The Great Flu Pandemic
Day five: a bright and sunny day with a biting wind.
I've seen numerous comments about Coronavirus which described its effects as being "just like flu" and as such wondering what all the fuss is about.
This is not some kind of homage to Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but the flu virus that appeared in the summer of 1918 was unlike any virus that had ever appeared before. There had been serious epidemics of flu in 1900, 1908 and 1915, so the outbreak that began in 1918 was initially ignored, but then things became significantly worse...
Juliet Nicolson's The Great Silence (the title refers to the aftermath of the Great War) includes a number of detailed contemporaneous accounts of individuals afflicted with the flu as well as a detailed description of the effects of the illness after the initial familiar symptoms of sweats, headaches and muscular pain:
The echoes resonate to this day, as this article from Nancy Banks Smith in today's Guardian shows:
Laughter is the Best Medicine
I've seen numerous comments about Coronavirus which described its effects as being "just like flu" and as such wondering what all the fuss is about.
This is not some kind of homage to Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but the flu virus that appeared in the summer of 1918 was unlike any virus that had ever appeared before. There had been serious epidemics of flu in 1900, 1908 and 1915, so the outbreak that began in 1918 was initially ignored, but then things became significantly worse...
Juliet Nicolson's The Great Silence (the title refers to the aftermath of the Great War) includes a number of detailed contemporaneous accounts of individuals afflicted with the flu as well as a detailed description of the effects of the illness after the initial familiar symptoms of sweats, headaches and muscular pain:
"When the virus entered the body it was transformed into something almost invariably fatal. The drama of the sickness was reflected in an explosion of colour. First the skin turned a vivid and almost beautiful purple... Then the lungs and all the other major organs became filled with a thick scarlet jelly that choked the afflicted. Death occurred as the victims drowned in their own blood and bodily fluids."This was more than a century ago and it has been estimated that the death toll was between forty and fifty million.
The echoes resonate to this day, as this article from Nancy Banks Smith in today's Guardian shows:
Laughter is the Best Medicine
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