THE GREAT INFLUENZA The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

Good morning, Blog Buds!
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I know there's a lot of controversy over the Flu Shot these days.  I totally get what the opponents say against it, BUT as a history buff I can't help but think of the alternative.
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World War I is frequently overlooked in history class.  And when we do study it, this war which was called 'The War to End All Wars' overshadows another extreme event of the time.
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The 1918 Flu Pandemic.
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Personally, I believe it is burned into our collective subconscious, however, and that is why Zombie
movies are so popular.
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The year was 1918 and medicine was progressing as rapidly as other sciences of the time.  Doctors had  finally learned to wash their hands, thank God, and most accepted that diseases were caused by germs. 
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This book gives you a very thorough study on the doctors and the medical science which raced and struggled to contain this deadly pandemic while people literally died in the streets around them, just like in the movies.  A train would leave a station with seemingly healthy people and arrive with mostly dead people.  Another book tells the story of a remote ranch where the folks looked out the window to see sick people staggering towards them, desperate for food, water, and medicine. 
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The Flu Pandemic of 1918 killed about 675,000 Americans.  To put that into perspective, the United States has about tripled in population since 1910.  So...three times 675,000 is...what?  About 2 million.  Typically, right now in the United States, about 36,000 people die from seasonal flu.  Now, imagine that number suddenly shooting up to about 2 million.  That's like every man, woman, and child in Houston, Texas dead.
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The city of Philadelphia lost nearly 5000 people in one week in October.  They ran out of coffins and couldn't bury the dead fast enough.  That's Philadelphia, folks, right here in the United States of America.
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Here's another nasty secret from the 1918 flu - it killed mostly young adults. 
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Normally, seasonal flu strikes down the very old and the very young.
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So, we have millions of young men dying in the trenches of World War I and millions of young men and women dying of the flu at home.  And the number was in the millions worldwide, estimates 50 to 100 million people dead worldwide from just the flu.  Not the war.
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And, remember, we've tripled in size since then.  So, worst case scenario for today, 300 million worldwide.
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One poignant story was of a young man who managed to survive brutal combat to finally come home to his wife and children, only to die a week later from the flu.  Along with his wife and all but one child, I think it was.
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Still afraid to get the Flu Shot?
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Anyway, the book ends with how the 1918 Flu mutated into a less lethal strain, which means, of course, that people never actually defeated this monster.  It kinda just moved on to other things.  Also, scientists have been digging up the remains of 1918 Flu victims from the Arctic permafrost to try to find a specimen for study, so they can create a vaccine.  Just in case the monster ever comes back.
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Of course, we know there have been lots of other pandemics, like the Black Plague which killed about a third of Europe's population in the Middle Ages.  But, by shear numbers, the 1918 Flu Pandemic killed more people than any other and it touched every corner of the globe.
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A few places did manage to keep the death numbers down by strict quarantine, like Japan.  And I think there was an island which managed to escape it altogether the same way.
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Sometimes, I wonder how we would handle a pandemic like this right now.  Sure, we have advanced medical technology.  The CDC and the WHO keeps vigilant watch and each state in the union has a pandemic plan in place. 
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But, human nature never changes.
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Sure, it can be tempered with intelligence and good morals.
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Nevertheless, I have to ask why didn't other nations put themselves under strict quarantine, like Japan?
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Greed.
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They didn't want to stop buying and selling across international or state lines.
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Do we still have greedy people today?  Yes, we do.
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As the book painfully outlines, there was also a great deal of Denial.  People just couldn't wrap their minds around the threat, because their hearts wouldn't let them.  And Fear.  In Alaska, whole villages full of people all died because they couldn't trust the white people who told them to quarantine themselves and to not gather together in groups.  Well, Alaska Natives live very communally by tradition and white people had lied to and brutalized them for hundreds of years.  Why would they do what the white people said?
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Do we still have Fear and Denial today?  Yes, we do.
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So, I'm not gonna tell ya to take the Flu Shot.  It's your choice, of course.  There's positives and negatives either way.
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I will tell ya to go get this book though!  Cause every choice we make in life has consequences and so every choice ought to be extremely well-informed, methinks.
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There are several books about the 1918 Flu Pandemic, but this one is the most thorough one for the average reader to get through.  And even then it will be hard, because the medical technobabble gets a little challenging at times.  Hang in there, though, because it's worth it.
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Much love, Buds.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic