How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#121

Post by staticautomatic » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

jtdev wrote: post #29

jtdev wrote: post #7

“ Philadelphia had scheduled a big Liberty Loan parade for September 28. Doctors urged Krusen to cancel it, fearful that hundreds of thousands jamming the route, crushing against each other for a better view, would spread disease. They convinced reporters to write stories about the danger. But editors refused to run them, and refused to print letters from doctors. The largest parade in Philadelphia’s history proceede…

To add a little context: I’m currently scheduled to attend a ~50000 attendee international conference in the U.S. My employer has sponsored - and I’m not in a position to refuse to attend (yet). The host org is standing firm on pushing forward as scheduled, but has released a bunch of PR B.S. communications about hand sanitizer, face masks, etc. being provided and quarantine of symptomatic individuals at the event (n…

Quarantine? A non-governmental person/entity doesn't have legal power to detain anyone in the U.S., including for the purpose of quarantining them. See https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...

The only way you could legally be physically detained in quarantine at a conference would be by a sworn offer (e.g. a police officer) acting on a government order.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#122

Post by macintux » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #115

macintux wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP Pence has been given veto authority over all messaging, and the CDC’s funding in this area was gutted early in the administration.

The CDC's funding was not gutted in that area, that's a false propaganda point being shoveled by several prominent Democrats. Trump attempted to push cuts through and failed, fortunately. > AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness > Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts…

You’re correct that funding wasn’t impacted. I was wrong about that.

However he did indeed cut the people tasked to deal with pandemics.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump...

> But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.

> In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#123

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

jtdev wrote: post #29

jtdev wrote: post #7

“ Philadelphia had scheduled a big Liberty Loan parade for September 28. Doctors urged Krusen to cancel it, fearful that hundreds of thousands jamming the route, crushing against each other for a better view, would spread disease. They convinced reporters to write stories about the danger. But editors refused to run them, and refused to print letters from doctors. The largest parade in Philadelphia’s history proceede…

To add a little context: I’m currently scheduled to attend a ~50000 attendee international conference in the U.S. My employer has sponsored - and I’m not in a position to refuse to attend (yet). The host org is standing firm on pushing forward as scheduled, but has released a bunch of PR B.S. communications about hand sanitizer, face masks, etc. being provided and quarantine of symptomatic individuals at the event (n…

[deleted]

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#124

Post by newhere2020 » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

jtdev wrote: post #29

jtdev wrote: post #7

“ Philadelphia had scheduled a big Liberty Loan parade for September 28. Doctors urged Krusen to cancel it, fearful that hundreds of thousands jamming the route, crushing against each other for a better view, would spread disease. They convinced reporters to write stories about the danger. But editors refused to run them, and refused to print letters from doctors. The largest parade in Philadelphia’s history proceede…

To add a little context: I’m currently scheduled to attend a ~50000 attendee international conference in the U.S. My employer has sponsored - and I’m not in a position to refuse to attend (yet). The host org is standing firm on pushing forward as scheduled, but has released a bunch of PR B.S. communications about hand sanitizer, face masks, etc. being provided and quarantine of symptomatic individuals at the event (n…

Same conference, similar position. "45,000 healthcare professionals from 90 countries" Absolutely crazy. Might there be a public outcry if the citizens of Orlando were made aware of it?

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#125

Post by js2 » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

MrGilbert wrote: post #117

js2 wrote: post #36

While doing ancestry research years ago, I learned I had a 2nd great uncle who immigrated to America from Romania aboard the RMS Carpathia in 1904. (Eight years later in 1912, this would be the first ship to come to the Titanic’s rescue, and six years after that would itself be sunk by a U-Boat.) He had left Romania likely to escape anti-semitism. He’d eventually find his way out to Denver. Sadly, he’d die in 1918 (t…

I'm impressed how far back you've managed to come in your history. An uncle of mine did something similiar some 20 years ago. He managed to get to the point by the end of 1890 where we realized that our grand-grandfather was a Kuckuckskind [1] - and part of our family immigrated to the US. [1]: A "Kuckuckskind" (German for "cuckoo's child") is a child who's social father is not their biological father. However, this…

I did most of my research just using ancestry.com. The U.S. censuses and NY state censuses are gold for this kind of thing.

My ancestry is from Romania, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. I haven't been able to track back into Eastern Europe except for Poland, where a relative hired a professional genealogist who managed to go back to the 1700s. I have no way to verify that information is accurate. On the Romanian branch, I have third cousins who only immigrated to the US as adults and we were able to piece together some bits from photos and postcards that were passed down.

At some point, I'd like to figure out the provenance of my surname (Soffian). Typically names ending in "ian" are Armenian, but I'm fairly confident the Soffian branch of my ancestry is from Ukraine. (Armenia never had much of a Jewish population so it would be unlikely.)

I have a friend who tracked his ancestry into English royalty. He's got a tree with over 10,000 names on it.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#126

Post by Seenso » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #104

nostromo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the 1918 flu was unique in that it killed many young, healthy people. Corona virus is more typical in that it's primarily killing the very old or otherwise ill. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

There were two waves to the Spanish Flu. Wave 1 started like the standard flu - it was mild, hitting mostly the old and ill, and not terribly deadly. Wave 2 is when it mutated, spread like wildfire, and killed 2% of the world population. From what I can tell they aren't completely sure what happened here. One theory I read is that WW1 reversed the trend of what happens with flu: if you had mild symptoms, you stayed o…

>> It's worth noting that the 1918 flu was unique in that it killed many young, healthy people.

> There were two waves to the Spanish Flu. Wave 1 started like the standard flu - it was mild, hitting mostly the old and ill, and not terribly deadly. Wave 2 is when it mutated, spread like wildfire, and killed 2% of the world population.

That's sounds similar to the 1977 swine flu. It mainly infected people in their 20s or younger, because it was likely a lab escape of a then-extinct 1950s flu strain. Older people were unaffected because they had already acquired immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542197/

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#127

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #45

wincy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the USA at least, wouldn't imposing a ban rather than a recommendation be a violation of the Constitutional right to freedom of assembly?

Legal eagle did a video on Youtube that came out yesterday that seemed to suggest that the government has leeway in cases of pandemics (sort of like in wartime) that it wouldn't have otherwise. It might technically be unconstitutional under some readings of it, but SCOTUS might rule that it's warranted.

Basically: "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#128

Post by jtdev » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

staticautomatic wrote: post #121

jtdev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a little context: I’m currently scheduled to attend a ~50000 attendee international conference in the U.S. My employer has sponsored - and I’m not in a position to refuse to attend (yet). The host org is standing firm on pushing forward as scheduled, but has released a bunch of PR B.S. communications about hand sanitizer, face masks, etc. being provided and quarantine of symptomatic individuals at the event (n…

Quarantine? A non-governmental person/entity doesn't have legal power to detain anyone in the U.S., including for the purpose of quarantining them. See https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin... The only way you could legally be physically detained in quarantine at a conference would be by a sworn offer (e.g. a police officer) acting on a government order.

HIMSS is using the word "isolated" [1]. HHS defines "isolation" and "quarantine" as the following [2]:

"Isolation is used to separate ill persons who have a communicable disease from those who are healthy. Isolation restricts the movement of ill persons to help stop the spread of certain diseases. For example, hospitals use isolation for patients with infectious tuberculosis.

Quarantine is used to separate and restrict the movement of well persons who may have been exposed to a communicable disease to see if they become ill. These people may have been exposed to a disease and do not know it, or they may have the disease but do not show symptoms. Quarantine can also help limit the spread of communicable disease."

Seems like the only real distinction is in terms of whether on not you're currently ill, but fundamentally they both restrict movement.

From HIMSS [1]: "Screening procedures established by the CDC will be conducted on site throughout the conference; HIMSS and the Orange County Convention Center will consult health teams at Orlando Health when necessary.

Should screening reveal an elevated risk for an attendee, the person will be isolated immediately to prevent exposure to conference participants."

[1] https://www.himssconference.org/updates/himss-update-coronav...

[2] https://www.hhs.gov/answers/public-health-and-safety/what-is...

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#129

Post by dnautics » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

certmd wrote: post #91

Macha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that was down to the disease, compared to the conditions that "young, healthy" people would have been subjected to during a world war?

From the article (as well as other places I've read similar things). "Why did so many young adults die? As it happens, young adults have the strongest immune systems, which attacked the virus with every weapon possible—including chemicals called cytokines and other microbe-fighting toxins—and the battlefield was the lung. These “cytokine storms” further damaged the patient’s own tissue." The more robust immune respon…

Iirc from my time as a biologist, we don't have any direct evidence that a cytokine storm happened and there seem to be other possible explanations for that distribution.

Re: How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

#130

Post by peterwoerner » Fri, Feb 28, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

MrGilbert wrote: post #117

js2 wrote: post #36

While doing ancestry research years ago, I learned I had a 2nd great uncle who immigrated to America from Romania aboard the RMS Carpathia in 1904. (Eight years later in 1912, this would be the first ship to come to the Titanic’s rescue, and six years after that would itself be sunk by a U-Boat.) He had left Romania likely to escape anti-semitism. He’d eventually find his way out to Denver. Sadly, he’d die in 1918 (t…

I'm impressed how far back you've managed to come in your history. An uncle of mine did something similiar some 20 years ago. He managed to get to the point by the end of 1890 where we realized that our grand-grandfather was a Kuckuckskind [1] - and part of our family immigrated to the US. [1]: A "Kuckuckskind" (German for "cuckoo's child") is a child who's social father is not their biological father. However, this…

Americans have the same thing, the man is who thinks he is the father is called a cuckold. The term is used predominantly by less savory corners of internet who have broadened its use.