Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Pandemic 1918 > Status Update

‘The threat of pandemic flu is as severe as that of a terrorist attack. According to Professor Oxford, the impact of a flu pandemic in Great Britain would be the equivalent of blowing up a nuclear power station.31 The police, hospital staff and military and local authorities therefore conduct regular contingency exercises in preparation for such an event.’

‘Taubenberger subscribed to the theory that the virus provoked an auto-immune response known as a cytokine storm. Ironically, the healthier the patient, the more likely they were to die. The 1918 H5N1 produced a marked inflammatory response, causing secondary damage to the patients’ lungs. ‘It’s not the virus that kills you but your own body’s immune response,’ explained Taubenberger.’

‘That has stayed in my memory through all the years told of a little boy who, feeling the pinch of hunger, went to ask the butcher for some meat. He then asked the butcher how to cook it. The butcher asked why his mother wouldn’t be cooking it. The little boy replied that his parents had been asleep in bed for two days. The butcher accompanied the lad home to find that they were asleep permanently.’

This is a fascinating read but so awful. I wonder how I will feel if I re-read it again once everything going on right now is over. I wonder if I will feel as angry as I do now, there are so many similarities, yet we just repeat the same mistakes. I hope everyone reads this book.

‘Young men who had never experienced sea sickness before presented themselves to the sick bay and were admitted by inexperienced medics. Meanwhile, a stream of men with genuine flu symptoms were turned away for lack of space, and, so delirious that they were unable to find their way back to their own quarters, they simply laid themselves down on the deck.‘

‘In a strange twist on the concept of flu prevention, ‘vaudeville theaters were only allowed to be half full – members of the audience had to leave the seat on either side empty so that they would not breathe on one another. To further protect themselves many wore surgical masks, so that even when they laughed the sound was muffled.’’

‘Hundreds of teachers, unable to work since the schools had been closed, also volunteered; Archbishop Daugherty assigned 200 nurses from the Order of St Joseph to the emergency hospitals; Roman Catholic nuns worked at a Jewish hospital under the direction of a Doctor Cohen, while the St Vincent de Paul Society offered food, clothing and care, with its members prepared to dig graves if required.’

‘Until the epidemic, death had seemed kindly, coming to the very old, the incurably suffering or striking suddenly without the knowledge of its victims. Now, we saw death clutch cruelly and ruthlessly at vigorous, well-muscled young women in the prime of life. Flu dulled their resistance, choked their lungs, swamped their hearts . . . There was nothing but sadness and horror to this senseless waste of human life’

‘the cause of the summer outbreak in Britain and prevent further outbreaks later in the year, writing that he would be grateful for any help investigating the epidemic. One solution, Fletcher suggested, would be to control the numbers travelling by public transport, which had to be playing a part in spreading influenza across the entire country. But Newsholme remained indifferent to Fletcher’s pleas’

Had to read this after watching the BBC documentary The Flu That Killed 50 Million and with what is going on now. Seems like we never learn, we should have been prepared after what happened in 1918, yet we just have been repeating the same mistakes.