Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
One hundred years have passed since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 swept around the world, circumnavigating at least twice between 1918 and 1920, killing outright between 50 and 100 million human beings. The pandemic was so shattering, so pervasive that more accurate numbers of the dead cannot be calculated. Those who lived in developed countries like the United States fared little better than those in less developed nations — once the influenza struck, the victim either recovered after a week of unpleasant flu symptoms or died rapidly, sometimes within hours., with lungs filled with fluids and blood. Influenza, caused by a virus, usually kills the very young, the weak and the very old. But the 1918 Flu, sometimes called “the Spanish Flu”, seemed to preferentially kill young, strong, otherwise healthy men and women in their 20’s, a demographic that normally fared well with only mild symptoms in other flu seasons.
An oddity about the 1918 Flu Pandemic is the fact that despite its horrendous toll, it usually warrants only a paragraph or so in most history books and is often mentioned as if it were part of or an outcome of the First World War. Only at the end of the 20th century, with the threat of avian flu prominent in the daily news, have the details been brought into our public consciousness. PBS did a special titled Influenza 1918 as part of their American Experience series in 1998. Gina Kolata, science journalist with the New York Times, wrote FLU: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 in 1999. John Barry, you who recently wrote the story of the Great Flood of 1927, wrote The Great Influenza in 2004.
In the news, just a week ago:
Dad rages after 4-year-old daughter dies of flu complications
Sonja Haller, Feb. 11, 2019
A Texas father is mad. His 4-year-old daughter, Ashanti Grinage, developed a high fever on Jan. 29. She was taken to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with the flu and sent home with medicine, according to father Martel Grinage.
Two days later, she died. Grinage told Dallas news outlet WFAA that doctors failed to diagnose his daughter’s persistent cough as pneumonia.
“On Tuesday when she went to the doctor, she had pneumonia, and we didn’t know,” he said.
The Garland, Texas, family said their 4-year-old didn’t receive a flu shot. Her death came amid a flu season that hasn’t seemed as urgent as last year’s because there have been fewer deaths. Last year, flu complications claimed the lives of 180 children, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The latest CDC weekly report shows that 28 children have died this flu season.
But New York City and 24 states, such as Colorado, Indiana and Virginia, are reporting “high” activity. Flu outbreaks are responsible for closing schools in at least four states.
Influenza sweeps around the world every year — sometimes the prevalent strain of flu is mild and sometimes not. Virologists (doctors and biologists that specialize in viruses), especially those in public health agencies, are, to put it mildly, terrified of influenza. Not terrified of our unpleasant but comparatively mild flus, but terrified that one of these years a flu virus will mutate once more into a 1918-type flu — easily contagious via the air, causing a rapid onset of serious breakdown of the body’s defenses and fatal in a significant percent of the population.
Pediatric deaths are common, but the numbers are not very high, around 100 per flu season for the United States — 2017-2018 saw almost double that at 185. This number is very close to the number of annual child deaths involving bicycles. We see that so far, in this season, the number of pediatric deaths remains low but may yet have to peak.
Among adults, flu deaths reach up to ten percent of ALL weekly deaths as in two recent years in the United States:
How Many Deaths?:
There were 675,000 deaths in the US in the 1918 pandemic, not counting the number of US soldiers fighting in Europe that died of the flu — there “It ultimately killed more American military personnel than did enemy machine guns and artillery”. US Eastern cities like Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia had to use mass burials to handle the corpse burden. Not only soldiers and civilians died; doctors, nurses and flu researchers died as well.
In 2017-2018, the last flu season, 49 million Americans became sick with the flu, almost a million of those requiring hospitalization and 79,000 Americans died of flu and its complications.
What we don’t see in this graphic is the panic that spread through the international public health sector in 2009….
World now at the start of 2009 influenza pandemic
Dr Margaret Chan — Director-General of the World Health Organization
[Excerpts from her Statement to the press]
11 June 2009
In late April, WHO announced the emergence of a novel influenza A virus.
This particular H1N1 strain has not circulated previously in humans. The virus is entirely new.
The virus is contagious, spreading easily from one person to another, and from one country to another. As of today, nearly 30,000 confirmed cases have been reported in 74 countries.
We are in the earliest days of the pandemic. The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch.
No previous pandemic has been detected so early or watched so closely, in real-time, right at the very beginning. The world can now reap the benefits of investments, over the last five years, in pandemic preparedness.
We have a head start. This places us in a strong position. But it also creates a demand for advice and reassurance in the midst of limited data and considerable scientific uncertainty.
Most cases of severe and fatal infections have been in adults between the ages of 30 and 50 years.
At the same time, it is important to note that around one third to half of the severe and fatal infections are occurring in previously healthy young and middle-aged people.
The public health community was put on high alert — here we had a flu that sounded very much like the 1918 flu: highly contagious (spreading easily from one person to another), and spreading from nation to nation. An entirely new, never-seen-before H1N1 flu strain. And ominously, “one third to half of the severe and fatal infections are occurring in previously healthy young and middle-aged people” — just like the 1918 Spanish Flu. The 2009-2010 flu season started earlier in the year than in other seasons:
Thoroughly terrified, the World Health Organization and national public health bodies felt they were ready. And, as it turned out, the world was spared another disaster — only a comparatively very low 2,195 deaths were reported in the United States for the 2009-2010 flu season. The somber tone in the press release from the director of WHO informs us just how serious the situation could have been.
Public Health had learned a hard lesson from the panic in the United States which stemmed from an incident at Fort Dix, New Jersey. An Army private, young, hale and hearty, suddenly fell ill with flu symptoms in February 1976. The soldier reported for sick call, and returned to bed. By evening, he felt a bit better and decided to join his unit for a five mile hike. Halfway through the hike he was stumbling and was returned to the base hospital, where he died hours later. Army doctors were shocked, shaken, and at once recognized the similarity in pattern to the 1918 eruption of flu among army recruits: Healthy young men with a brief flu-like illness that leads to death in 24 to 48 hours.
When even more soldiers at Fort Dix became ill with flu-symptoms, the Army doctors and the CDC called secret meetings of health officials from all over the US to decide on a course of action for “the swine flu”. Panicked, health officials realized that a return of the 1918 flu was possibly beginning; they convinced then-President Gerald Ford to authorize a national program to immunize every American with federal funding for the program and for the federal government to offer indemnity to vaccine manufacturers against possible future law suits. Once the program spun up and was running, many of the officials that had supported the idea had second thoughts, but it was too late to call it off. The vaccine that was produced has been rushed through and had not undergone much testing, there just wasn’t time.
In this rush to prevent another 1918 flu epidemic, the massive vaccination program ran into trouble — several people died of heart attacks shortly after being vaccinated, cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome began to show up coincident with vaccination.
Epidemiologists knew full well that anytime a population-wide vaccination program takes place, be it flu or polio, the sheer number patients guarantees that some of them will have medical issues coincident with vaccination and these may thus look like they were caused by the vaccine itself. A certain percentage of the population will have, on average, a heart attack in any given year, about one tenth of those inevitable heart attacked will take place in the five weeks following vaccination. Lawyers will then weigh in for the kill – which is exactly what happened. The vaccination program was suspended and eventually dropped altogether.
In the present, the CDC (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and vaccine manufacturers guess at which strains of the flu virus will be prevalent in the coming year’s flu season. They then manufacture a vaccine that they think will protect most people from the viruses actually circulating. And of course, the public is encouraged to get their “flu shot”, preferably early enough to be preventative for the season. How does this work out? The CDC says: “…flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.”
[Yes, I have had mine, my wife has had hers — we get them every year now that we are based here in the US — we had lots more vaccinations for life in the Dominican Republic and Northern Caribbean, North Africa, etc. I encourage you to get yours. ]
The Story of 1976 Swine Flu contains some cautionary elements.
What did Dr. Margaret Chan — Director-General of the World Health Organization — say in 2009? “We have a head start. This places us in a strong position. But it also creates a demand for advice and reassurance in the midst of limited data and considerable scientific uncertainty.“
Laurence Gostin in his article At Law: Swine Flu Vaccine: What Is Fair? [doi: 10.1353/hcr.0.0184 ] writes that “…the swine flu affair fails to tell us whether, in the face of scientific uncertainty, it is better to err on the side of caution or aggressive intervention.”
In the case of the 1976 Swine Flu episode, President Ford, acting on the advice from the country’s best medical advisors, authorized dramatic action — aggressive intervention, in the form of a national immunization campaign — which turned out badly. Many of the advisors that had originally convinced President Ford to act almost immediately had second thoughts, long before the adverse effects started to turn up. Historians have been critical of Ford but the blame stems from the difficulty of decision making under deep uncertainty.
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Each of us has to face these types of decision many times in our lives. We are faced with the possibility of a serious threat — but we don’t have enough information to make a decision or the information we do have is very uncertain — yet we still have to make a decision. Should we “Do nothing and wait and see”? Should we rush to make big and consequential changes to protect against the possibility of the threat?
Today national leaders are confronted with this choice in the Climate Change arena. The public, continuously bombarded with scare stories about the possible future effects of climate change, demand action or at least reassurance. Politicians and policy makers demand expert advice. There are voices calling for immediate, drastic action. Others are calling for caution and a more nuanced “no regrets” approach. All base their demands on the same set of highly uncertain scientific knowledge. Many of our best scientists are involved in political advocacy for various approaches, which advocacy erodes the public’s confidence in their advice.
Yet any climate decision will necessarily be based on currently available but highly uncertain scientific knowledge. That’s all we have. Our historical data is vague with huge uncertainty bars and present day data from one field often seems in direct contradiction to data from another field. Journal papers written by scientists at NASA, published in the same week, have reported mutually exclusive results on Antarctic ice. [ see here, paragraph beginning “As for Antarctica?”] Climate models produce chaotic, wildly varying results even when initiated with very-near-identical parameters, yet are claimed to accurately predict the average climate of specific cities 60 years into the future. Every week, it seems, there are new papers describing new understandings about aspects of the Earth’s climate adding to both to our knowledge base and discovering new questions that need answering, giving us a better understanding of how much we still don’t know. There are political activists pushing for, demanding, solutions which are not only impossible, but for which even making the attempt to achieve them will certainly cause serious damage to human society and its infrastructure.
Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty has become a standalone subject and now even has its own learned society.
We live in interesting times. It is this author’s hope that governments and policy makers will resist the urge to make society-destroying decisions in their rush to solve a problem which is not yet well understood.
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Author’s Comment Policy:
Taking a look at the history of influenza pandemics reveals what the scope of a real existential threat looks like — it looks like the 1918 Influenza Pandemic or worse. In today’s more crowded world, a high-mortality flu would kill far more than the 1918-1920 record of up to 100 million.
There have been weather related disasters in the last 100 years — in 1970, The Bhola Cyclone hit Bangladesh and took an estimated 500,000 lives, “primarily as a result of the storm surge that flooded much of the low-lying islands of the Ganges Delta.” The weather and geography conspired together to create the deadliest natural disasters of modern time. Political disasters have killed far more, but none in such a short time.
Climate policies will necessarily be set while we are still highly uncertain about the causes and effects of climate across time.
There are some opinions in this essay, which are mine and mine alone. Addressing your comment to “Kip…” will bring it to my attention and I’ll try to answer your questions or supply missing data.
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Another difference between now and the world of 1918 is the amount of high speed international travel.
The ability to get from New York to Paris in just a couple of hours did not exist in 1918.
Kip
Did the Spanish Flu cause global cooling?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/02/america-colonisation-cooled-earths-climate/
Clyde ==> Don’t know — check your favorite temperature series for the 1920-1921 period. Let us know?
(Yes, I don’t think that paper is robust…)
Kip
Just for the record, both the average low and high were increasing during the immediate post-flu period and the difference was essentially flat. “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/11/an-analysis-of-best-data-for-the-question-is-earth-warming-or-cooling/
Clyde ==> Thanks!
Yeah… so this study shows (at least in mice) that vaccinating for one type of flu can make you more vulnerable to other types of flu… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440239
wrnsay ==> The current CDC recommendation for children is “Children younger than 5 years of age –especially those younger than 2 years old– are at high risk of serious flu-related complications. A flu vaccine offers the best defense against getting flu and spreading it to others. “
During my career I have spent a lot more time than I ever imagined around epidemiologists and virologists (I am a marine fishery biologist). Most of our discussions related to arthropod vectored diseases primarily mosquito vectored diseases which sicken millions and kills hundreds of thousands each year in the world. Well before any discussions on AGW and “emerging new diseases” they were concern with the spread of “old” diseases primarily due to rapid modern travel AND illegal immigration. After all malaria, dengue, yellow fever, etc, all have been common diseases in the USA since before the country’s founding until relatively recently. However, what literally scared the heck out of these experts was the flu. This was about the same time the anti-vaccine crowd was developing. That scared them even more. We have the technologies to at least mitigate the spread of arthropod vectored diseases but they only real tool for the flu is an annual vaccine. If you understand how vaccines actually function in preventing the spread of disease what percentage of a population which is vaccinate makes a big difference. The flu virus that scared them the most was any H1N1, strain.
Edwin ==> Thanks for the insight from a professional. And, yes, virologists are terrified of the flu — H1N1 the most.
Better to spend $trillions on “fighting climate change” and embarking on “green new deals” to fight imaginary future global threats, than to spend that money of more pragmatic currently-known global issues like, oh, trying to prevent another 19818-like influenza pandemic.
That’s not my thinking . . . but anyone with an IQ above room temperature (Fahrenheit scale) knows who’s fronting it today.
1918, not 19818, of course. My fumble fingers, and re-reading too quickly before posting.
Gordon ==> Climate Pragmatism calls for handling such things as profound poverty, lack of basic health care, basic electrification, basic schools — all before embarking on decarbonization.
Kip..
Some random thoughts about the 1918 Spanish flu, its deaths and the relatively recent H1N1 2009 flu epidemic which was alarming yet not as devastating world wide. Years after the 1918 epidemic, cultures of lung fluids kept from that time and analyzed with new bacterial growing techniques identified a bacteria then named Hemophylis influenza (H flu). Hemophylis because it caused hemolysis (lysing red blood cell walls) of blood auger culture plates and influenza because it came from the lungs of people who died of pneumonia. Today, because of the devastating impact of H flu causing meningitis in infants, a vaccine was developed and now provided to most infants. A treatment for H flu, Ampicillin has been broadly available in the armamentarium of the medical world as well. Today, large numbers of infants world wide have received the H flu vaccine along with one of the first vaccines (1938) of pertussis (Whooping cough which prior to the vaccine killed 7,000 children and impaired for life 225,000 children every year in the US).
A possible reason for the failure of the influenza epidemic in 2009 not causing such devastation vs 1918, may be the combination of implementation of wide spread H flu vaccination and a specific anti-bacterial agent. A conjecture to be sure: the Spanish flu of 1918 may be a predisposing precursor to H flu pneumonia via antigen/antibody initiation. Prior to 1900, the mean age of survival in the US was somewhere around age 45 yo. A lot of infants died in their first 5 years of life possibly from H flu. Because of persistent respiratory colonization with H flu, when the individual acquired H1N1 in 1918, there was an overwhelming impact; ie, the so called: cytokine storm.
Vaccines do save lives far beyond the numbers reported today.
RiHo08 ==> Thanks for your cogent input.
“… in 1970, The Bhola Cyclone hit Bangladesh and took an estimated 500,000 lives”
Imagine the calls for action to influence the global climate if that were to happen today. Or next year. Such disasters need to be commemorated lest they be forgotten.
The cause of death in most of the flu cases in 1918 were actually due to bacterial pneumonia. There were no antibiotics in 1918.
Read one theory where experimental meningitis vaccines may be behind the outbreak at Fort Dix and subsequently the world as soldiers were then sent to Europe via East Coast cities. No proof beyond the fact flu usually kills the elderly and very young, not healthy adults in their prime, and bacterial infections found in the lungs of the dead that were autopsied
Pft ==> The 1918 Influenza Pandemic has been very closely studies, time lines carefully built, evidence examined. It is very unlikely that there is some hidden cause or that any of these conspiracy-like theories hold any water.
I give links to two very exhaustive books on the subject in the first couple of paragraphs. Gina Kolata’s book is shorter and a quick, if somewhat dry, read. Barry’s book is longer and even more exhaustive.
What I heard had flu doctors really scared is they took a low pathogenic version of H7N9 and gave it two tweeks to give it features from two other circulating versions that they believed would make it more transmissable and then gave the result to caged ferrets. They then placed those ferrets in the vicinity of unaffected animals. The ferrets got sick and passed the virus on to all of the new ferrets and all of the ferrets in the test died. So contrary to belief, the virus doesn’t automatically get less deadly as it turns into a pandemic version. It can get even more so.
They immediately stopped the research. Partly because there could have been an accident and partly because they were documenting the mother of all weapons.
What has them baffled is why a virus that can make all the necessary mutations in one strain, hasn’t.
How do you prepare for that? The same as you should for CAGW. Have a radical plan of action you’d never implement until the worst was already starting. The reason is that people won’t do what is necessary until they are convinced the hazard is a greater pain than the solution. And of course it may never happen.
Tiny ==> Who would have thought that ferrets would be lab animals for research, yet it is true. Ferrets turned out to be very good at getting the flu, human strains of the flu. They were rather nasty to work with though, according to contemporary reports, all those sharp little teeth.
When syphilis first showed up in Europe, in the late 1490s, it was much more virulent than currently. It was probably too effective. It seems to have become less virulent, even becoming dormant for years before killing the host.
About 20 years ago I had a flu. Could barely stand up.
I lived, but at the time I wasn’t sure about it. Haven’t missed the shot since.
About then we went to a clinic. They scheduled a morning and there were lines.
About 5 years ago, most of the vaccine was going to pharmacies and clinics did not have much.
If someone thinks they might have a reaction, I’d suggest going to a clinic. Then sit in the lobby and wait a half hour. I don’t even get a sore spot. My wife, on blood thinner, does. No big deal.
But get the shot. You really do not want flu.
John. Just this morning recovered from the most serious flu illness I have ever experienced. At one point I was beginning to think I may not make it. A couple of days into the illness I was thinking maybe I should have got the flu vaccine like my wife does. About that time she got the flu too. Her son got the vaccine and the flu too. He is living with us now. I was forced to get a flu shot for ten years while a member of the USAF. The shot always made me ill for a couple of days. We were always given the shot before a three day weekend. I have not taken the shot since 1980. My wife and her son conditions were no better than mine. So now I’m still no sure about the vaccine.
James Francisco ==> “The CDC says: “…flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.”
So, it improves one’s chances not getting the flu — if vaccinated, you’ve got a coin tosses chance of not getting it. If you also get the pneumonia booster, then you chance of getting mortally ill from this year’s flu is reduced by a lot more.
If you can get FREE flu shots (health insurance pays) then your cost/benefit ratio looks pretty good — especially when, like me, one is older and the downside can be death.
Kip …. and all u other people …. if you want to maximize your resistance to the flu … 1) get a flu shot (number needed to treat NNT = 40), …. 2) take 4-5000 units Vit D (NNT =33; actually better than the flu shot); …. 3) take Elderberry Extract when in crowds and immediately if you feel you’ve been exposed to the flu (proven to antagonize flu binding to cells, thus preventing infection).
You do those three things …. you won’t get the flu.
James F.,
I sense at least two issues.
The flu vaccine can cause symptoms , but cannot cause the flu.
If you get ill “always” there is no reason, other than bad luck, that others should respond in the same manner (maybe twins?).
If the three of you got the flu, the batch of vaccine in your area may have been poor — don’t suspect that’s possible.
One of you picked this up. What happened next? Nursing homes and the like would have been in “lock-down” and visitors restricted. Those on site would use hand sanitizer quickly and often, and wear masks of high quality (say, N-95). Living in the same house and not doing such things would assure you of passing the virus around.
Anyway, the two of us have had the shot for 20 years and have been flu-free.
Better luck in 2019.
We suspect we picked up the virus in a local bar. All three of us were there a couple of days before. A friend playing for the band that night became very ill too. He said several people there became ill too. We drank two small pitchers of beer. My three cousins setting across our table didn’t have any problems. I guess I will get the shot from now on. Thanks John.
James, how long before you showed symptoms of the flu did your wife and her son get the vaccination? There is an incubation period before the symptoms appear, plus a lag time after the vaccination before it reaches any degree of effectiveness. It could very easily be that you were both exposed to the illness before the vaccinations.
She said at least a couple of months ago
The flu vaccine doesn’t immunize against all strains of flu, just the strains that they believe will be the most likely to appear.
James, the think to remember is that the flu vaccine is a bit of a guessing game. They have no way of knowing in advance which strains of flu will be going around. They look overseas to see what strain have been active there in guessing as to which ones are likely to be active here. Each vaccine is formulated to target three or four of the “most likely to circulate” strains each year, but there are many more stains out there. Unfortunately, it seem that your family happened to catch one of the ones that the vaccine didn’t target this year.
I find the first graph comparing 1918 and 2018 mortality by age group quite astonishing. It appears that for those aged 65 and up, the chance of dying is today is the same as it would have been in 1918, and this despite the availability of a flu vaccine said to be more effective than usual.
You might find it interesting to learn that the government of Quebec, which in prior years provided the flu vaccine gratis for those 65 and older, decided this year to deny it to those under 75, unless they have certain qualifying chronic illnesses . It would be most interesting to learn whether this turns out to be a cost-cutting measure in more ways than one.
otropogo ==> The first graph, with the “W” shape for 1918 compares 1918 with the ten previous years – 1911-1917 — not the present.
The characteristic shape of the death by age remains the same, 100 years later — very young, very old, and the weak. 2009 was an exception again — men and women, strong and healthy, in their 20s once again were taken, but the numbers of dead were smaller than normal.
Kip – My Grandmother nursed the sick in the 1918 Black or Spanish flu epidemic with its thrice-weekly “Dead Trains ” to mass graves outside Auckland City, NZ. My books inform me the last German offensive before the British broke through to open country past Cambrai in 1918, were accompanied by high rates of Flu in the ranks. We remember later epidemics like the Asian one after WW2, ’50-s-60s.
In Dec. 1998 I got the Sydney A Strain and came within an ace of dying. My heart was badly damaged, lost 55% of pumping function, widespread damage. Studying Aplied Plant Science and Pathology at the time: I looked into this and found that it was the cytokine storm, virally-induced, that does the real damage. “A” or Wild Strains are indeed worst at killing, but the disease stops there, so weaker “B” strains that evolve are better vectors. Sure do not miss a flu shot now, but they weren’t available in December for my one. Nor would I have had one, having forgotten the lesson of history, as we do….. Cheers and Thanks, from Brett
Brett Keane ==> Thanks for sharing your flu story. Glad you’re still with us and able to give good advice — get your flu shots!
I didn’t realize the 1918 flu hit New Zealand so hard. Those wanting more details on the New Zealand 1918 Pandemic can see it here.
…..President Ford was pushed by health experts….
As I understand it many of the deaths were caused by overdosing with aspirin:
The high case-fatality rate—especially among young adults—during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Although late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia, early deaths exhibited extremely “wet,” sometimes hemorrhagic lungs. The hypothesis presented herein is that aspirin contributed to the incidence and severity of viral pathology, bacterial infection, and death, because physicians of the day were unaware that the regimens (8.0–31.2 g per day) produce levels associated with hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in 33% and 3% of recipients, respectively. Recently, pulmonary edema was found at autopsy in 46% of 26 salicylate-intoxicated adults. Experimentally, salicylates increase lung fluid and protein levels and impair mucociliary clearance. In 1918, the US Surgeon General, the US Navy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended use of aspirin just before the October death spike. If these recommendations were followed, and if pulmonary edema occurred in 3% of persons, a significant proportion of the deaths may be attributable to aspirin.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/49/9/1405/301441
Rexx ==> The paper you link only makes a case for the plausibility that aspirin treatment lead to some of the 1918 flu deaths and concludes:
“To determine the proportion of virus-induced pathology, subsequent bacterial infection, and overall 1918 pandemic mortality attributable to salicylate, experimental models and analysis of primary consecutive individual treatment and pathology records are needed. Prospectively, aspirin should be investigated in countries where aspirin is used for influenza.”
The idea may be sound, but the paper itself notes that aspirin treatment was not the norm, but rather was new and not common. Further, the 1918 strain of influenza was massively mortal everywhere — in tiny Alaskan outposts, major American cities, the wilds of New Zealand, the depths of Siberia — places where new (and at the time exotic) drugs were unknown and therefore unused.
It might be possible to test the idea — the Army possibly kept treatment records for soldiers in its hospitals. But people dropping dead on the streets of America in 1918 were very unlikely to have taken too much aspirin — or even to know what it was.
The interesting thing is that research goes on even 100 years later.
Thanks for the fascinating read on a topic that deserves more discussion, both the 1918 flu and decision making conundrums. My grandparents’ generation was devastated by the flu. Both my grandfathers lost sisters, a great uncle lost his fiancée and had to marry someone else, friends died… all were in their 20s. Too many people today don’t realize the devastation that diseases caused just a couple generations ago. People lost children to whooping cough and diphtheria and Scarlett fever, people contracted polio. My aunt, now 91, contracted polio as a young woman.
Nothing is certain, and diseases have a way of fighting back, but vaccines are a blessing. It dumbfounds me that people don’t vaccinate their children.
Janelle Allemandi ==> Thanks for sharing your family’s story — your experience is common but often simply not talked about. And you are so right about the diseases of yesteryear not being in the public’s consciousness….and the silliness for refusal to have children vaccinated.
I was 20 in 1976 when everyone was encouraged tjo get the swine flu vaccine. Years later, my father recalled getting the vaccine at a local high school . Patients stood in line and waited their turn. He insisted he recalled the reusing needles to administer it. That was also the year AIDs began to spread widely.
Reggie ==> Your father is probably remember the Jet Injector — which was used in 1976 during the mass vaccination program against smallpox. The actually don’t have a needle but shoot a high pressure jet of the vaccination liquid into the skin of the patient.
According to a story I read an autopsy on the remains of one of the victims of the 1918 pandemic which was preserved by the Greenland/Iceland permafrost showed that it was bird flue!
Ross ==> A man named Johan Hultin went to Alaska to dig up 1918 flu victim corpses, which had been buried and remained in permafrost, to get samples of their lung tissue in 1951. The 1918 flue was an H1N1 virus, and so are some bird flu and some swine flu.
Question: Is it not possible that overly focusing on the 1918 Flu strain distracts from the issue of why that certain Flu strain took people who normally didn’t succumb to the Flu in general? Isn’t it as likely that so many healthy people died because during their lifetime that NO significant Flu occurred previously while they were “young” to prep their immune systems on an annual basis?
The native Americans were decimated by Small Pox and other diseases brought by the Europeans. These diseases were not a part of the historical experience of Western Hemisphere up to that time and therefore there was no immunity developed by the native Americans. In other words, the surviving Europeans were carriers that reintroduced diseases to re-create immunity in the next generation by their very infectious presence. Hence, the very young would experience a high mortality rate due to a lack of personal historical exposure and very old would be killed off due to the state of general poor health (worn out body defenses) by the time they got old.
Like everything else we experience in life, it is the constant assault, the struggle that preps us for success/survival. Use it or lose it.
dscott ==> The answer to the question is “Yes, it is reasonable’ but that was not the cause of the high mortality — virologists know now exactly what flu strain caused the 1918 Pandemic — they obtained samples, in 1951, from the frozen lungs of victims in the Arctic buried in permafrost– and they pray that it does not recur.
The viruses that cause flu mutate very rapidly and present the medical world with new strains almost every year — there are a lot of strains out in the worlds floating around, hiding in animal populations and in human populations.
In 2009, the new flu strain that popped up had WHO and other public health bodies very worried, as it was an H1N1 type, it struck middle aged people hardest — it just looked so much like the 1918 strain — but it fizzled.
In the 1918 Pandemic in the US, there were two waves in the general population. Those who had been sick but survived the first wave were immune when the second wave hit.
The portion of the article about modern prevention does not address promoting a high-level of immune function, something you need whether you go the vaccine route or not. Those of us who follow these topics closely address immune system health by promoting optimal vitamin D levels, ideally through brief exposure to mid-day high-angle sun, or by supplementation along with D’s co-factors, Vitamin A, K2 and magnesium, high-doses of Vitamin C, adding liposomal C as symptoms are coming on, and ensuring optimal digestive (micro-biome) health, as well as more exotic things.
Regarding vaccine injuries, I am not a parent so I haven’t studied this topic closely, however from what I know of it, I think your portrayal is very unfair. My understanding of vaccine injuries is that they involve catastrophic (often permanent) loss of function and are not things that could be easily confused with something else. It would be interesting to know if such events ever happen in un-vaccinated children, but I am not aware of any studies looking at this, and vaccine injuries are apparently not reported in a well-organized, reliable way, so the answer seem to be that we really don’t know. It’s not a risk I would take except to vaccinate against a deadly and likely threat.
Regarding vaccination overall, if someone is aware of good long-term studies (long-term being 10-15 years) that compare maximally vaccinated, minimally vaccinated and un-vaccinated equivalent populations against all health parameters, especially auto-immune issues, I would love to hear about it. That is what it would take to begin to establish safety and generate a proper risk/reward profile. The potential for long-term auto-immune issues seems, from my understanding, to far outweigh the marginal -at-best benefit from the flu vaccination, especially when the immune-strengthening items I mentioned above are added (something the CDC’s statistics are not corrected for.)
Those interested in this topic should seek out the recent book or podcasts by Dr. Thomas Cowen on the topic of how the immune system, herd immunity, and vaccinations actually work, and the potential long-term risks involved.
Superchunk ==> Readers should be advised that Dr. Cowan’s medical licensed was revoked, with the revocation stayed on the conditions of lots of retraining. He is on probation as a doctor. This action was taken by the Medical Boards of California in the spring of 2017.
1976 was the last time I had a flu shot. It must have worked well cause I’m still alive. The flu vaccines are a fraud because they will never know long enough in advance to actually manufacture and distribute the vaccines in time to prevent an outbreak. Faith in government sponsored solutions is a mistake. The next outbreak will most likely be genetically engineered to sail through the herd immunity.
Fred, they’re not a fraud, they’re an educated guess. They look at what strains are going around elsewhere in the world and, based on that information, make their best guess as to which ones will be active over here when flu season hits. Sometimes they get it spot on, other times not so much.
Looking at the 2009-2010 flu graph, I would love to see a line where broad immunization program was underway. Without immunizations, would that early slope have continued its rapid climb?