Stay in Touch
Get sneak previews of special offers & upcoming events delivered to your inbox.
Sign in
02-03-2020 01:57 PM
Although some researchers argue that the 1918 pandemic began elsewhere, in France in 1916 or China and Vietnam in 1917, many other studies indicate a U.S. origin. The Australian immunologist and Nobel laureate Macfarlane Burnet, who spent most of his career studying influenza, concluded the evidence was “strongly suggestive” that the disease started in the United States and spread to France with “the arrival of American troops.” Camp Funston had long been considered as the site where the pandemic started until my historical research, published in 2004, pointed to an earlier outbreak in Haskell County.
02-03-2020 02:00 PM - edited 02-03-2020 02:01 PM
The next time you wear one of those face masks they want you to wear at the hospital or doctor's waiting room look to see where it is made, it is made in China. If you want to buy some from Amazon et cera most are made in China. This was only an FYI, interesting.
02-03-2020 02:01 PM
02-03-2020 02:16 PM
It's also a totalitarian country with quite precise control over individual behavior. So if the people there don't have access to properly run cities or to sanitation out in the countryside, that's the fault of their government elite, not them.
Some Asian Americans in the public eye have been reporting new hateful rhetoric being thrown at them in person and online. Like an Asian American vlogger (who was born here) was told to stop eating bats and go back to her own country. And she wasn't even Chinese American, which shouldn't matter anyway. The same folks who like to harrasss other groups of people have a brand new excuse and new material to sling at a fresh target. It's the same nasty people and the same nasty motivation.
02-03-2020 02:18 PM
In 1918 the world's deadliest influenza epidemic started in Kansas and then spread across the world.
Ground Zero in one of the world’s deadliest influenza pandemics started quietly, inconspicuously.
It was winter, 100 years ago. And it was here, in Kansas.
The virus began on the windswept Kansas prairie, where dirt-poor farm families struggled to do daily chores — slopping pigs, feeding cattle, horses, and chickens, living in primitive, cramped, uninsulated quarters.
T
The virus mutated along the way as men coughed and sneezed, spreading germs in Army barracks, then on trains across the nation and on ships to Europe. Within six to nine months, the 1918 influenza pandemic had killed at least 20 million people worldwide. Some reports said 40 million.
No one knows for sure what farm, what family may have first fallen ill. The community was most likely Santa Fe, now a ghost town in Haskell County, says Darlene Groth, curator at Haskell County Historical Society in Sublette.
What is known is that a Kansas country doctor — Dr. Loring Miner, who practiced in Haskell County — became concerned when he noticed this three-day flu wasn’t typical. It was an “influenza of the severe type,” he wrote, and hit young, strong and otherwise healthy people the hardest. He was the first to report to Public Health Reports —a publication of the U.S. Public Health Service — that this flu was a killer.
Dr. Miner could not have known that a perfect storm of circumstances was developing to rapidly spread the virus around the world. At any point, it could have lost its potency. But it didn’t — it kept building in strength like a wildfire each time large groups of people were forced into crowded situations in geographic centers around the world.
In the military
Camp Funston, at Fort Riley, was the largest training facility in the Army, full of makeshift non-insulated barracks, housing 250 soldiers each. It teemed with soldiers from all over the Midwest, training for duty in France.
“They trained over 50,000 troops at a time who all lived in close quarters. The Army was cognizant that it needed to help our French and British Allies out, so there was no questioning, they were sending troops out — soldiers were being sent that had flu-like symptoms,” said Robert Smith, supervisory curator for Fort Riley Museums.
Troops traveled by train from the Midwest to ports, then boarded ships bound for the war.
“Recruits were being shifted from camp to camp by the thousands and they were taking with them fatigue and it made for easy exposure. The infections and disease followed,” Smith said.
Along the way, the virus mutated, many times. It hit people in waves, becoming more virulent each time.
The first wave in the winter of 1918 was serious. The second wave — during the summer, when many of the soldiers were on the Western Front — was deadly, Smith said. The third wave came during the fall, when troops were returning.
“We gave it to our Allies and they gave it to our enemies,” Smith said.
02-03-2020 02:25 PM
pt 2
The Spanish flu
It was one of the greatest pandemics the world has seen, Smith said, even greater than the bubonic plague during the Middle Ages. It was nicknamed the Spanish Flu, the Spanish Lady and the Blue Death. Old-timers called it the grippe. German soldiers called it Flanders fever.
One in every four Americans caught it, and 12,000 Kansans died of it or its complications. There are few Kansas cemeteries that don’t hold victims of the 1918 flu.
Like other places, Kansas tried to stop it.
In early October of 1918, Dr. Samuel Crumbine, secretary of the state board of health, issued a statewide shutdown order to stop the spread of the disease. Visitors were barred from all state institutions, movie theaters were closed, and local authorities were told to discontinue public meetings. People were advised to keep their feet dry and try not to get chilled. Churches, schools, theaters were closed.
In Goessel, members of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church held funeral services outside the building for the flu victims in an attempt to avoid spreading the disease.
The Wichita Eagle published homework assignments from teachers and sermons of local ministers.
The Eagle reported that nearly 200 people died during October — more deaths in the city than had ever before been recorded in a single month.
d now
Could it happen again?
The short answer is yes.
What helps now — say medical historians — is that we have flu shots. They didn’t exist in 1918.
“The military takes the health of its soldiers very seriously and the civilians who work with them,” Smith said. “They make flu shots available to us. But the problem with the flu is that it mutates very rapidly and so while it can be one virus now, in a few months, it can mutate to a totally different type of flu.”
The 1918 flu was a strain known as H1N1. This year’s dominant strain is H3N2.
“Compared to the 1918 flu, this year is not that bad,” Amy Seery, Via Christi pediatrician and assistant professor at the KU School of Medicine Wichita. “Compared to 2009, this feels a little like that.”
The swine flu pandemic in 2009 was a hybrid of the H1N1.
02-03-2020 02:29 PM - edited 02-03-2020 02:32 PM
@cherry You are comparing 100 years ago,with now, in china ,big difference, and speaking about conditions over there ,is not being a bigot.
02-03-2020 02:33 PM - edited 02-03-2020 02:34 PM
Yes it is. It is blaming an entire population for a disease... Are we dirty, do we live disgustingly.? I doubt those homesteaders in Kansas were disgusting ,filthy people, either
This type of talk and attitude takes us right back into the dark ages...
02-03-2020 03:09 PM
@cherry wrote:Yes it is. It is blaming an entire population for a disease... Are we dirty, do we live disgustingly.? I doubt those homesteaders in Kansas were disgusting ,filthy people, either
This type of talk and attitude takes us right back into the dark ages...
No, that was back then, my gosh most had very little,worked sun up to sun down, ,never said they were dirty, they had no running water, and when they got sick many died,you are really comparing then,to now.
02-03-2020 03:29 PM
You need to read the last part of my article about it happening again, and the flu out breaks we have had since the Spanish flu..there is no defense for blaming an entire culture for a flu out break..It is certainly an unenlightened thing to do..I could even call it worse, but I already have, and I am sticking to it
Get sneak previews of special offers & upcoming events delivered to your inbox.
*You're signing up to receive QVC promotional email.
Find recent orders, do a return or exchange, create a Wish List & more.
Privacy StatementGeneral Terms of Use
QVC is not responsible for the availability, content, security, policies, or practices of the above referenced third-party linked sites nor liable for statements, claims, opinions, or representations contained therein. QVC's Privacy Statement does not apply to these third-party web sites.
© 1995-2024 QVC, Inc. All rights reserved. | QVC, Q and the Q logo are registered service marks of ER Marks, Inc. 888-345-5788