Replies to post #366560 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

You can more accurately blame WWI and the concentration and transfer of troops from camps to trenches and back again.

And Wilson was the president who can take some blame. Look at the word he and Trump share in common

Before Trump, another US president downplayed a pandemic and was infected

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-07/why-coronavirus-keeps-being-compared-to-the-1918-spanish-flu/12016782

By Faith Karimi, CNN

Updated 6:01 AM ET, Sat October 3, 2020
See how world leaders reacted to Trump's coronavirus diagnosis

(CNN)A century ago, a new respiratory virus gripped the country at the height of World War I. It started among American troops and exploded into a flu pandemic that killed 675,000 people in the US.

Like the coronavirus, the fast-spreading 1918 flu disrupted life in unprecedented ways. It overwhelmed health care systems, cleared public spaces, and shuttered workplaces and social events.
Like President Donald Trump, President Woodrow Wilson's administration downplayed the pandemic.

And like Trump, who announced early Friday that he has coronavirus, Wilson also got infected. So did some of their closest aides and staff members.

"Wilson never made a public statement about the pandemic. Never," said John M. Barry, author of "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History."

"So to keep morale up during the war, the government lied," Barry added, in an interview with CNN. "National public health leaders said things like, 'This is ordinary influenza by another name.' They tried to minimize it. As a result, more people died than would have otherwise."

Woodrow Wilson, who served as President from 1913 to 1921.

Wilson already had one domestic crisis -- a world war -- to worry about, making the pandemic an afterthought.

"He had an OCD personality and he focused intensely on the war, period," Barry said. "Nothing distracted him."

But Howard Markel, a physician and medical historian at the University of Michigan, disagrees that Wilson downplayed the pandemic. The federal government was so small in that era, he said, it had a limited role in public health.

At the time, there were no federal health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institutes of Health. The government's role was limited to war, collecting taxes, and making federal law, Markel told CNN. Local governments played a key role in health issues.

Wilson's administration kept his illness a secret

Trump's Covid-19 diagnosis is an extraordinary development a month before a presidential election. He has dismissed experts' guidance on wearing masks and holding socially distanced events even as the virus has killed more than 208,000 people nationwide. At age 74 and obese, he falls into a high-risk category for serious complications from the disease.

Wilson was not exactly a picture of health when he got the flu at age 63. Before his illness, he'd suffered several health problems, including asthma and a stroke. He got the flu in 1919 while in Paris, where he spent several months negotiating the peace treaty after the war.

Wilson became ill and coughed so severely his doctor initially thought he'd been poisoned in an assassination attempt. He started having hallucinations that he was surrounded by spies. But his administration kept his illness a secret. There were no televisions and no social media back then so it did not take much effort.

"He thought the French were spying on him. He also believed he was personally responsible for things like all the furniture (in his room)," Barry said. "If he weren't President, deathly ill in the middle of the peace conference, it might have been funny."

After his recovery and return to the US, Wilson went on a national tour to drum up support for his peace treaty. He suffered a stroke later that year and died in 1924.

The 1918 flu mostly killed young people

While last century's pandemic -- it was often called the "Spanish flu," even though it didn't originate in Spain -- had some similarities to the coronavirus, there were some differences.
With the flu, people had horrific symptoms like bleeding from the nose, mouth, eyes and ears. The 1918 virus also mostly killed the young, which left researchers puzzled. The mortality rate was especially high in people between ages 20-40 and in children under 5.

"Roughly two-thirds of the deaths were age 18-50, and the peak age for death was 28," Barry said. "Soldiers were, of course, in the age group that was the prime target. The US military training camps obviously had high mortality."

Fear swept over the nation as people started turning on one another.

"Because they could not trust what they were being told, real terror gripped some people, so much so that society itself began to fray and it became everyone for himself," Barry added. "That's different from most disasters, when people come together to help each other."

Masks were an issue then, too

This will sound familiar. In 1918, public health authorities strongly recommended that people wear face masks to stop the spread of the virus. They also issued social distancing guidelines and urged people to practice proper hygiene.
But back then, Americans who did not wear masks were not making a political statement.

"Lots of people grumbled about wearing masks, or even refused to do so, but they weren't doing so because of a political stance or partisan allegiance," said Alexander Navarro, assistant director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

With the country at war, wearing masks was seen as patriotic. People who didn't wear them were shamed in public service announcements and news headlines for their defiance.

"Lots of elected officials as well as public health officers were telling people to wear masks as part of their civic duty," Navarro told CNN. "They were trying to tap into this idea that if you couldn't be over there fighting alongside our boys overseas, you could be doing your part here on the home front."

The flu faded in 1920 after killing more than 50 million people worldwide. There has been no flu as lethal before or since.

[fuagf]

So to you half a million is peanuts. eh. Not serious. Are you saying 675,000 American deaths would be your number.

Compare the flu pandemic of 1918 and COVID-19 with caution – the past is not a prediction

June 4, 2020 10.30pm AEST

[...]

Medical historians conservatively estimate that influenza killed 50 million people globally, with 675,000 in the United States between 1918 and 1920. After that, this strain of flu receded, likely due to changes in the virus itself and the fact that most people had already been exposed and developed immunity or died.

[...]

One virus’s pattern is not a prediction

People seek answers from the experiences of influenza in 1918-19 for a fundamental reason: It ended.

History shows the pandemic ebbed after a final, third wave in spring 1919 without the benefit of an influenza vaccine (available only in the mid-1940s) or a molecular or serologic test, or effective antiviral therapy, or even the support of mechanical ventilation.


The earlier pandemic does hold lessons for the current one, including the value of wearing masks to
stop the virus’s spread. Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Today we’re living through a novel pandemic. By and large, people are actively collaborating in unprecedented measures to disrupt transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Scanning the historical record is one way to draw our own lives into focus and perspective. Unfortunately, the end of influenza in summer 1919 does not portend the end of COVID-19 in the summer of 2020.

The pandemic’s scientific complexities are formidable challenges. They’re playing out in a global economy that has ground to a halt, with resultant increasing pressures to reopen communities, and a technologically advanced and interconnected society – all issues that our predecessors a century ago did not have to consider.

https://theconversation.com/compare-the-flu-pandemic-of-1918-and-covid-19-with-caution-the-past-is-not-a-prediction-138895

Do you need 675,000 American deaths before you accept the virus is an unintentional and serious
problem. Even with the mitigation measures being introduced. You really need it that high?

[SoxFan]

Well it only killed 675,000 in the US and you said the virus wasn't the most dangerous in "this country" not the world. Of course that was over two years and ours just is over a year.

Oh and it should be called the Kansas Flu or the American Flu and not the Spanish Flu as it started in Kansas

[DragonBear]

The spanish flu killed 50 million people in 1918.

Can you really blame that on President Harding?

Typical of your posts, a deflection into meaningless nonsense.

Harding succeeded Wilson 04-Mar-1921. The Spanish flu started March 1918. It ended in the Spring of 1920. Long before Harding assumed office.

Trumpy succeeded Obama Jan 2016. The first US cases occurred in Jan 2020. Long after Obama left office.

So your question about Harding is random with little context to reality.