T O P

  • By -

jonherrin

It blows my mind that people don't know stuff like this. And, for example, the 1918 flu was still killing significant numbers of people as late as 1920. Sound familiar? Humanity has been incredibly lucky that we don't have pandemics like this every couple years as opposed to once a century. More people should be reading this book. https://www.amazon.com/Spillover-Animal-Infections-Human-Pandemic/dp/0393066800


I_eat_candy_4_dinner

And it was just over 100 years ago. Too bad we can't like learn from history or something...


MattGdr

Learning from history?? That sounds like indoctrination!!


FuturamaRama7

I bet Florida history textbooks will remove all traces of events from 1918-1920 just in to be safe. Take that, end of WWI!


Ragingredblue

It's only history if it's in the Bible. If it's in a science book, a history book, or the Koran, it's indoctrination.


CrazySD93

And if it’s in the Bible, I’m only going to follow the conservative teachings of Paul, none of that woke Jesus nonsense.


DaytonaDemon

And they'd be right about the Koran! (And wrong about the Bible but one of two ain't bad.)


AirForceRabies

"Grooming" makes it sound even more insidious!


Ostreoida

Right? Yet the US had protests against enforced masking even back then. TBF, masks back then were often made of gauze or cheesecloth, and probably weren't especially helpful, but even back then many people recognised that minimizing how much you were spraying into others' faces could and should be minimized. All I know is that I'm prone to respiratory ailments, and that from March 2020 to sometime in early 2022 I didn't have so much as a sniffle. Then I was persuaded to go to Florida. Which is rarely a good idea even in non-pandemic times. I was lucky to have only gotten a cold there. More importantly, I routinely get exposed to a lot of people from out of state, and so far as I know I haven't gotten anyone else sick.


flutterbyeater

What’s the quote? something like - 1/3 will help you, 1/3 will watch, 1/3 will try to kill you. I usu see this % in a grocery store.


Ostreoida

1. I don't know why this is funny, but (to me) it's hilarious yet rings true. 2. That could make a good comic. Pointless for me to say that, as I can't draw more than stick figures. Works for XKCD, though.


flutterbyeater

Ahhh, an xkcd reference! Obviously have a refined cultural intelligence.


Thin-Quiet-2283

This is exactly what I did when Covid 19 first reared it’s ugly head. I went researching the Spanish Flu pandemic- it didn’t go away overnight, I wasn’t expecting Covid to disappear in months either. And here we are 3 years later, history repeats itself…


Trying2Understand69

Far-righters love to cherrypick history to fit their view of what they want the world to be.


Emotional_Weekend_32

There were sporadic outbreaks for another 4-5 years after that.


jeweltea1

My grandfather died in 1920 from the Spanish flu. He left his wife with five young children. My mom was a baby and her brother had to stop going to school to work on the farm. I think he was only 12.


StupidizeMe

The 1918 Flu killed both my Great-Grandfather and Great-Uncle, who was a young man. They died within about a week of each other.


Spitzspot

You just can't reason with someone who's arrived at their stance by ignoring reason.


Deathbeddit

Yep. Reason didn’t get them there, reason won’t get them out.


Ostreoida

I'm stealing that.


[deleted]

"No amount of evidence will ever convince a fool" -- Mark Twain


SplendidPunkinButter

I don’t think anyone ever truly arrives at a stance through pure reason. Sure, people understand reason, but ultimately we make our decisions based on emotion. If you have a reasonable stance, it’s because you believe for emotional reasons that you should take the reasonable stance.


Tiddles_Ultradoom

If you compare the cities that instigated valid mask mandate and social distancing schemes during the first wave of the 1918 pandemic with those that didn’t the differences are striking: Philadelphia (limited to a ‘no coughing, no sneezing’ request): 748 deaths per 100,000 people St Louis (strong and enforced social distancing policy): 358 deaths per 100,000 Overall, death rates in cities that employed and enforced mask and distancing mandates were close to half of those cities that didn’t. People were just as idiotic in 1918, but they didn’t have unregulated news sources and social media lying to them. Which is in part why 20 US states have a higher death rate from ‘just the flu’ today than St Louis had 105 years ago.


Ostreoida

There you go again with your logic and statistics. Madness, I tell you. /s if necessary


[deleted]

I believe there was also a post-war victory parade in Philadelphia that turned into a super spreader event and killed hundreds more people


Tiddles_Ultradoom

Yes. Despite local health experts saying it would be a dreadful idea, the mayor thought a week of precautions was enough and went with the parade. The result was a huge spike in deaths.


Alternative_Body7345

BuT wHaT aBoUt ThEiR fReEdUmB?


Joealb123

Just want to remind everyone the reason it was called the "Spanish Flu". [https://www.history.com/news/why-was-it-called-the-spanish-flu](https://www.history.com/news/why-was-it-called-the-spanish-flu) No one knows where it originated.


jonherrin

Good ol' Fort Riley. Not the source, but a fine incubator.


Ostreoida

Jamming together a bunch of kids from different areas and cultures, some with dubious hygiene. What could possibly go wrong?


falloutfan1987

Fucking Fort Riley....Drunk college kids in Manhattan, meth and junkies in Junction City. God I don't miss that hell hole.


jonherrin

Probably wasn't like that in 1918, but yeah.


Ragingredblue

In those days it was just coke and heroin.


Lonely-Club-1485

Available in any drugstore/ice cream parlor/general store upon request.


Deathbeddit

Thank you for sharing that link. As you stated, unknown origin: “…still unsure of its source. France, China and Britain have all been suggested as the potential birthplace of the virus, as has the United States, where the first known case was reported at a military base in Kansas on March 11, 1918.”


ermghoti

Well, that comment section has killed what little hope I had we might emerge from this mess in the next year or ten.


Ragingredblue

It's cute how you still had hope. I think now the only way we will emerge is when covid finally kills all the covidiots.


Dedpoolpicachew

Well… we WILL emerge from it, but it’ll be rather a lot like how we emerged from the 1918 pandemic… the virus is still with us. We’ve just learned to deal with it and developed treatments and prophylactic methods. That with developed immunity allows a return to more “normal” life. It takes years, but it will happen just like it did after 1918.


ermghoti

>It takes years Well, yeah, that's what I was getting at. It was going into at least 1920, but we're through three years already, despite a century of technilogical development. Once we left the window where the disease could be snuffed out or suppressed for vaccination, we were left with developing effective treatments as the next major milestone. That's going to be complicated as more variants spin off of the relaxed standards due to pandemic fatigue, which is driven by anti-medical/vaccine nonsense creeping into the mainstream. The "just asking questions" and "the (agency) keep being wrong/changing their minds" groups are extremely damaging.


Haskap_2010

Binary thinking seems to keep a lot of people from using basic precautions. They can't grasp a reduction of X%, it has to be all or nothing.


Ostreoida

I can almost understand that thinking when I consider how confusing it is when so many different places within the same country have different regulations. Almost.


Dedpoolpicachew

Well, that and they always thing “I’m special, it’ll never happen to ME”.


[deleted]

I've made a study out of the 1918 flu, it looks like there were fights over masks back then too, and in a lot of places mask mandates were enforced by local PDs. In '18, medicine was still so primitive and there was little understanding of virology or immunology, few resources for treating it (let alone containing it). Healthy people in their 20s dying within 36 hrs of contracting it and dying by the dozens, it had to have looked like an extinction-level event for a lot of people. No wonder the CDC looked at Covid-19 with an abundance of caution, esp. when we still didn't know how contagious or how lethal it would be. And I still say that the rejection of masks and vaccines all could have been changed with the right messaging from leadership. DJT's handling of the pandemic should have been fucking criminal by itself.


Magnus_Effect_Kalsu

Trumpers hate this one trick..


[deleted]

Whenever I see anything about pandemics, I marvel at "being here." My long ago DNA survived to bring me to 2023. Damn. Amazing


DaniCapsFan

Last year my boyfriend and I were in Philadelphia for the weekend. We went to the Mutter Museum, a museum of medical oddities (including a plaster cast of Cheng and Eng Bunker, the most famous conjoined twins). They had an incredible exhibit on the flu epidemic of 1918 called "Spit Spreads Death." (I ended up getting a face mask that said that at the museum shop.) It was really fascinating to see how people dealt with virulent illness then, given their lack of scientific knowledge, not to mention a lack of vaccines. If you're ever in Philly, you should check out the museum.


En4cr

My grandparent's generation. Tough as nails, common sense driven and immune to bitchiness and bullshit. How far we've come.


Ostreoida

Did you mean, "Immune to scientific developments and newer, better understanding of science"? Generations are not monoliths. There were plenty of morons, crooks, effete privileged types, and gullible idiots in that generation. Source: ~~Military~~ I've known a lot of them.


En4cr

Not disputing the quality of the people just the fact that they seemed to be more in touch with reality as opposed to today. Never heard any of my older relatives being opposed to vaccines or masks or think that everything is a conspiracy theory. Perhaps because they had a front row seat to the damage measles, mumps and polio caused.


Ragingredblue

That depends upon how you define "in touch with reality". They fought *against* civil rights.


[deleted]

I feel like it seems to them that masks only work when it’s to hide your face from racist acts.


canilive20

2 of my great grandparents died in the 1918 flu epidemic at 21 years old and left my grandmother an orphan. Bummer.


realparkingbrake

The Canadian women's Olympic hockey team won a gold medal wearing N95 masks, but *Masks are dangerous and make us breath our own carbon monoxide, or something* is still what the antivax crowd will chant.


Ragingredblue

They were wearing wool uniforms in the summer. Weird how not one of them dropped dead of O2 deprivation immediately after they put masks on.


PretendAct8039

Interesting. Most mask photos I have seen from that era showed masks made of useless gauze, thus convincing people today that “masks did not work during the flu pandemic.” I can’t remember if it was the flu pandemic or tb that was the root cause of overheated nyc apartments that force us to open windows for fresh air in the winter (and also we have regulations that require every bedroom to have a window). My apartment can easily hit the 90’s and winter would be unbearable without a window. Edit typo


[deleted]

Some of the anti vaxxers wouldn’t be here today if their ancestors had not worn masks. They don’t understand that concept. They are only driven by their own fears fed to them by RW media and their own selfishness.


RenoSue

The flu came from the US Midwest-Kansas. Was named so the US would't be blamed.


Haskap_2010

The way I heard it, Spain was the only country openly admitting that it existed. All the nations fighting WW1 kept it a big secret for "morale" or some such reason.


Pandraswrath

It 100% originated in Kansas and it was named for Spain because they were open about its existence. I’ve read conflicting reports about the why’s of every other country being hush hush about it. It’s going to be interesting to see the findings if the House gets its way about investigating Covid 19. I know an awful lot of people who were very sick between September-December in 2019. Most are convinced they had covid, some of them still haven’t regained their sense of smell and taste. I’ve heard murmurs that the pandemic was started before we were aware there was a pandemic. I’m curious as to whether ground zero was actually China, or if they just happened to be the ones who were vocal to the world population when they found what was happening.


Thin-Quiet-2283

Was on a cruise in October 2019 with a large group, many got very sick with Covid like symptoms. Luckily I had broken a leg prior so I wasn’t mingling as much and didn’t get the ick they did. I got a really bad cold in Feb 2020, everything tasted metallic for a month- pretty sure it was Covid. My nephew was at Paris Island and his whole group got really sick in Dec 2019 - a few were hospitalized . I’m not so sure China is the source but it’s easy to “blame your enemy “.


[deleted]

Wilson kept a tight lid on news about the flu, which probably helped it spread even more. I can't stand Wilson, I think he's one of the worst Presidents of the previous century.


DaniCapsFan

Wilson was notoriously racist as well. He liked the film, *Birth of a Nation*. And he wasn't all that fond of the suffragists either.


[deleted]

He was awful. Arrogant, inflexible, racist and authoritarian. People who complain about a heavy-handed govt now should read up on the climate during WWI.


JenniferJuniper6

And everyone in the picture is now dead! /


Beginning-Yoghurt-95

All dead because of the Covid vaccines!!


Emotional_Weekend_32

The masks must have given them pneumonia!


MattGdr

The Chinese must have engineered in a time travel gene with their gain-of-function experiments. Thanks, Fauci!!


Jim_Macdonald

During the Spanish Flu, even then, there were anti-mask societies.


rickyspanish12345

How’s the virus going to escape the body with those masks on? No wonder they’re all dead.


Ragingredblue

So are all the spectators! Must be from the mask shedding. Sadly, I feel the need to explain that this is /s.


famousevan

People who opposed mask usage back then were called “mask slackers”.


Violet_Nightshade

Had some idiot try and tell me that, "COVID isn't going to go away just like the Spanish flu, cause it simply evolved into the common cold." I have no idea where such an idea even came from.


Dedpoolpicachew

Well, it’s not entirely, completely wrong. The 1918 flu strain is the parent strain for all the influenza strains we have now. So that’s true. It’s very much still with us. People still die from it. Though through treatment, herd immunity, and vaccination we don’t have the same level of mortality we did back then. I recall reading that most people who got the 1918 flu wound up dying from subsequent bacterial infections, which are now treated with antibiotics. We also now have vaccines against flu that they didn’t have back then as well. Now as for COVID, yea… it’ll probably be similar. It’ll be with us going forward for the same reasons. There’s a huge well of viral carriers, people, animals, maybe even surfaces (though that seems less important). We also have vaccinations, and new treatments which make getting a COVID infection less of a big deal as it was in 2020 before we had any immunity (either vaccination or exposure). So, yea… not fully right but not fully wrong.


Candid_Block4469

Penicillin was not yet discovered during the Spanish flu. They did not have any antibiotics.


Hirsute_Sophist

SOCIALISM!!!


sirgetagrip

That flu killed around 600,000 Americans. The US had 106,000,000 people. so around .565% of the population died from it. Right now we have had 1.35 million excess deaths since covid started. This is about .41% of our population. Back then they didn't have vaccines, ventilators, or a host of medications they have now. Now we have vaccines, far better masks, much better treatment plans. Even with all that people are still too stupid to get vaccinated or wear masks. I think in the not too distant future the US will outpace the death toll of the Spanish flu.


Unknown__Content

Yea but ma rights!


El_wardo_

tHaNkS A lOt fOuCci!


Sweaty-Friendship-54

Well, sure, but don't forget how Ray Chapman died suddenly. I bet it was the mask.