A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the
"Spanish" flu from a personal point of view. Today it's been on my mind because of a
Washington Post article I saw:
"Europe Thinks It Is Past the Peak of the First Wave of Coronavirus." I don't usually respond to such things, but today I did, perhaps because I saw the story when it was only a few minutes old. I said, "Key words: 'first wave.' Without testing, we still don't know what sort of immunity there is in the general population." Which inspired a hearty—and generally polite and well-informed—conversation. Sometimes it's
okay to read the comments.
Among the points raised (well, this one by me) was that the 1918 pandemic started in the spring, then quieted down, then reappeared in a particularly virulent second wave in the autumn. Someone remarked, "The second wave of the 1918
pandemic came because people left their homes to go out in the streets
to celebrate the end of the war. Once they came out, thousands of new
hosts were available to the virus. If they had stayed in, eventually the
virus dies out with no hosts."
Of course, I had to check. And what I found is that (a) the second wave was due in part to infected soldiers returning from Europe en masse, but also that, yes, (b) there was one parade in particular that is tied to a catastrophic resurgence of the disease, in Philadelphia, in September 1918. It's called the Liberty Loan Parade, and was organized not to celebrate the war's end (which wasn't until that November), but to raise money for the war effort. The city's director of public health okayed the event, saying some fatalities earlier
that month had stemmed from "old-fashioned influenza or grip,"
the "Spanish" flu being no longer a threat. Oh no? The details vary depending on the source (
here, for example, is a thorough story in
Smithsonian magazine on the hundredth anniversary of the parade; and
here is one from last month in the
WaPo), but the parade drew 200,000 spectators along a two-mile course. Within ten days, a thousand people had died, and some sixteen thousand by the following March.
The point I was making in pointing this second wave out is that
we don't have immunity. And until we can do solid testing and tracking—or more to the point, have a vaccine—we are fools to think that this virus will "just go away" and we can "open back up" without serious restrictions in place. Perhaps not as severe as now; but perhaps so, I don't know—and the experts aren't issuing any guidance yet, so perhaps they don't either. We need to pay attention to history. The 1918 pandemic provides plenty of lessons, even if the world is very different today. Biology hasn't changed, though. And this thing
isn't "just the flu."
Me, I'd much rather listen to a scientist than to the buffoon in the White House. Who today, by the way, was busy tweeting that his followers should
"LIBERATE" Michigan, Virginia, and Minnesota—essentially, inciting insurrection. Which is illegal. But Comrade Teflon don't care. Comrade Teflon don't give a . . . Yeah, okay, don't get me started . . . (Anyway,
here is our national treasure Heather Cox Richardson's take on 45's tweetorial antics today. And here is an eloquent
fuck you from a frontline nurse.)
I am still inching my way through
The Great Influenza by John Barry, and today found
a nice little write-up on a talk he gave in 2005 at Johns Hopkins—a school that features prominently in his history. I'll leave you with that.
No new stats for Monterey County today.
Stay inside. Stay smart. Stay healthy.
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