AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/16091793.htm
Another pandemic is inevitable, health experts say ? and today's society may be even more susceptible
<!-- begin body-content -->BY DAVID HAWLEY PIONEER PRESS
At first, it was a sickness that was happening somewhere else ? in Boston, in Philadelphia and at military bases to the east.
But not in St. Paul.
In September 1918, all attention was on a world war, then reaching its dreadful climax in Europe. Local newspapers bannered war news in front-page headlines.
But on inside pages, there were short little news items from out of town: 1,483 cases of influenza in Boston (Sept. 13), 1,000 "mild" cases at Chicago's Great Lakes Naval Station (Sept. 19).
On Sept. 25, the St. Paul Dispatch interrupted war news by reporting the death of Archbishop John Ireland in a lavish front-page tribute.
On Page 8 of the same edition, St. Paul chief physician Dr. B.F. Simon cautioned citizens to take care with common colds, adding there was "no cause for alarm" about influenza.
By the end of the following year, at least 12,000 Minnesotans would be dead of influenza.
Will another pandemic occur?
Yes. The influenza pandemic of 1918 was the first of three pandemics in the 20th century, though the outbreaks in 1957 ("Asian flu") and 1968 ("Hong Kong flu") were relatively mild ? each with about 2 million deaths worldwide.
"Just about everybody agrees a worldwide pandemic will occur," said Minnesota's state epidemiologist, Dr. Harry Hull. "It might happen this winter. It might happen two to three years from now or a decade from now."
How deadly will it be?
Based on tissues taken from 1918 flu victims, geneticists have concluded the deadly virus jumped directly from infected poultry to humans ? then directly from humans to other humans.
Two years ago, similar concerns were raised about H5N1, a virus present in Asian birds. Epidemiologists worry H5N1 might follow the same pattern as the 1918 virus.
"The 1918 virus killed about 2.5 percent of those it infected, but H5N1 is 10 times more lethal in case mortality," said Dr. Michael Greger, a bird flu expert with the Humane Society of the United States. "The implications are staggering."
Are we prepared?
The 1918 outbreak, though downplayed in an effort to maintain war morale, prompted an escalating series of public measures. In St. Paul, schools closed and all public gatherings ? including church services ? were banned. Public funerals were forbidden. City officials ordered staggered closing times for downtown businesses to reduce crowds on streetcars during that era's rush hour.
Through it all, newspaper stories whipsawed between announcements of drastic new measures, daily statistics about flu cases and deaths, and stories that influenza was "on the wane."
The occasionally peculiar or crude measures undertaken to meet the 1918 outbreak mask the disturbing probability that today's society is more vulnerable to a similar flu pandemic, several epidemiologists say.
"The modern world is much less able to handle it," said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease, Research and Policy.
"We live in a country with a just-in-time delivery system," Osterholm said. "Should international trade and travel be interrupted, the domino impact will be huge. Hospital budgets are gnawed to the bone and sucking calcium. Emergency rooms are running over capacity every day. Any major crisis would overwhelm the system."
State epidemiologist Hull agrees, though he adds that Minnesota might fare better than many places ? just as it did in 1918.
"We have a good public health system and a better state of preparedness," Hull said.
But, for Hull, that's not enough. "I've stockpiled food and water now so that I won't have to go out if things get really bad," he said.
SELLING THE FLU
As thousands of St. Paul residents fell deathly sick in fall 1918, there were some who saw influenza as an opportunity ? to sell products. Everything from floor clearers to toothpaste was touted as a flu preventive.
Here are samples of newspaper ads from that era:
? "Where Krank's 'KLEANAFLOOR' has been used for a year, no one had a cold during that time." The product was a liquid cleaner that was combined with sawdust and brushed onto the floor.
? Kolynos Dental Cream is a "Weapon of Protection Against Influenza." The toothpaste company bought a daily ad in nearly every issue of the St. Paul Dispatch during the fall of 1918.
? Laxative Bromo Quinine "should be taken in larger doses" to prevent influenza. The laxative was advertised as "the first and original cold and grippe tablet" used "in every civilized nation."
TALES FROM A PANDEMIC
Annie Sevigny, a member of Forest Lake's small French-Canadian farming community, saw death in the eyes of her flu-stricken eldest daughter, Minnie.
"She's already gone," Sevigny informed another daughter. Minnie died three days later.
By then, the farmhouse was strictly quarantined. Minnie's body, in its open casket, was propped to a standing position before a closed front window, and visitors walked by outside to pay their respects.
In November 1918, a visitor to Salol, a village near Roseau and Lake of the Woods, discovered the entire community ill with influenza.
In Roseau County alone, officials reported the deaths of more than 100 American Indians from influenza. A fur trader, Isadore Sigel, returning from the small Indian community of Crow Lake Portage, reported that one man and three children had survived in the village of 30.
Armed soldiers from the National Guard patrolled the streets of Worthington to enforce a ban on any public gatherings in the community of 3,400 residents. A new wing at the high school was turned into a Red Cross "flu hospital" and soon confined scores of patients.
Nobles County Commissioner O.A. Reeve died at his farm home near the village of Brewster. Mourners who came for the funeral were instructed to stand scattered across the front lawn in front of his house and to avoid touching each other while the Rev. M.G. Shuman stood on the front porch and delivered a eulogy.
The deceased man's family, confined to the house, cracked a window to hear the preacher.
.
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Another pandemic is inevitable, health experts say ? and today's society may be even more susceptible
<!-- begin body-content -->BY DAVID HAWLEY PIONEER PRESS
At first, it was a sickness that was happening somewhere else ? in Boston, in Philadelphia and at military bases to the east.
But not in St. Paul.
In September 1918, all attention was on a world war, then reaching its dreadful climax in Europe. Local newspapers bannered war news in front-page headlines.
But on inside pages, there were short little news items from out of town: 1,483 cases of influenza in Boston (Sept. 13), 1,000 "mild" cases at Chicago's Great Lakes Naval Station (Sept. 19).
On Sept. 25, the St. Paul Dispatch interrupted war news by reporting the death of Archbishop John Ireland in a lavish front-page tribute.
On Page 8 of the same edition, St. Paul chief physician Dr. B.F. Simon cautioned citizens to take care with common colds, adding there was "no cause for alarm" about influenza.
By the end of the following year, at least 12,000 Minnesotans would be dead of influenza.
Will another pandemic occur?
Yes. The influenza pandemic of 1918 was the first of three pandemics in the 20th century, though the outbreaks in 1957 ("Asian flu") and 1968 ("Hong Kong flu") were relatively mild ? each with about 2 million deaths worldwide.
"Just about everybody agrees a worldwide pandemic will occur," said Minnesota's state epidemiologist, Dr. Harry Hull. "It might happen this winter. It might happen two to three years from now or a decade from now."
How deadly will it be?
Based on tissues taken from 1918 flu victims, geneticists have concluded the deadly virus jumped directly from infected poultry to humans ? then directly from humans to other humans.
Two years ago, similar concerns were raised about H5N1, a virus present in Asian birds. Epidemiologists worry H5N1 might follow the same pattern as the 1918 virus.
"The 1918 virus killed about 2.5 percent of those it infected, but H5N1 is 10 times more lethal in case mortality," said Dr. Michael Greger, a bird flu expert with the Humane Society of the United States. "The implications are staggering."
Are we prepared?
The 1918 outbreak, though downplayed in an effort to maintain war morale, prompted an escalating series of public measures. In St. Paul, schools closed and all public gatherings ? including church services ? were banned. Public funerals were forbidden. City officials ordered staggered closing times for downtown businesses to reduce crowds on streetcars during that era's rush hour.
Through it all, newspaper stories whipsawed between announcements of drastic new measures, daily statistics about flu cases and deaths, and stories that influenza was "on the wane."
The occasionally peculiar or crude measures undertaken to meet the 1918 outbreak mask the disturbing probability that today's society is more vulnerable to a similar flu pandemic, several epidemiologists say.
"The modern world is much less able to handle it," said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease, Research and Policy.
"We live in a country with a just-in-time delivery system," Osterholm said. "Should international trade and travel be interrupted, the domino impact will be huge. Hospital budgets are gnawed to the bone and sucking calcium. Emergency rooms are running over capacity every day. Any major crisis would overwhelm the system."
State epidemiologist Hull agrees, though he adds that Minnesota might fare better than many places ? just as it did in 1918.
"We have a good public health system and a better state of preparedness," Hull said.
But, for Hull, that's not enough. "I've stockpiled food and water now so that I won't have to go out if things get really bad," he said.
SELLING THE FLU
As thousands of St. Paul residents fell deathly sick in fall 1918, there were some who saw influenza as an opportunity ? to sell products. Everything from floor clearers to toothpaste was touted as a flu preventive.
Here are samples of newspaper ads from that era:
? "Where Krank's 'KLEANAFLOOR' has been used for a year, no one had a cold during that time." The product was a liquid cleaner that was combined with sawdust and brushed onto the floor.
? Kolynos Dental Cream is a "Weapon of Protection Against Influenza." The toothpaste company bought a daily ad in nearly every issue of the St. Paul Dispatch during the fall of 1918.
? Laxative Bromo Quinine "should be taken in larger doses" to prevent influenza. The laxative was advertised as "the first and original cold and grippe tablet" used "in every civilized nation."
TALES FROM A PANDEMIC
Annie Sevigny, a member of Forest Lake's small French-Canadian farming community, saw death in the eyes of her flu-stricken eldest daughter, Minnie.
"She's already gone," Sevigny informed another daughter. Minnie died three days later.
By then, the farmhouse was strictly quarantined. Minnie's body, in its open casket, was propped to a standing position before a closed front window, and visitors walked by outside to pay their respects.
In November 1918, a visitor to Salol, a village near Roseau and Lake of the Woods, discovered the entire community ill with influenza.
In Roseau County alone, officials reported the deaths of more than 100 American Indians from influenza. A fur trader, Isadore Sigel, returning from the small Indian community of Crow Lake Portage, reported that one man and three children had survived in the village of 30.
Armed soldiers from the National Guard patrolled the streets of Worthington to enforce a ban on any public gatherings in the community of 3,400 residents. A new wing at the high school was turned into a Red Cross "flu hospital" and soon confined scores of patients.
Nobles County Commissioner O.A. Reeve died at his farm home near the village of Brewster. Mourners who came for the funeral were instructed to stand scattered across the front lawn in front of his house and to avoid touching each other while the Rev. M.G. Shuman stood on the front porch and delivered a eulogy.
The deceased man's family, confined to the house, cracked a window to hear the preacher.
.
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