[PLUG-TALK] 1918 Re: Move to Strike

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 10:06:13AM -0700, Paul Heinlein wrote:
> I move to strike epochal seconds 1577865600 through 1609487999 from
> the record, come 1609488000.
> 
> All in favor?

Sadly, after the 1918-19 flu pandemic, they also "struck
the epochal seconds from the record", but they did not
recover the lost "files".  No backups then or now. 

I just finished reading "American Pandemic: The Lost
Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic", 2012, Nancy
Bristow (U. Puget Sound).  Not about the influenza virus
(a dark unknown at that time), but about the 70% idiotic
(and 30% heroic) ways citizens (and especially nurses)
reacted to the disease, and treated the survivors.

Though some important "black lives didn't matter" stories
were sadly warped by the tortured language of academic
virtue signalling, most of the book is engagingly written.  

The population of the 1918 United States ridiculed sound
guidance from public health scientists and community
leaders, intermittently following guidelines when the
deaths were too obvious to ignore (bodies stacked like
cord-wood), then back to bad habits a month later.

People pretended the flu either (1) wasn't actually flu
(2) was caused by the Chinese (3) was curable by quackery
(4) was not as important as going to taverns, churches,
movies, etc. (5) was God's punishment for the victims,
justifying further punishment of the survivors.

Sound familiar?  Dr. Bristow can write another book about
the U.S. response to the 2019-21 COVID epidemic with an
hour of "search and replace".

One major difference in 1918 was that President Woodrow
Wilson wasn't "tweeting", insulting others, and holding
rambling two hour press conferences.  Wilson was busy
concluding World War One, leaving the epidemic to state
and local leaders and competent professionals.

-----

Also not in Bristow's book:

Wilson himself fell ill to "Spanish" influenza (so named
because only Spain was honest enough to publish statistics)
in April 1919.  He recovered with some brain damage, and
had a stroke six months later.  Consequently, Wilson
bungled the 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference.  Germany was
saddled with draconian reparations, justified resentment,
Hitler, and World War 2, leading to the atomic bomb ...

-----

So yes, if we find a way to delete COVID and the forest
fires from reality itself, please delete 1918 and its
consequences as well.

P.S.  An excellent book about the 1918 H1N1 virus is Gina 
Kolata's 2001 "Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza
Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It"


I can suggest many other books (lots of reading time these
days), but those two will help you understand how free
people sometimes freely choose stupidity.  As my science-
fiction-writing secular-conservative pal Jerry Pournelle
said, "Stupidity is evolution in action".

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com