Matt’s Reviews > Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World > Status Update
Matt
is 8% done
When James Joyce wrote, in his thoroughly modern novel Ulysses (1922), ‘Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. Serum and virus’, he probably thought of a virus in much the same way as Azevedo had [that it is a venomous secretion].
JJ didn’t knew better, whereas the American President thinks that “the germ is so brilliant antibiotics can’t keep up with it.”
— Apr 12, 2020 11:35AM
JJ didn’t knew better, whereas the American President thinks that “the germ is so brilliant antibiotics can’t keep up with it.”
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Matt’s Previous Updates
Matt
is 76% done
In 2007, the CDC issued guidelines for how to ensure maximum compliance with public health measures in a pandemic [and] recommended that measures only be made mandatory when the proportion of the sick who die rises above 1 per cent. […] Using 2016 numbers, that means that more than 3 million Americans would have to die before the CDC would advise such a step […].
— Apr 18, 2020 11:03AM
Matt
is 37% done
Your best chance of survival was to be utterly selfish. Assuming that you had a place you could call home, the optimal strategy was to stay there (but not immure yourself), not answer the door (especially to doctors), jealously guard your hoard of food and water, and ignore all pleas for help.
— Apr 14, 2020 05:45AM
Matt
is 15% done
On 12 October, the day that the flu spread through the elegant guests at the Club dos Diàrios [in Rio de Janeiro], the satirical magazine Careta (Grimace) expressed a fear that the authorities would exaggerate the danger posed by this mere limpa-velhos – killer of old people – to justify imposing a ‘scientific dictatorship’ and violating people’s civil rights.
Sounds familiar 100 yrs later
— Apr 13, 2020 01:56AM
Sounds familiar 100 yrs later
