Six on Coronavirus: Survivor of Spanish flu epidemic, Great Depression: “Look at each other” for hope; In the Battle Against Coronavirus, Humanity Lacks Leadership; Cuban doctors head to Italy battle coronavirus; Ogdensburg and the 1918 Influenza Pa
panaritisp
And please don't forget to check out the pertinent images attached to every post
Thanks John and Gary
"A 107-year old man from Sarasota offered a simple piece of guidance for those searching for a source of hope during the coronavirus pandemic: “Look at each other."
Joe Newman survived several crises during his century-plus time on earth, including the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and the Great Depression.
“You might say we’re all cripples in this thing and we all need a crutch,” Newman said. “You have to be my crutch. I have to be yours. It’s been that way through every crisis we’ve had and then we find that’s what got us through.” [h/t to Ierotheos]
|
"International cooperation is needed also for effective quarantine measures. Quarantine and lock-down are essential for stopping the spread of epidemics. But when countries distrust one another and each country feels that it is on its own, governments hesitate to take such drastic measures. If you discover 100 coronavirus cases in your country, would you immediately lock down entire cities and regions? To a large extent, that depends on what you expect from other countries. Locking down your own cities could lead to economic collapse. If you think that other countries will then come to your help – you will be more likely to adopt this drastic measure. But if you think that other countries will abandon you, you would probably hesitate until it is too late.
Perhaps the most important thing people should realize about such epidemics, is that the spread of the epidemic in any country endangers the entire human species. This is because viruses evolve. Viruses like the corona originate in animals, such as bats. When they jump to humans, initially the viruses are ill-adapted to their human hosts. While replicating within humans, the viruses occasionally undergo mutations. Most mutations are harmless. But every now and then a mutation makes the virus more infectious or more resistant to the human immune system – and this mutant strain of the virus will then rapidly spread in the human population. Since a single person might host trillions of virus particles that undergo constant replication, every infected person gives the virus trillions of new opportunities to become more adapted to humans. Each human carrier is like a gambling machine that gives the virus trillions of lottery tickets – and the virus needs to draw just one winning ticket in order to thrive."
This is not mere speculation. Richard Preston’s Crisis in the Red Zone describes exactly such a chain of events in the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The outbreak began when some Ebola viruses jumped from a bat to a human. These viruses made people very sick, but they were still adapted to living inside bats more than to the human body. What turned Ebola from a relatively rare disease into a raging epidemic was a single mutation in a single gene in one Ebola virus that infected a single human, somewhere in the Makona area of West Africa. The mutation enabled the mutant Ebola strain – called the Makona strain – to link to the cholesterol transporters of human cells. Now, instead of cholesterol, the transporters were pulling Ebola into the cells. This new Makona strain was four times more infectious to humans.
|
|
"This is the sixth medical brigade Cuba has sent in recent days to combat the spread of the new disease abroad. It has sent contingents to socialist allies Venezuela and Nicaragua as well as Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada.
“We are all afraid but we have a revolutionary duty to fulfill, so we take out fear and put it to one side,” Leonardo Fernandez, 68, an intensive care specialist, told Reuters late on Saturday shortly before his brigade’s departure."
|
"The editor of the Republican Journal complained that in communities affected by the flu “rigorous preventative measures have only been adopted after the disease has obtained a firm grip… [H]ad the proper steps been taken… the number of people stricken might not have been so large.”
On October 9th, the Ogdensburg Board of Health “respectfully urged” people who were recovering from the illness or who were coughing and sneezing to keep away from others. The Board urged that public dances be prohibited, crowded places be avoided and that people refrain from visiting the sick. The following day the Board of Health closed churches, theatres, and dance halls. Other indoor assemblages, including public funerals and Liberty Loan gatherings, were also prohibited. Dr. J.W. Benton stated that only three or four deaths had occurred in Ogdensburg, and there were “half a dozen hospital cases… and that there was nothing alarming in the situation.” Interestingly enough, the Board chose to keep schools open because it believed cases among children were few.
On October 11th Congress voted to fund $1million to the Public Health Service to cope with influenza, but some newspapers continued to downplay the epidemic, dismissing the flu as a “Hun ploy.”
Sales of masks exploded however, and the New York State Department of Health directed Dr. Herman Biggs to take charge of the state’s response to the epidemic. It was made a misdemeanor to sneeze or cough in public without covering your nose, punishable by a $500 fine!
Still, a Liberty Loan Parade was held in Ogdensburg on the same day. This public gathering was advertised next to the obituary of Mrs. Arthur Valley, a young woman who died of influenza as did her husband. (If one did contract the flu, one local druggist sold “Williams Camphorated Mustard Cream” at the bargain price of 30 cents per jar, it promised: “use it in time and avoid pneumonia.”)
By October 15th the “Social and Personal” section of the Republican Journal was filled with news of local citizens who had contracted influenza including at least one local doctor. The U.S. Board of Health issued a bulletin warning people to stay at home if they suspected they were ill and to not take patent medicines. Twelve nurses at Hepburn Hospital fell ill and the hospital asked the Red Cross for assistance. Still, the Public Health Service issued a bulletin stating that “the proportion of deaths in the present epidemic has generally been low.” Presumably this was to keep citizens from panicking.
Louisa Madill, wife of Dr. Grant Madill, noted on October 13th that “For the first time in the history of Ogdensburg no church bells rang today-all closed on account of influenza.” The following day she helped make masks at the Red Cross Canteen. She was appointed chair of the Red Cross Canteen, which set up at the Strand Theatre and worked with other women to prepare for the sick. Throughout her diary during this period however, she remained focused on the progress of the war in Europe. “Reports from Europe [are] very encouraging,” she wrote, “but you cannot trust Germany.”
|
| When the Stanley Cup Final Was Canceled Because of a Pandemic In 1919, a second wave of cases of the previous year’s flu lead to the sudden death of the hockey championship [h/t to Ken Petersen] |
"The White House, under the guise of its coronavirus response, is quietly advancing policies that President Trump has long advocated, from tougher border controls to an assault on organized labor to the stonewalling of congressional oversight.
And across the government, departments have been citing the “whole of government” response to the pandemic as they push through the same policies they sought before the crisis. Just this week during a coronavirus briefing, Mr. Trump said his administration would use authority granted to the surgeon general to immediately turn away those who crossed the border illegally.
At the Agriculture Department, officials said they were teaming up with companies like PepsiCo to quickly deliver food boxes to students in rural areas, although Congress has repeatedly rejected the Trump administration’s push for such meals, arguing that they contained low-quality food without healthy alternatives.
