, because children are much more efficient than adults at spreading flu, and subways are enclosed spaces where sneezes linger in the air — but doing that would be harder to pull off, Dr. Weisfuse said. "People talk about 'flu days' like snow days," he said, "and if it was just days or a week, that would be simple. But if it's weeks or months, that becomes another matter." Without mass transit, no one gets to work and the economy collapses, he pointed out, and many poor children depend on the free breakfasts and lunches they get at school.
An alternative is to limit people to necessary travel and to have them wear masks — a tricky thing.
Getting people to don masks in Asia is relatively simple, Dr. Bell said. Particularly in Japan, it is considered polite for anyone going to work with a cold to wear one. And in Asian cities full of soot and diesel exhaust, people often wear gauze masks on the street.
But in the United States, "we don't have a culture of courtesy mask use," he said, and people may feel foolish wearing them.
The government of Taiwan faced that problem three years ago during the SARS epidemic. It ordered everyone who had a cough or fever, or who cared for a family member or patients who did, to wear a mask if they ventured outdoors. The head of Taiwan's version of the Centers for Disease Control correctly noted that studies showed that masks do much more good if the sick wear them, keeping sneeze droplets in, than if the healthy do.
But masks were rare on the streets, and the mayor of Taipei, the capital city, decided to ignore the data and pay more attention to the psychology. The sick and exposed would never wear masks, he reasoned, if it marked them as disease carriers. So he simply issued a mayoral order: no one without a mask could ride the subway. The next day, everyone in Taipei was wearing them. Within a week, they had become a fashion item, printed with logos like the Nike swoosh, the Burberry plaid and the Paul Frank monkey.
Pictures of the 1918 flu epidemic include much evidence of that sort of mass psychology. In a photograph of ranks of Seattle police officers, all are wearing masks; in one of 45 Philadelphia gravediggers digging trenches for the dead, none wear them. In a photograph of dozens of beds in a military field hospital, almost all of the patients, doctors and nurses seem to have masks — but most in the foreground have pulled them down for the photographers. People act as the group acts.
When a disease seems far away, as avian flu still does, notions like mask fashion and elbow bumping sound like jokes. But when people start dying, panic ensues, and nothing seems too far-fetched to try. In the 1918 epidemic, Prescott, Ariz., outlawed handshaking. Some small towns tried to close themselves off, barricading their streets against outsiders and telling any citizen who left not to plan on coming back. In factories, common drinking cups gave way to a new invention: the paper cup.
Under pressure, people don't adopt only sensible precautions, they overreact, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. During the anthrax scare of 2001, he said, nervous citizens submitted 600,000 specimens of white powder to public laboratories. The samples included brownies with powdered sugar. Dr. Osterholm said he feared that public reactions would be out of sync with any epidemic; that people would get scared too early, then say the fear was overblown and dismiss it. Then, if a pandemic lasts for weeks, fatigue will set in. "We tend to be a just-in-time, crisis-oriented population," he said.
It is all in the timing, said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academy of Sciences. "In the middle of a major pandemic, with people dying, we're likely to see people hungry for clear instructions," he said. "What would backfire would be for you to say, 'Start bumping elbows now.' People would look at you as if you were from Mars."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/we...ew/12mcne.html

[Susan]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

REMEMBERING THE KILLER FLU
By Elaine Hale Jones Editor's Introduction: skipped due to length

exert as follows

MONTROSE ? American servicemen called it the three-day fever or "Purple Death." The French called it "Purulent Bronchitis." The Italians referred to it as "Sand Fly Fever," the Germans, "Flanders Fever." By the time WWI was drawing to a close, the virus known as the 1918 influenza, a.k.a. the Spanish flu (Spain was the first country to widely report the epidemic), had circled the entire globe in four short months.

Despite its name, some researchers believe the Spanish flu originated in the United States, in particular, from overcrowded and unsanitary conditions at Ft. Riley, Kan., where soldiers were training for the last wave of support overseas during WWI. Once the soldiers disembarked in Europe, the virus exploded. Second and third waves of the Spanish flu hit the U.S. during the cold-weather months of 1918-1919.

Historical records dating from the 1700s show that every 10 to 40 years, the world suffers a global flu pandemic, the result of a major virus mutation. The virus, known as H1N1, was especially vicious and cruel. It started simply with a sore throat, chills and fever. But from there, it turned deadly. Most victims died very quickly; within two to three days of showing symptoms, their lungs filling with blood or other fluids, starving the body of oxygen. Unlike many other strains that typically affect the elderly or those with compromised immune systems, the 1918 flu targeted young healthy people, including children.

Death was by slow suffocation. Mahogany-colored spots appeared on the cheekbones; within hours these patients turned bluish-black due to the lack of oxygen. When triaging scores of new patients, nurses checked the patients' feet first. Those with black feet were considered beyond help and carted off to die.

Images of victims being "carted off" are still vivid memories for longtime Montrose resident Ralph Brown. He was only 7 years old when the epidemic struck, but like many others of his generation, the 1918 flu left a lasting impression.

"We were living in Golden, Colo. at the time," he said. "I remember one day the ?Black Maria? (a type of wagon used to collect bodies) backed up to our door. My mother ran from room to room to see if we were all still alive. She then told the driver to check next door. As it turned out, our neighbors had lost their little girl."

"Everyone died too fast," Brown remarked, adding that a Dr. Garvin was one of the best doctors around at the time. "He went night and day treating the sick. He tried his best to get people who were not feeling well to take it easy. I remember he warned two young men about going back to work in the hay fields. They went ahead anyway. The next day they were dead."

"My family was very fortunate (not to lose anyone during the 1918 flu)," he said. "My grandfather even made a special trip to visit us from Oklahoma because he thought we were going to die."

The influenza in the Uncompahgre Valley followed on the heals of a serious typhoid epidemic 10 years earlier. Both epidemics stretched local medical resources, placing family members, nurses and doctors side by side to save lives in the community.

Nurse Anna Doretta Fender was well-known in early-day Montrose for her humanitarian efforts in the field of medicine. Seeing a desperate need for a centralized hospital, Fender and her husband and mother-in-law established St. Luke's Hospital at the corner of Cascade Avenue and South Second Street in 1916. Two years after St. Luke's was established, Montrose fell victim to the epidemic that was sweeping across the nation. The influenza claimed two or three deaths daily for weeks in the Uncompahgre Valley.

During this time, the files of the Montrose Daily Press reveal that Fender made a "superhuman" effort to care for the sick and dying. Her work during this trying period endeared her to members of hundreds of local families. Two annexes to St. Luke's Hospital were also established, one on the north side and one on the west side. In the event the facility filled up, patients were cared for at the local Catholic Church.

The 1918 flu claimed the lives of 62 Montrose residents.

In stark contrast, the town of Gunnison escaped without a death.

In a passage from the book, "The Great Influenza," author John M. Barry described one of the most aggressive efforts to halt the spread of the flu.

"In early October, far in advance of any cases of influenza, Gunnison, Colorado and most neighboring towns issued a closing order and a ban on public gatherings. Then Gunnison decided to isolate itself entirely. Gunnison lawmen blocked all through roads. Train conductors warned all passengers that if they stepped foot on the platform in Gunnison to stretch their legs, they would be arrested and quarantined for five days. Two Nebraskans trying simply to drive through to a town in the next county ran the blockade and were thrown into jail. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Sargents (located on the west side of Monarch Pass) suffered six deaths in a single day--out of a total population of 130.

"After weeks of dying and with the war over (WWI), the Gunnison News-Chronicle, unlike virtually every other newspaper in the country, played no games and warned, 'This disease is no joke to be made light of, but a terrible calamity.'"

"Gunnison essentially shut down its borders.You could leave town, but you couldn't come back in," Dr. Ted Dickinson, retired Montrose surgeon, said of the story. "In general quarantines don't work very well, but in this case, extreme efforts paid off."

In the nearby San Juan Mountains, the influenza crept into the most isolated mining camps. Reports of the deadly virus first surfaced in the town of Ouray in October 1918.

In an effort to stop the spread of influenza, the Ouray City Council undertook drastic measures to help protect residents. A "shot gun quarantine" was enforced by guards to keep miners from crossing over the mountains from Silverton and Telluride. A barricade was set up across the main road leading into Ouray, and travelers arriving by train were also checked at the depot.

By December of 1918, however, the flu had spread throughout the town. Local hotels, such as the St. Elmo and Western, served as extra hospital wards for dozens of stricken miners brought down from the mountains. In January, 1919, the quarantine was lifted on the town of Ouray, but people continued to be cautious about being out in public. The neighboring mining town of Telluride had also lifted its quarantine regulations, but when a public dance brought 50 new cases of the flu, Ouray, in turn, banned all local dances. A new outbreak of influenza occurred a year later in January, 1920, with 15 new cases reported. A total of 15 people died in Ouray from influenza.

One of the hardest hit towns was Silverton. Situated at 9,318 feet above sea level with an average snowfall of 200 inches, the high mountain community was frequently isolated from the outside world for days on end. Nonetheless, town officials closed businesses before a single case of the flu had even surfaced.

But the virus found its way in, with a vengeance. High altitude and pneumonia were already a lethal combination for townspeople; the addition of the influenza virus was a death sentence for hundreds. On Oct. 26, 1918, the town reported 52 deaths in 10 days and 500 cases of influenza. In one single week in Silverton, 125 people died. Newspaper headlines declared that there were not enough grave diggers or nurses to go around.

The flu also raged among the Southern Ute tribe at Ignacio in the southern part of the state; 100 cases were reported among the 400 Native Americans with 12 deaths recorded.

While the deadly flu epidemic occurred over eight decades ago, the 1918 flu still evokes haunting memories of a sudden and merciless killer, one that raises serious questions and issues today.

"I think we can expect another epidemic that will ravage people at some point in the future," Dr. Dickinson stated. "It may not be the bird flu, but there will be a time when a virus mutates (like the one that caused the 1918 flu). Today's worldwide transportation system will make it even harder to stop an epidemic."

"Unfortunately," Dickinson explained, "it takes up to a year to develop flu vaccines because the virus is grown in eggs. In the future, flu vaccines may be developed must faster using tissue cultures, but that takes money. The government is also stockpiling the drug Tamiflu, but we don't know just how effective that will be to stop a future outbreak."

"We should remain alert (to the possibility of a future epidemic)," he advised. "People need to continue to get their annual flu shots."

Nature's antiseptic

Most people recognize the clusters of blueberry-type berries found on growing on the prolific juniper trees in our area. These berries are the primary ingredient in the making of gin. However, the juniper tree has another less known use as an antiseptic. Fragrant juniper incense was used during the 1918 flu epidemic as an aerial antiseptic in hospitals. Similarly, hanging a bunch of juniper over the doorway was said to chase illness from the household.

http://www.montrosepress.com/article...cal_news/1.txt

[GaudiaRay]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

>On Oct. 26, 1918, the town reported 52 deaths in 10 days and 500 cases of influenza.

This is the same percentage of infection to death reported in the NY Times on Oct 13 and Oct 15, 1918.

It was then 10% of those who became infected. This was the number to watch and it is the number to watch, now. Mortality as a percentage of those showing noticeable infection.

This percentage would take into account all those who have mild, unreported infection, given an assumption that H5N1 acts no differently than H1N1 in 1918.

[Susan]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

http://www.juniperridge.com/pbpn_incense_juniper.htm

40 sticks for 5.95

In a passage from the book, "The Great Influenza," author John M. Barry described one of the most aggressive efforts to halt the spread of the flu.

"In early October, far in advance of any cases of influenza, Gunnison, Colorado and most neighboring towns issued a closing order and a ban on public gatherings. Then Gunnison decided to isolate itself entirely. Gunnison lawmen blocked all through roads. Train conductors warned all passengers that if they stepped foot on the platform in Gunnison to stretch their legs, they would be arrested and quarantined for five days. Two Nebraskans trying simply to drive through to a town in the next county ran the blockade and were thrown into jail. Meanwhile, the nearby town of Sargents (located on the west side of Monarch Pass) suffered six deaths in a single day--out of a total population of 130.

"After weeks of dying and with the war over (WWI), the Gunnison News-Chronicle, unlike virtually every other newspaper in the country, played no games and warned, 'This disease is no joke to be made light of, but a terrible calamity.'"

"Gunnison essentially shut down its borders.You could leave town, but you couldn't come back in," Dr. Ted Dickinson, retired Montrose surgeon, said of the story. "In general quarantines don't work very well, but in this case, extreme efforts paid off."

posted above

The town of Gunnison wouldn't allow anyone off the train that stopped in town and blocked two mountain passes to automobile traffic, Leonard said. As a result, Gunnison had one of the lowest infection rates in the state and practically no mortality. Conversely, the Silverton area saw 150 deaths, many of them worn-down miners who decided to tough it out rather than seek medical care.

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1

[Susan]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

1918 - symptoms of this killer fluThe first wave of the flu followed typical flu symptoms consisting of a three-day fever, a cough and a runny nose, followed by a rapid convalescence. The second and third waves were often fatal. Of every 1000 people who were infected, 800 had severe flu symptoms. The remaining 200 had lung complications, 120 of whom could be classified as desperately ill or dying.
Normal flu symptoms accompanied by a very high fever, shivering and muscle aches quickly translated into lung complications, sometimes progressing to bronchopneumonia, which sometimes swept through the body like toxaemia or septicaemia. People literally drowned in their own fluids.

Sources for the whole section on the 1918 epidemic in South Africa: SA Railways and Harbour Magazine, December 1918; Phillips, Howard. South Africa's worst Demographic Disaster: The Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918. (South African Historical Journal, (20), 1988.

http://www.health24.com/medical/Cond...1705,16646.asp

[Susan]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Influenza 1918, A Venus Connection
Venus Atmosphere Temperature and Pressure Profiles
Sunspot Activity, Venus Inferior Conjunctions, and Biological Events
1st Quarter 2001 Influenza Data Analysis (USA)
Global Developments: Spring-Summer 2001
Influenza A(H1N2)
USA Influenza Activity 2001-2002
West Nile Virus
USA Influenza Activity 2002-2003 - (Part 2 has SARS information.)
USA Influenza Activity 2003-2004 - (Part 2 has Special Note for June 2004.)
Venus Transit: Biohazard?
USA Influenza Activity 2004-2005 -
Calculated Dates of Venus Inferior Conjunctions

http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/1918.htm


The ISP is now datasync.com

[sharon sanders]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Susan - Very interesting thread.

[Susan]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Thank you Florida1. As I'm sure you know the material related to the Spanish Flu is extensive. My hope is to somehow sort through the bulk it in seach of benchmarks and/or info that could possibly serve as a warning or an aid to prevention.

[DerekSmith]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

Thank you Florida1. As I'm sure you know the material related to the Spanish Flu is extensive. My hope is to somehow sort through the bulk it in seach of benchmarks and/or info that could possibly serve as a warning or an aid to prevention.

Susan, you clearly are far better researched on 1919 than the majority of us are. Can I therefore ask for your help.

You state above that you seek to use this history to aid prevention. Ascorbate is the means to prevention but many people (those not already using ascorbate and convinced by first hand experience of its effectiveness) need extra proof of the effectiveness of ascorbate berfore they prove it for themselves. The archives may help provide this extra proof by showing that some groups were more badly effected than others.

For example, the town of Silverton situated at 9,000 ft and 200 inches of snow per year, frequently sealed off by bad weather. This town suffered terrible losses when the flu swept through it. It is reasonable to summise that food in this town during the time of the pandemic would not have contained very much fresh veg or fruit (main sources of ascorbate). As a consequence, its residents would have been under extreem ascorbate depletion when the flu struck and the impact of the flu would have been at its worst.

If you are able to find any similar conditions or places people who fared particularly well whose dietary ascorbate could have implicated these results, then we could help a lot of people understand the power of ascorbate and add it to their own defences.

I hope you feel inclined to help.

Regards
DerrekSmith

[zkurmus]

Re: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

All of us who hum "ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down," should guess that this song refers to the beuboic (spelling?) plague... the little things... it's not about the spanish flu, but the folklore following an avian flu pandemic would have similar nursery rhymes... i read somewhere that already, peoples' poets (poet/singers with traditional saz instruments -something like a guitar, but with 5 strings, i think) in turkey are making songs about the bf that took the lives of the kocyigit and ozcan children...