what a coincidence...

Rolf Steiner · Post by **Rolf Steiner** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 3:59 pm

this section should appear as I was just given as a pressy Max Arthur's 'Last Post - the final word from our first world war soldiers' - I should probably have read its predecessor first but nevertheless zipped thru it over a few days. Odd kind of read in its way possibly due to the patchiness of some of the old boys' recollections or maybe the continued reluctance to discuss what they went thru, but a very good read nonetheless.

one thing tho: somewhere it claims the 'flu epidemic of 1918 caused comparable death figures to the conflict itself???

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 4:57 pm

Worse. the bottom estimates I've seen start at 50 million deaths worldwide and go up. Fast.

Waleed Y. Majeed · Post by **Waleed Y. Majeed** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:05 am

I agree Phylo.
The "Spanish Flu" not only hit the countries
directly involved with the war but everyone everywhere!

http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/

waleed

Rolf Steiner · Post by **Rolf Steiner** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 1:13 pm

blimey, historically it never rains but it pours eh??

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Sun Jan 07, 2007 7:49 am

Strangely enough, the Flu "only" caused 400,000 deaths in France for example, and actually didn't have a very large social impact, unlike in the US - and after a chance comment in a french movie the other night I tracked down and found out why; in France - and probably in Britain too though I've found little mention of it all - the large camp hospitals used during the War for gas attack/respiratory victims were used to nurse the sick, the main symptoms being almost totally identical! lungs filling up with fluid/serum until the patient drowned in their own juices. The French had already nursed tens of thousands of victims of such.....!

Wolery · Post by **Wolery** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 5:22 pm

From what I read, the CDC is as scared of Spanish Flu getting in the hands of terrorists as smallpox. Spanish flu is one of the nastier pandemics the world's ever seen.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:31 am

And yet they've just gone and genetically recreated it to find out what made it so lethal! The results were published last friday. After all the theorizing, it turns out the mutant strain was SO lethal not from any of the normal Flu symptoms, but because it triggered a runaway immune response in the human body, leading to the fuid in the lungs and lethal congestion as the lungs filled up with serum....

....which means it now exists again in the laboratory. I wonder which of Murphy's Laws will result in it getting accidentally released......!

Rolf Steiner · Post by **Rolf Steiner** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 2:31 pm

Lex Luthor is eyeing that lab up even as we speak!

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:32 pm

Just as long as it isn't Lex Al-Luthor!!!

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:41 pm

Strangely enough, Wolery - it sounds like it had a huge global impact - but in percentages of overall population - it was a bump on the graph. Look for example at the original Black Death of 1348 - when the UK for example lost a QUARTER of its population! Comepletely changed the economic geography of England, and so weakened ALL European countries to the same extent...that Edward III decided France was weak enough that it was time to assert a few claims - leading to the original landing at Calais and the campaign that led to Crecy and the kick-off of the Hundred Years War!

Or the Mumps, Measles and and Common Influenza that denuded Central America in the wake of Cortez etc. - there something like 70% of the native population was wiped out in a few short years...if not months.

In return - we got Syphilis - that had a similar effect on the more "mobile" populations of late Medieval/Feudal Europe....soldiers! What now takes years to kill...took a maximum of six weeks when first released in a population with no naturally-builtup immunities. I'm not sure of the name, but the was around 1500 a King of France crossed into Italy with an army of 57,000 men, including the world's then-largest artillery train.....and watched it dissolve before his eyes courtesy of the camp whores!

The Spanish Flu Pandemic looks huge because it was the first such reported and recorded in the modern press and public consciousness.....but it had very little effect on political, economic or social development...except maybe feed America's Isolationism again!