23 - The 1918 Pandemic

Speaker 0 00:00:02 So, wow. We're, we're keeping to our schedule. I am impressed. Speaker 1 00:00:07 It feels great. Doesn't it? It does. Speaker 0 00:00:09 I look forward to this so much. I look forward to our Thursday afternoons together to kind of get to talk about these things, to kind of do what I think we both really want to do, which is to create public history, right. To connect the Academy with the public. Speaker 1 00:00:27 Right. I mean, we're, we're doing that every week and that is what the most exciting part of our job is. Hands down. I love it. Speaker 0 00:00:36 So, um, this week it's going to be a little morbid. Speaker 1 00:00:41 Yeah. Well, and it's not just more, but so many things in history are morbid and depressing and hard to talk about this this week though, is going to strike home in a really intense way, uh, because we're in the thick of another pandemic. And so trigger warning, I guess, but it's going to be, Speaker 0 00:01:05 Although the title of today's episode should warn you in 1918 pandemic. Um, well, that's what we're going to be talking about today. So, uh, join us today on an incomplete history. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. Speaker 1 00:01:21 And where are your hosts for this weekly history podcast? <inaudible> Speaker 0 00:01:46 So it's the first week of December, 2020. We are now going on. How many months? Nine months. Speaker 1 00:01:55 Um, yeah, I think we're about to start the ninth month, right? Cause it started March. Speaker 0 00:02:01 Uh, yeah. Although new CDC data and research data indicates there may have been cases of COVID-19 in the U S as early as December last year. Um, so maybe we're in our 12th month now, who knows? Um, Speaker 1 00:02:16 Every single person that I talked to he's like, I think I had it back in February. Speaker 0 00:02:20 Yes. Speaker 1 00:02:22 How many people have you heard say that Speaker 0 00:02:24 I've heard many people say I got really sick back. Yeah. I got sick back at the beginning of the year and I think that's what it was. And it was like, okay. I mean, maybe there's a chance, but, um, but yeah, I mean, this is we're living in strange times, Speaker 1 00:02:43 But not so strange because that's, what's got me every time is that, I think I said this in the last episode. So I apologize, but the people say unprecedented or, Oh, this is an unprecedented moment, but it's not an unprecedented moment at all. And quite frankly, it lines up. So in such eerie ways to what happened in 1918, what's happening right now. I mean, month to month and numbers and reactions and government reactions. Right. That's what I figured out as I was really going through this and going into the study of this a little more deeply because I always cover the influence, uh, the Spanish flu in 1918, whenever I teach, um, us history. And when I'm teaching like intense, you know, periods of us history, particularly the early 20th century. And, but I never, I mean, I was always teaching it, not when we were in a pandemic, but now that we are, and I'm going back and looking through my stuff, it's like, Oh my gosh, it winds up in really kind of creepy ways. Speaker 0 00:03:53 Oh yeah. I've I mean, I've got some great anecdotes that just, if you change the dates on, when the things were said, you're like, well, this is like last week somebody said this, obviously. Um, but before we jump into that, not to disappoint our long-term listeners, uh, what's the weather like there the first week of December and in Mississippi, Speaker 1 00:04:14 Pretty dreary out today. And earlier this week, I almost wish we'd recorded on Monday because it was 16 degree wind chill on Monday, the temperature I think was 21 and the windshield was 16. And then we got a few drops of snow. It was very exciting. And of course that was the best time Speaker 0 00:04:33 Like flakes, Hillary flakes. I know you're a Southern California native, they're called they're called flakes. Speaker 1 00:04:41 They're called snowflakes, actually, Hillary, they didn't want to offend any of our listeners, no flakes or something, but, um, uh, yes, so we did, we got that's good. Uh, we got some snowflakes that was very exciting. And I think we, you would call them flurries, I think too. Right, Speaker 0 00:04:59 Right, right. Yeah. Well, we're in the middle of a Santa Ana event here in Southern California. We had 50 mile an hour winds last night. Speaker 1 00:05:08 Well, that sounds typical. Speaker 0 00:05:11 Uh, no, this is, I mean, Speaker 1 00:05:15 Uh, Speaker 0 00:05:16 It was very chilly last night and I mean, legitimately chili, not Southern California chili, it was in the forties last night. Speaker 1 00:05:23 That requires a jacket Speaker 0 00:05:25 Of in Southern California. That requires like a full-on Christmas story body said. Yeah. Although we're not going out at all. Well, the good thing is we're not supposed to be going out after 10:00 PM. So, and that's when it was the coldest, but yeah, I mean, 50 mile an hour winds, they've shut down power across parts of the County to prevent wildfires, Werner assembled. Like we've got, yeah, it's just a perfect combination. So we've got the lockdown, we've got Highmark high winds from the Santa Ana's and we've got a red flag warning, extreme fire, dammit, D a danger through the 10th also for the next week. So fun times. Um, yeah. Uh, but yeah, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, that's, it's great that you said early on that this is an unprecedented and I think that's the key, right. Is this is, you know, I don't want students, I always tell students like you, that history does not repeat itself. Things are always different, but you can notice patterns of human response to certain things because humans, humans are both very unpredictable, but in other ways are very predictable. Speaker 1 00:06:43 I love that the human response, uh, piece of it is really interesting because what's happening here is that people say, well, viruses act unpredictably and that's, that's true. Um, but humans don't act so unpredictably to viruses spreading. Right? I love the thinking about it in that way that we can kind of predict what people are going to do and say based on things that have happened, um, in times past. But yeah, it's not an exact repeat. Uh, but what upsets me as a historian is that we don't learn from things that happened in the past, or we do well, those people are still alive who experienced it, but as soon as a generation dies, who experienced a tragedy, we just go right back to doing things the way that we would do them before. And I'm oftentimes standing, you know, in the background just like screaming, no, we have to look at what happened last time. And we can't do that again. And that when I'm looking at this 1918 flu pandemic, I'm screaming because it's, it's really scarily similar in terms of infection, rates and responses. So do you want to go over just some general statistics about the 1918 flu pandemic? Speaker 0 00:08:03 Uh, I could do that, but I mean, I think as Maria Von Trapp would say, we should start at the very beginning. That's a very good place to start. Um, that's the sound of music reference way for you to play a sound of music clip? And I had myself in anticipation of it. So, uh, so the 19 Panda 1918 pandemic, it is the H one N one virus, right? So this is the same one that comes back in 2009. Um, and this is the thing with influenza, right? And, and most kinds of diseases like this that have played humanity is they come back, they're repeat performances. Um, they're cyclical, right? Uh, the black death like revisits Europe consistently, it's like a predictable thing almost right. The bubonic plague, the black death, uh, and then other quorums of illness as well. Um, but I mean around 50 million people die as a result of the 1918 pandemic. And the 1918 pandemic is not just from 1980, it's 1918 till about 1923 ish. Um, but 50 million deaths. Those are the deaths we know about. I mean, the issue with that statistic is we actually don't know how many people died and weren't counted as having died as a result of this, this virus, this viral infection, Speaker 1 00:09:35 Good point, because you can look at a lot of statistics and it seems like 50 million is the sort of middle of the road agreed upon. I've seen as low as 20 million, but I've seen as high as 100 million dead. So we'll say 50 million for the purposes of, uh, being conservative, I think. Speaker 0 00:09:55 Right, right. And then you look at the United States and we get a casualty, we get a number of deaths at 675,000. This is almost as many Americans as die in the civil war. Speaker 1 00:10:07 I think it's more depending on how you look at the numbers, right. But it's a really similar number. Yes. And that, or that kills most Americans out of all the Wars. Speaker 0 00:10:19 And I mean, it's interesting this summer. I don't think we were having a conversation of casualties from COVID-19 approaching this number, but now we suddenly are having these kinds of these conversations. Speaker 1 00:10:35 Well, we have to based on the numbers and what we're seeing, um, skyrocket on a daily basis. So today is December 3rd, 2020, yesterday, December 2nd, we recorded a record number of hospitalizations, new cases and deaths as a result of COVID-19 in the United States. And I, I kind of look at it and I know it's wrong and I, somebody please call me out, send me a message and tell me to stop doing this. But I always look at the deaths in relation to an event that I see as some watershed event in my lifetime. And that's nine 11. And I think many people would see that as a major watershed event. And you look at the number of people who perished on that horrible day, September 11th, 2001. And I would look at the death rates and say, how many people died in nine 11? Well, how many people are dying of COVID every day, we are now approaching that number every day of who is dying of coronavirus yesterday 2,885 Americans died of COVID-19. Speaker 1 00:11:42 Um, and the people who died on September 11th was 2,977. So again, I don't equate them. I do not, I do not conflate them. Um, but to me, that was such a huge moment and such a life-changing world altering tragedy over those deaths. But I'm looking now every single day, we're experiencing September 11th in terms of loss in this country. And although they were different, we're still, these are family members missing at dinner tables. Um, these are families who won't celebrate Christmas this year, um, and so on and so forth. So if you look at those numbers, I think that that's for me, that's how I look at it. And I know that that's probably not great, but what do you, do you ever think about that? Speaker 0 00:12:31 Um, I think it more, I mean, it's interesting. I think of it more in the context of, of war casualties. Um, here's the thing, if there are battles that take place during the war during world war II, the United States is involved in that involved more than 3000 casualties in one battle, but it would be very hard to maintain morale at home if every single day, 3000 us soldiers died. Speaker 1 00:13:00 Yeah. And that was, I mean, I think I read something the other day, um, a historian posted because historians do often look at things in terms of war casualties. And I've also thought about it in that way, about, about storming the beaches of Normandy and what the survival rate was. If you were going to, you know, be a soldier fighting in that battle and you know, he's equating it to the way people were responding. Now it's like, well only 1% of people die or something like that, but we would never say that in terms of war. Speaker 0 00:13:34 Right. Right. I mean, it's so, I mean, it's interesting it's I was hoping to get us this war thing. Cause I think it's a good place to start when you're talking about the United States and the 1918 pandemic. Um, we're certain, this pandemic starts earlier than 1918. We just don't know how early, but we know April, 1917 is when we get involved in world war one, the great war. And we send about 375,000. Uh, we have about 375,000 soldiers in the army and we immediately start draft the draft, right. And start to create these recruitment camps. And we create 1332, not 1330, two large camps across the country in each of these houses, somewhere between 25 and 55,000 soldiers. So that is by June, by summer of 1917. This is going on. And by March of the next year, the U S has now been involved in the war for almost a year. By March of next year, we start to get reports of this flu, like illness breaking out. And the first, some of the first recorded cases are a hundred soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas. Yes. Speaker 1 00:14:52 And this is when we start figuring out that there is a flu that's, that's more deadly than the typical illnesses that circulate during the winter months. Speaker 0 00:15:03 I mean, this is the thing, most flus, a healthy adult can survive. However, children and the elderly, it's a very different case for them, even the normal flu, right. Which is why you should get flu vaccines every year, because it may not be so much to protect you it's to protect community spread because there are certain members of the community that are much more vulnerable, but this flu is striking down young men. Speaker 1 00:15:31 Yes. And by 1918, March of 1918, we start to see cases of the flu. But the U S government's response to this is mute Speaker 0 00:15:45 Well, we're in the middle of a war, right. And what are you going to do is shut down the training camps. But here's the thing within a week of those initial 100 soldiers being reported, the number of cases quintuples, and this is the problem, because if you think about these soldiers moving, they're moving large numbers of people around the country and across the Atlantic and wherever they move them, anyone who comes in contact with them theoretically, gets exposed to this virus. And by may of 1918, they're moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers across the Atlantic, into Europe, the European theater. And by fall of that year, by September of that year, we get what's the second wave. So the first wave isn't really that devastating at all. In fact, you can look at it and it doesn't. You can look at casualties for almost any location. Speaker 0 00:16:44 And that, that first wave doesn't even show up are most of them because it's just not apparent anything or it's really rad. But the second wave starts in September of 1918. And the second wave is much more devastating. The, the illness seems to be much more fatal, um, and it shows up in multiple points across the United States and globally, right? We don't have a clear idea of globally all the places it occurs, but we know it is occurring at many places. And by October of 1918, in the month of October, 195,000 Americans die from the pandemic in that month, in that single Speaker 1 00:17:33 Well. And if you look at the number of deaths approaching Thanksgiving, it was eerily similar to what we have happening in the United States right now. And we all know also that in November of 1918, we have pharmacist's day, November 11th. And there were these huge celebrations that broke out all over the world, um, celebrating the end of the great war. And of course they didn't call it world war one because they didn't know there was a sequel coming. So the great war ends in November of 1918, huge crowd gatherings and celebrations breakout followed closely by Thanksgiving. And so with all of this contact, all of these crowds gathered, um, and all of this troop movement within the United States and globally the virus spread, or the influenza spreads rapidly. And then right into the winter months where we're at right now, where these illnesses are so much more pronounced during the winter, of course, winter in the Northern hemisphere. Speaker 0 00:18:40 Well, and then you compound it with a shortage of nurses. So, I mean, it's mostly doctors, I mean, mostly nurses, right? I think the issue, I mean doctors, whatever, but I think the nurse shortage is even more critical to what happens. And there's a racial component to this as well. But nurses have been deployed overseas during the war. They've also been deployed to military camps and it actually leaves a vacuum of qualified nurses to kind of administer to civilians, compounding that many points in the country will not let African-American nurses treat white people Speaker 1 00:19:25 Because of segregation. Right. Speaker 0 00:19:28 It's like, are you kidding me? Speaker 1 00:19:30 Yeah. That's Speaker 0 00:19:32 So they, you know, you have all these calls for the kind of expansion of nursing and everything that go out. But I mean, this is this, again, this really hits home to me because you're seeing this right now, not the segregation part of it, although we can talk about kind of how this current illness hits certain communities harder than others. Um, but I think this kind of shortage of medical workers and medical facilities, it happened in 1918. It's happening now. It should not surprise us that this is the case. Speaker 1 00:20:06 Yeah. We have reached the peak of things yet, uh, in the wake of Thanksgiving. And I don't think we'll reach a peak for many, many weeks and already hospitals are overflowing and overloaded. And this is precisely what happened in 1918, where they had to overflow patient care into schools, uh, private homes, churches, any sort of location that they could. And then there's a shortage of people to, to care for the individuals who were being hospitalized or who were in dire dire health. Um, and then of course, this also creates a shortage. When you start having mass death of people creates a shortage of coffins, morticians, uh, grave, diggers, Speaker 0 00:20:52 Places to store the bodies before burial. What was that places to store the bodies even before burial, Speaker 1 00:20:59 Right? Yes, exactly. And that now, right now we're seeing refrigerated trucks and that wasn't the case. Speaker 0 00:21:05 Philadelphia uses cold storage plants to store corpses during this. Um, they use packing crates used for fruits and vegetables and other goods as coffins because the infrastructure just is not designed to, to handle the scale of death that's occurring, but you ha you start to see some cities. And this is what I find really interesting by October of 1918, you start to see divergence of different cities handling things differently. So September the New York board of health kind of starts tracking flu cases. Um, and they require all these cases to be tracked. Um, Chicago by October, 1918 closes movie theater theater is movie houses. Um, schools, public gatherings of any type are prohibited. Um, San Francisco says people should wear masks and, and you don't, you're not required. It's not a law, but there's a strong recommendation that you do this. Um, at the same time, we start to see economic kind of fall out from this New York city, 40%, 40% decline in shipyard activity. Um, and these kinds of things are gonna go, I mean, there's this balancing that's going to go is like public health concerns versus economic productivity. I mean, it's the same conversation we're having now. Speaker 1 00:22:37 And it was the same level of divisiveness. I mean, it was, um, you know, obviously we have different ways of spreading this through social media and things, but there was a lot of divisiveness within the newspapers. I mean, you can look at primary source papers from that period where you will have an advertisement run that says, you must be wearing a mask. You shouldn't be going out and doing gatherings. It's very dangerous, blah, blah, blah. And right next to it you'll have an advertisement for we're having a big church service, uh, Sunday, you know, I mean running right alongside one another. So it was divisible even then. And, um, there were anti mask leagues that surfaced during this time. It predominantly in San Francisco where people were refusing to wear masks, even though the masks were distributed by departments of health, which I thought was really interesting because that didn't happen here at, during this time, we didn't have a mask distribution, um, that happened, but they did distribute masks during the 1918 pandemic and people were refusing to wear them. Speaker 0 00:23:46 Yeah. I mean, it's, you have a certain percentage of the population refuses to wear it. And so you get that 1918, the late 1918 kind of fall and winter, 1918, second wave. And by January you get a third wave and the third wave is kind of the most devastating of all. Um, it lasts basically until the summer. And in fact, we can look at spring of 19, 19. Um, some people have theorized that Woodrow Wilson, when he collapses at the Versailles peace conference, it's actually because he asked the influencer, Speaker 1 00:24:21 I thought that that had been confirmed that he did have influence during the week by conference. Speaker 0 00:24:27 I think they are, as certain as we can be without actually performing some kind of blood tests on them to confirm that the virus was present. Speaker 1 00:24:35 But I think that that's a widely accepted fact. Speaker 0 00:24:37 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's widely accepted. Although I just, I do want to kind of leave room that, you know, we cannot confirm it with 100% certitude because we can't test his blood, but it certainly seems like that's the case. Um, so I mean, this is the thing over the course of this illness, this pandemic, you see kind of a lot of the same things that are happening in our country today, kind of public leaders getting it, um, kind of cities divided on how you should address it. The public divided a real lack of concrete answers and procedures and what you should do now, what's important to note is unlike now in 1918, 19, 19, they don't have antibiotic treatments that they can do. So once you get sick with this good luck, Speaker 1 00:25:33 Well, I was looking at what the treatment did look like for influenza patients and, Oh my gosh, it was brutal treatment that would happen. So can I walk you through maybe a day in the life of someone who has influenza? I muted myself for a second to turn the page, my notes. So if you got influenza in 1918, they didn't have the same treatments that we have today. And not only did they not have the same treatments, they had very different treatments that were medieval, uh, or I guess, archaic treatments that they would use to try to stop the virus from, from killing somebody. So one of the rumors about treatment was that if you stood outside of a factory and breathe in the fumes of the factory, that it would act as an antiseptic because all of the gases and fumes that could be inhaled outside of a factory, had a lot of chlorine in them. Speaker 1 00:26:42 And there were actually instances where factory workers were not getting the virus as much because of the, so much of a presence of chlorine in the air that it would kill the virus that was airborne. So people would take their families. This was happening in like, um, in the South of Wales. People were just taking families to stand outside of factories in order to try to stop the spread of the virus. So let's say you do get it. You could have treatments over the course of several days, several weeks. Um, according to some nursing records of a patient who had influenza, this treatment was offered over the course of three weeks, they use mustard seed to be rubbed on the skin. Speaker 1 00:27:31 The patient was administered aspirin for fever, coding for cough over the course of three weeks was given seven animals. Rectal tubes were placed. I don't know what that is, but it was on the nursing records. Um, there were given milk of magnesia, which was another swarm of laxative, um, pheno failing, which was a cancer causing laxative. In addition to the magnesia, the milk of magnesia, uh, Euro Tropin, which is a blood antiseptic, they were given prescribed doses of whiskey prescribed at doses of champagne and 14 doses of Castro oil. And this was over a three week period of someone who had influenza. So the treatment was not pleasant. Um, another treatment that was given this was not to this patient that I wrote the records for, but another very common treatment was bloodletting, which killed PR the first president of the United States, right? George Washington had his blood let out. And this whole, this, um, ancient kind of practice or medieval practice of bloodletting was the idea that if you drain somebody's blood out, you'd be draining out the sickness with it. But oftentimes that killed the person. So, um, they were still trying that though in 1918 to treat patients and I look, or I consider some of the treatments that we have today, where some of the suggestions for treatment that we have today. And I, and I can't even imagine, you know, this list that I just provided. What do you think about that? Checking Speaker 0 00:29:18 Yourself with Clorox Speaker 1 00:29:20 That was suggested Speaker 0 00:29:22 Yes, it was suggested. I mean, it was pretty horrific. I mean, this is, but this is also the problem, I think is the 1918 pandemic. It happens before we actually have perfected vaccines, a very modern sense. Um, you know, there, there had been smallpox inoculations that it occurred back in the colonial period. So, you know, that wasn't unheard of, but it's not until the forties that saw that they kind of perfect a vaccine in the modern sense. Um, so there's no preventative measures besides social distancing and wearing a mask. That's pretty much it, um, quarantines as well. But the treatment is interesting because I, I think the treatment today, even, I mean, we see this as changed a lot. If you go back to kind of early summer, late spring and look at what treatment regimens were for people infected with COVID-19 now you look at what's being recommended. And I think there's a, it's a fairly substantial difference in a lot of ways. Um, I mean, just this week, the CDC actually decreased the recommended quarantine time for people. Speaker 1 00:30:44 Wasn't there a lot being said about ventilators, perhaps causing more damage to patients who were placed on them. So that's the thing you learn as you go. I mean, yeah. Speaker 0 00:30:56 And that's what epidemiologists in this early on in this epidemiologists were like, look, we're, we're learning about this as we move on. So what we tell you is going to change, um, Speaker 1 00:31:09 And stay home in the meantime while we figure it out. Right? Speaker 0 00:31:14 So one thing I want to bring up is individual cities responses. And specifically, I mean, it could have looked at any number of cities for this, but I looked at New York city because I've found some interesting parallels to contemporary events. So New York city initially is really on top of this, um, summer of 1918. There are a couple of ships that come into port. They have six people are these sick people are kind of whisked away to a city, hospital and quarantined. So there's immediately, um, uh, a response to that this needs to be addressed. And it's mostly because New York city, one of the oldest cities in the country had experienced epidemics. So they kind of knew how to deal with it. In theory, Speaker 1 00:32:05 When, if you have such a huge population center, you have to be prepared to take on, uh, a concerted effort to stop the spread of contagious contagious disease. Right. I mean, it just makes sense, especially for New York city and it's the case now, too. Right? Right. Speaker 0 00:32:22 And, and here's the thing is by, by the first week of October, you have New York city, policemen are all wearing masks. Public workers are wearing masks. The public is being encouraged to wear masks. Um, and they start to distribute information. So you have this guy Royal Copeland. Um, and he's a fascinating guy because he's the health commissioner, any has the power at the time to kind of quarantine certain places. He puts the entire port district under quarantine. Um, and for most of that fall, he does a lot to kind of report cases and catalog them and figure out where things are going on. Um, increasing sanitary code regulations, there's an anti spitting law. Um, uh, that's instituted during this period. But what I find really interesting is this. So Copeland's like telling people to stay on and telling people to wear a mask and do all these things. Speaker 0 00:33:25 Um, what I find interesting is this though on the 23rd of December, 1918 Copeland actually tells, um, uh, Copeland recommends that the mayor send this letter out to mayors at all points of entry into the greater New York city. And it's to make sure that our reporting, whenever you have returning soldiers, um, coming back from Europe to check them for illness and to report those six sick people immediately. So here you've got December 23rd Copeland is, is aware that the return of your soldiers could increase, could, could increase the number of cases again in this city. So he kind of wants to get ahold of this. That's the 23rd of December, the 26th of December. And this should, this just blows my mind. The 26th of December Copeland goes out Staten Island and dresses up as Santa Claus, without a mask for a child celebration at an orphanage Speaker 1 00:34:34 Was the orphanage called the French laundry. Speaker 0 00:34:38 Hello, hosing. Speaker 1 00:34:40 I mean, this is it's so similar. You're right. Cause I read that too. And it's like, you have these public officials, he's government, you know, these people who are in charge of us who were like, don't do this, don't do that. And then they go out and do this kind of stuff that they're telling us not to do. It's infuriating. Speaker 0 00:34:59 And this is the thing Copeland doesn't even have the excuse of we've been under this for like nine months. We're tired of being under it, right. Regulations didn't go into effect in New York until October. This is less than two months later that he's doing this again. Why is it happening or why does he do this? Why is there's this cognitive dissonance between what he's telling people to do versus what he's doing himself? I, I think it has to do with class and Speaker 1 00:35:31 Class and it has to do with ego. Speaker 0 00:35:33 Right? So I'll talk about the class part. You talking about the ego part. How about that sounds good. So I think what Copeland and many others viewed the illness as is they assumed it was a working class illness. And this is basically a continuation of reform ideas that had started in the 19th century about cleanliness in places like New York, where you had kind of wealthy and upper middle class women, generally who led these kind of, um, uh, sanitation movements, um, that these poor working class, people just didn't know to how to keep themselves clean. And that led to these kind of periodic outbreaks of disease. So I think Copeland in some way, views himself as not part of that group, therefore he keeps himself clean. He's kind of excused from these roles that these rules really are for kind of these poor working class people that actually can't manage their own lives. Speaker 1 00:36:35 Yeah. But that's tied to the ego part too. I would say in that, well, rules aren't for me, rules are for them rules are for the plums, right? And there's also a huge part of it. And we can get into a discussion about healthcare in this country, but people who are important, government officials are going to have the Cadillac of treatments, right? They're going to get into a hospital. If they need a ventilator, they'll have a ventilator. If they need a certain medicine, they'll have a certain medicine. They are going to be treated in far superior ways to somebody in the general public. And we see this time and time again with so many of the leaders in our country now who have, um, come down with COVID-19 and then they get these treatments that not everybody else gets in 1918 though. There wasn't some sort of special treatment that people would get. Speaker 1 00:37:33 They may have prioritized treatment and they may have, you know, say like a personal nurse or a personal doctor or home care. But it was, it ravaged no matter who it was, the virus didn't discriminate on race and class, even though they may have thought so it did not. And so there's this ego thing of, well, I'm immune to it because I'm wealthy and important and in charge. And so I'm not going to get it, just those dirty, you know, working class, people are going to get it. So they do go hand in hand, but it's, it is reminiscent of what's happening at the moment. And that being said, though, I mean, we have had leaders who have died of COVID. So it, it does not stop. You know, it doesn't stop for leaders necessarily, but you see them go out and it's really hard because people, I know people are upset and I get upset too, seeing these, you know, mayors and governors and whoever else going and doing things that they're telling us, not to an history Speaker 0 00:38:36 I'm Hillary. And I'm Jeff. Sorry about that. That was weird. Speaker 1 00:38:42 Jeffrey. They've been welcomed to an incomplete history. Speaker 1 00:38:49 Anyway, you have these leaders who are going out and doing things or telling us not to do and people. And what I don't understand is the response of people like, well, then I'm going to go do it too. And what I would say to somebody who says that is what your mother should have told you when you were little, if Gavin Newsome jumped off a bridge, are you going to jump off a bridge to that's that's four. I am. It's like, just because they're making stupid decisions and they are making stupid reckless decisions, selfish decisions. It doesn't mean that everyone else should go out and do it. Um, so it's very, to me, again, the parallels of what was happening in 1918 and now are, or worrisome and any, I love what you said in the beginning about it's like human response just doesn't really change, but the outrage over it is, was, um, was present in 1918 and now the outrage over it. Now it's happening again. And we just see it repeating. Speaker 0 00:39:52 Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing is it's is as a story as we look at this and we kind of look at how, um, the pandemic play is playing out today, and we look back to 1918, 19, 19, even 1920. And we just kind of shake our heads because we see things being repeated, um, to the point where we even have people who remove their families from places like the city. So wealthy families like pick up and move out to the Hamptons or wherever to try to escape kind of the crowded city. And this had been a long practice in places like New York city. One of the reasons the elite left the city during the summer, um, if you've ever been in New York city and this summer you'll know exactly why it gets very hot, it's very humid. It's very stinky, garbage gets very stinky, very fast. And there was a perception that this allowed disease to run rampant in the city. So if you had the financial ability to leave, you would, and I think this is similar to what you see going on now. I mean, it's, you know, you've got these instances of, of resorts opening up and saying, come stay with us, come stay with the Ritz, Carlton and Maui for the next six months. It seems Speaker 1 00:41:14 Like that's a message that went to your inbox, not mine Speaker 0 00:41:17 And we'll provide, Oh, I was reading an article about it. And it was just like, and it was like, and we've got a tutor was socially distance learning for your kids so they can still continue to learn. And we've got great high, uh, high speed internet. So you can do whatever you need to do that. Um, but she don't have to worry about being out with the plebs and being exposed to disease. Speaker 1 00:41:39 That's, you know what that is so true. There is such a class aspect of what's happening right now. And it is easy for somebody who is privileged to say, well, just stay home. And I'm so very aware of that and my own privilege that I'm able to do my work from home and that not everybody can, and not everybody has a job where they take, they can just take time off where they can work from home or use the internet or zoom or whatever. And so I do know that there's a class aspect to it, and I do know the economy suffering and so many people are suffering, but I think that our delayed response to this in 1918 and today is what's really causing so much of this suffering. Um, I, uh, do you mind if I get into a little bit of the origins of why it was called the Spanish flu and such? Speaker 0 00:42:30 Yeah. Cause we can also talk about it's called different things in different places, right? So let's talk about the Spanish or why it's called the Spanish flair. Speaker 1 00:42:37 I, I use that as a segue to say that we had a very delayed response to this. Um, and, and that had to do in 1918, the influenza, um, the influencer response was so slow because as Jeff mentioned, we were in the midst of the great war at that time. So the government and the media in the countries who were involved, actively suppressed any sort of reporting on this and also just wanted all of the attention toward the war effort. And so they knew that there was a flu, they knew that it was deadlier than most flus. They knew that it was actually impacting a segment of the population, say 18 to 50, more than any other illness had. So they were very much aware of these things. They didn't report on it. Who did report on it though, was the country of Spain being a neutral country during the war. Speaker 1 00:43:28 The media in Spain was free to report on this. The media started reporting on this influenza in Spain, in may of 1918. And there was pretty heavy coverage on it. They called it the French flu. So they thought the Spanish thought, well, this came from France. Once everybody started getting on the whole like, Oh, there's an influenza. You know, there's a flu, there's people dying. All of the reporting had come from Spain. So they're like, well, it must have originated in Spain. And so it got called the Spanish flu. Another reason for it was the deaths in Spain was, were particularly high. Um, the death rate in Spain, and there's a couple of reasons for that, which I can get into also, but the different places call it different things. And again, the parallel you have people, we do not know where COVID-19 originated. We do not know, but we have people who call it, you know, saying that it was originated in China. We don't know that we know that they reported cases pretty early on in Wu Han, but there's also evidence that their strains that originated in Italy. Um, so we are quick to point fingers about where the virus comes from and they were the similar, it was a similar human reaction again in 1918 toward the, uh, the 1918 influenza. Speaker 0 00:44:53 Well, we, and we know we have evidence now that by in 1916, there already seemed to be the H one N one active in France, right. In some English army camps and France. So I mean, tracing the ex act point of origin of it is, is somewhat difficult, but it's, it's interesting. Um, the China, when it's called the China flu or the, any of the derogatory terms that are used to refer to it now, right. Or the China virus, um, is interesting in and of itself because it plays into a characterization of Asians in general, East Asians, more particular, the Chinese, even more particularly, and kind of non coastal educated Chinese specifically as a source of disease. Would you agree with that? Speaker 1 00:45:53 Yeah, absolutely. There's that racist element to it that it's foreign, that it's, you know, a disease that's brought on by someone from another country. Um, it's also plays into that class aspect that we're talking about, but there was also early on, there were ideas that the influenza was, uh, was a product of Germany, that it was a biological weapon developed by the Germans. Um, and that it may not have originated in Spain. So the allies thought that it could have been, um, I don't want to say lab created because that is what they say now. Right. Speaker 0 00:46:33 Did bill Gates, bill Gates help help develop that one as well? Speaker 1 00:46:37 I'm traveler. Yeah. Episode on conspiracy theories. Speaker 0 00:46:41 Yeah. Well, I mean, let me, let me talk about that conspiracy really quickly for the COVID-19 like, so that it's so convoluted. Um, so it's basically that George Soros gave bill Gates money to direct, to develop a vaccine in Wu Han China at Hillary Clinton's behest. Speaker 1 00:47:06 That's a lot. Speaker 0 00:47:07 Yeah, it's a lot. Well, first of all, I mean like logically bill Gates doesn't need George Soros to give him money. First of all, no second bill Gates has made it, his life's work since he retired to actually eradicate as many diseases as they can. The bill and Melinda Gates foundation does work in parts of the world, kind of doing these kind of treatments and things. So I mean, it's Speaker 1 00:47:35 People who believe that he's responsible for developing this, do not believe that he's done that good work. They think that any vaccination he's come up with has been some sort of poisoning of, of humans or something. Right. I mean, when you try to talk to somebody who's this far down the rabbit hole, who is this disconnected from reality, there's no amount of evidence that you're going to present that they're going to go, Oh, and their minds changed. And so that's, what's really scary about right now is the disinformation. Um, and there was some disinformation as well in 1918, but it wasn't rampant because, and I would say that's because of social media, Speaker 0 00:48:14 No internet. Right? So there's no, there's no chance for your crazy uncle to share the conspiracy theory with more people quickly and easily. Right. Right. But I mean, it's, it's so it's interesting. I, this a couple of weeks ago, I actually saw a response to this of how do you deal with this? If somebody, it was before Thanksgiving. And it was like, if you're at Thanksgiving and somebody, and I wanted to say, well, like, why are you going to Thanksgiving dinner? Why irresponsible? But whatever. They were like, uh, maybe the only way to combat these conspiracy theories is to out conspiracy theory then. And I saw a funny clip. Somebody made of that, where it's, you know, somebody comes up and basically says the bill Gates conspiracy, and the guy looks at him dead pan. And he was like, Oh, you believe the flu Israel. Speaker 1 00:49:00 Oh gosh, Oh, Speaker 0 00:49:04 Just like, just go even crazier. And right. And, and here's the thing we're going to end up with over half a million deaths from this conservative estimates say alone in our country Speaker 1 00:49:20 And treat alone because the deaths so far from COVID worldwide, where are, where do we stand right now? 1.5. Yeah. And United States leads in cases and in deaths. And you may hear people say, Oh, well, that's just because we report it. Well, we still have a lot of people dead and we solve a lot of cases. So I don't really want to get into who is, or is not reporting, but the United States, I mean, I think Donald Trump said that we were going to get so tired of winning. I'm really tired of winning them. Speaker 0 00:49:58 I wish we were well, yeah. I mean, so, so here's the thing is, is we had these, we had conspiracies that cropped up in the 1918 pandemic. They, they didn't gain traction like these do because they weren't able to be easily shared. And I think it exposes kind of this issue where the technology we have today both allows us to develop a vaccine rapidly and it rapidly, but at the same time, the same technology we use for that allows the propagation of these kinds of horror stories. Although I find it interesting social media companies are already making it clear. They're going to crack down on, on vaccine conspiracy posts as this vaccine starts to get rolled out. It's too late, right. Speaker 1 00:50:49 Too late. I mean, that's, that's the really sad part of all of this, this sort of disinformation spreading that's been going on for years now has reached a point of no return. I think. I mean, it's so out of control at this point, I just don't see any coming back from it. Speaker 0 00:51:10 Well, it's it's are the people who are anti mask really going to take a vaccine? Speaker 1 00:51:16 No, I don't think so. Speaker 0 00:51:19 I don't see it happening. I don't see it happening. Um, Speaker 1 00:51:24 You know, it's been very difficult. I was, it's been very, very difficult not to talk about today when we do this episode and we are very intentional about drawing those parallels. Um, but I, I want to share a couple of anecdotes of things that happened in 1918 that I think will kind of spell out some fear that we should have now, but also just to be specific to 1918. Yeah. Okay. So I mentioned that Spain did have an incredibly high death rate, and that was another reason why, um, it's been deemed the Spanish flu. Um, one of the reasons that Spain's death rate was so high and draw whatever parallels you may was that there was a refusal to stop church going in these heavily Catholic country, right. 1918. Um, and in one city alone in Spain and Samora Spain, there was an outright refusal to stop going to church and they would hold mass gatherings, um, in celebration of saints, um, in particular Saint Rocco, who's the patron Saint of plague and pestilence. Speaker 1 00:52:40 They would gather intentionally to worship this Saint. And if you're not familiar with Catholicism, let me, uh, brief you quickly about some, you know, rituals involved in involving saints. Um, there will be St fee stays and people will gather, um, this particular feast, people gathered for nine days straight and passed around a Relic of the Saint and also pass around a statue of the Saint. And everybody kissed it. Um, everybody kissed the statue passed it around. There was mass communion that was given out. And so that means the priest was distributing little, you know, wafers of bread. Um, and people were drinking out of the same goblet of wine. And this happened in many different areas of Spain, but in this particular region, it's Maura, the people in this region died at twice. The rate of the national average. It became the highest death rate of anywhere in Spain. Speaker 1 00:53:47 Um, and the disinformation there was that the, you know, there was this like, well, there has to be this separation. You know, the state can get involved in church affairs because the church's stance was we shouldn't be stopping the gatherings. We need to gather more. This, we need to thank God more. We need to grovel to God and the saints. Um, and particularly the Saint Rocco in order to stop this plague from spreading. And that the only way to stop it was to have a mass gathering and worshiping, um, and giving and distributing communion. And this is what spread that spread influenza so rapidly in that region, and then really spiked the death toll in Spain. Um, and I see that happening regionally for me, where I live in Mississippi, there are huge gatherings. Um, I had a neighbor down the street invite me last week. They were going to have a big prayer circle to pray away that the Corona virus we're going to all get together and pray. And I thought that's happening right now. I mean, whew, what do you think? Speaker 0 00:55:00 Well, we have, well, I mean, San Diego, we have, we have a certain religious institution that has refused to follow County health guidelines. And they are, I mean, all the news networks and the newspaper, everybody's like constantly calling this specific church out. Um, and the County has cited them. The sheriff has cited that like air, but they keep kind of doing this. And what I'm afraid is the Supreme court's decision last week. That was, yeah, that was in New York, which says you cannot, if you're going to allow businesses to have a certain percentage of people and you have to allow churches to do the same thing, you can't differentiate them. And it's so tone deaf to the reality of this disease. Um, a church service you're usually seated there for an hour or so maybe substantially longer, um, in an enclosed space, a grocery store is very different. I mean, at least the way I've done grocery store visits since April is I have a list I used to not be good at having lists to go grocery shopping. I am so good at lists. Now I have a, and I know exactly in the store where I'm going and I like go, I get my stuff. And I get in and get out as quickly as possible. There's no kind of window Speaker 1 00:56:31 Grocery shopping is so fun and leisurely. I haven't grocery shopped in a really long time. I mean, we send one person in our family to do the grocery shopping and he sent with a list and he has a mask and all that. And it is, it's a Swift, um, chore that is done. There's no, because the other thing, I mean, this isn't to knock churches, but I mean, just by their very nature, what they're doing, people are gathered tightly. There's a lot of like hand holding and they're singing the singing alone. This is an airborne virus. Speaker 0 00:57:04 This is what caused that outbreak up in Washington state, right? Speaker 1 00:57:07 Yes. Yes. It's not like you're going through the freezer section, holding hands with people and singing grocery songs. I mean, the grocery store is dangerous. You, you know, you should really be limiting your trips there, but it it's very nature is different than a church service, um, where there's just a lot of germs spread at church. And in the case of what happened in Spain in 1918, I mean, people, if you go to a Catholic church, you are sharing so many germs because people all drink from the same cup, which even when there's not a pandemic, I just, I can't participate in that sort of thing. Speaker 0 00:57:43 Right. Wow. This has been a pretty downer episode. Um, Speaker 1 00:57:49 I had so many other downer stories, but we're approaching an hour. Speaker 0 00:57:52 Yeah. But we do. I mean, there is a vaccine now and the vaccine got approved in great Britain yesterday. It's set to be approved over the next couple of days in the United States. They already kind of have a plan of how they're going to distribute these. We have multiple vaccines that are coming online that are going to be available. The CDC estimates, every American that wants the vaccine will be able to receive it by the summer. So there is kind of a way forward in this, but it's an interesting question. I'd like to kind of ponder here at the end and kind of think about this is mask wearing post 19 eight pain temp. Pandemic does not become an American thing, right. We don't other, unlike some other countries in the world where mask wearing is a very common feature. Um, the United States, doesn't kind of the legacy of 1918 is not that whenever you're feeling a little sick or there illnesses going around, you put a mask on, we just don't do that. Do you think that's going to change? Speaker 1 00:58:56 I do think that because you see after, um, MERS and SARS and, and those sorts of respiratory illnesses that circulated in Asian countries and in the middle East, you do see people that were, that's just culturally, uh, common. You see a lot of Asian people who just mask when they go out places and a year ago you would see that and go, Oh, is that person sick? But now you understand, no, that person probably not sick. They don't want to get sick. Um, and I, I think that that could be a leftover thing. I mean, what I do hope carries over is like, I am so pumped to not be shaking hands. I'm very, very germaphobic and I love the not shaking hands that has been stellar for me, the six feet keep giving me my six feet. I love it. Um, so I, I do think that we'll have some leftovers of that. Speaker 1 00:59:47 And you know what, I also think, I think we're entering an age of illness of disease of spread. I mean, I think that this, I think COVID will continue to mutate. I mean, cause COVID-19, um, it it's based on, there are other Corona viruses, right? The common cold is a Corona virus. I mean, I'm sure most people know that by now, but I think that it will continue to mutate. And I think we will continue to want to limit our sickness as much as possible as these become more and more, um, as they become stronger and stronger, I guess. Um, and, and more and more deadly, I think that the masks will stay, but, but I don't know cause Americans, they want their freedom. So Speaker 0 01:00:37 Freedom isn't free, freedom, freedom. Uh, yeah. I, you know, it's, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Um, I do think that this, I think 2020 will be, as we talked about last time, we've talked a cup out a couple of times. I think it will be a year that has entire courses at the collegiate level offered at some point. Um, I think there'll be books. There'll be dissertations written about it in the future to try to kind of understand what was going on here and the kind of the complex interplays, because I think this is the thing, I, I think that if this pandemic had happened outside of an election year, I don't think mask wearing would have been politicized as it was. Speaker 1 01:01:26 I agree. I agree. And that, that is an interesting human, again, a human reaction where it's just a fascinating thing to look at how mask wearing became political and how you can go out basically to the store and see who voted which way. Speaker 0 01:01:46 Yeah. I would say this as somebody who's been around the sun a few times, um, I would say this, if you love grandpa and grandma stay home for the holidays. Yeah, Speaker 1 01:01:59 Yeah, yeah. And let you know what it's Speaker 0 01:02:05 Terrible. And I see parents, you know, my child, they're just not going to have a Christmas this year. It was like, yeah. You know what though? Um, children in Europe padded a lot harder during world war II than this. So fuck up, you always talk about how exceptional the United States is. Why don't we act like we are then? Speaker 1 01:02:27 Yeah, exactly. Why don't we lead the way and set the example, Speaker 0 01:02:32 Sacrifice our own kind of comfort and desires for the good of your fellow human being. Right. And that's not communism, that's just basic human decency is what that is. Exactly. Exactly. So I think if we got preachy enough here at the end, um, Speaker 1 01:02:52 Really quickly before we end though is make, um, make a pitch for our Patrion. We have a Patriot and what, you know, we could do, I mean, this, it helps fund us week to week to do this, to bring this content to you. If you like what you're hearing, if you can't find yourself to be a listener, please subscribe to our Patrion. You can subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or, um, you know, higher amounts depending on your ability to give, but also we can provide extra content, um, for people who are subscribers to our Patrion. I have some great stories about specific instances that happened in 1918. We could record, um, bonus materials for our subscribers. And we're also willing to take, um, recommendations. You know, if you want us to talk about a particular topic, we're more than happy to do that. Please reach out. Um, you can comment in our Instagram, you can send us an email. Um, and that's, that's kind of what my pitch wanted. I wanted to have that pitch today, um, for, for us, because we are in really weekly schedule and it does take up, um, quite a bit of our time to bring this content to you. So Speaker 0 01:03:56 Thanks Janice. And as academics. It's interesting. I should know too. I think people have a misperception of how much academics make, uh, neither Hillary nor I are full professors. So we're not making tons of money. Sorry about Biden's tax plan. Yes. Not my couch is so up to the wall of my house. Um, it's actually not, there's a bookshelf between the couch and the wall, but the pickouts is up next to the bookshelf, right? Yeah. It's it's um, yeah. So drop us a buck if you like the show and um, at the very least like give us a comment, let us know what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see, what you want to hear. Um, I don't think we're ready to unveil next week's topic yet. We're still kind of debating a couple of possibilities, but definitely join us next week for an incomplete history. I'm Jeff and I'm Hillary. Speaker 1 01:04:51 Thanks for joining Speaker 2 01:04:53 <inaudible>.