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How the 1918 Flu Spread Across America (2017)

smithsonianmag.com

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

#81

Post by pimeys »

arkades wrote: post #58
nostromo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panic is unwarranted. On the cruise ship, which is known for being full of old people, there were 3 deaths out of ~750 known cases. Almost everyone dying so far has had another medical issue or been very old. Reports now say that many people testing positive have no symptoms at all and aren't getting sick. There have been zero deaths of children so far, which is unlike the flu. The youngest death was in his mid 30s.…

> Almost everyone dying so far has had another medical issue or been very old I agree with not fomenting panic. However, "had another medical issue" means diabetes, which alone covers 11% of the US population, and has so far been associated with a mortality rate of about 8%. This likely includes at least one family member in more or less every US family. It's entirely reasonable to view that as a compelling reason to…

Would be interesting to know how the level of your treatment to diabetes affects your chances to die. I'm type 1, A1c under 6% and I do constant exercise. Is it worse with bad control, I haven't found an answer yet.

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

#82

Post by yodsanklai »

sadfev wrote: post #44

Here comes the fear mongering. We are far better equipped to handle epidemics and pandemics now than 100 years ago.

I wonder. I'm less worried about the handling of the pandemics than its impact on the globalized economy. I assume it was less an issue 100 years ago, and that we are not fully equipped to deal with this.

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

#83

Post by throwaway55554 »

wincy wrote: post #15
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…

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?

It can be regulated if it impinges upon my rights.

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

#84

Post by nostromo »

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…

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...

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

#85

Post by moultano »

yodsanklai wrote: post #71
bcrosby95 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel. It's probably a bit late for this stuff from a containment perspective. But it would help reduce the r0. Speaking personally, I have to decide by mid March if we should take our trip to Legoland in San Diego. Right now I'm leaning towards "no". And I don't imagine the outlook will be much better in just 2 weeks…

> I'm not sure why officials haven't come out suggesting things like this. And to avoid non-mandatory travel. Maybe because it's not needed yet? We are talking about a few cases in a country of 300+ millions inhabitants. Even if we assume that there are many unreported cases, we can still assume that the risk is extremely low. It's notoriously hard to assess probabilities of low events, so I would simply follow recom…

> so I would simply follow recommendations from experts, and so far my government hasn't emitted any specific restrictions (besides avoiding traveling to China and a few other places).

You are in a better position to assess your personal cost of WFH than the government is.

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

#86

Post by Macha »

nostromo wrote: post #84
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…

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...

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?

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

#87

Post by gshdg »

cmiles74 wrote: post #60
moultano wrote: post #13

For those of you reading this from the bay area, we already have suspected community transmission 50 miles away, in a town with a lot of people who commute to the Bay. If it's easy for you to work from home, consider doing so, giving explicit permission to your reports to do so, and asking your manager to give permission to their reports to do so. We're fortunate to be in an industry where WFH has relatively little c…

A friend of mine flew back from Japan yesterday. They were involved with providing food to the passengers quarantined on the Diamond Princess. He worked about an hour away from the cruise ship. This friend called the Center for Disease Control before flying back and asked them if he should do anything, like maybe quarantine himself in his home; they said no. No one questioned him when be boarded the plane to the stat…

They've already been on a plane with hundreds of other people flying to the US. If they're contagious, it's way too late to avoid spreading the disease. (Which is not to say they shouldn't continue to quarantine themselves -- just that flying was foolish if they were concerned about being a vector for introducing the disease to the US.)

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

#88

Post by tobltobs »

nostromo wrote: post #70
tobltobs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early Any sources for that theory?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

I am looking for

"The worst case scenario right now is that some people might lose their grandparents a couple years early"

in those numbers, but I can't find anything like this.

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

#89

Post by albroland »

sadfev wrote: post #44

Here comes the fear mongering. We are far better equipped to handle epidemics and pandemics now than 100 years ago.

It's not even a matter of being equipped to handle it imo; all signs also point to COVID19 not being as serious as initially thought and far more mild than expected.

Administrating the test for it is both expensive, and time consuming, so the gross number of known infections is likely to be substantially underreported because of selection bias (why run expensive RNA analysis on a blood sample if the person is having mild cold symptoms?). There are probably a bunch of other confounding factors, such as most people getting it are probably asymptomatic or just think they have a typical cold/flu. It also appears to be non-lethal to children, as opposed to seasonal influenza.

In simple gross numbers, more people die in car accidents every day than the current worldwide totality for this virus. Comparing against US CDC stats, it isn't even remotely close to statistical estimates for flu deaths so far this year in the US alone(~16k).

My suspicion is if you concede that gross numbers of COVID19 infections are substantially underreported, the death rates fall into line with typical flu, maybe marginally worse.

The reasonable response to this is what people should already be doing for influenza: practice good hygiene, stay home if you're sick, take caution when interacting with at risk populations to minimize their exposure, etc.

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

#90

Post by refurb »

Macha wrote: post #86
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...

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?

The belief is that it was disease related. Younger, healthier people have more active immune systems and the Spanish flu was causing it to kick into overdrive (similar to a cytokine storm).

I think the war definitely helped spread it as living conditions were rough and there was plenty of migration.

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