Dakota Beacon

World War I was called the “Great War”.  No conflict in modern history had involved so many or resulted in so many deaths.  Some 20 million died in that war. When the war ended in November of 1918, our American soldiers came home.  With them came the deadly influenza which was killing thousands throughout Europe.  Rumors had been spreading that it was the “Huns”, the evil Germans and Austrian governments which had caused it.  In truth, this flu was crippling the armies of the Kaiser as much as it was the Allies.   Estimates of its death count were from 50 million to 100 million.

According to one source, the first recorded case of what became known as the “Spanish Flu” was actually on a military base in Kansas.  No one knew back then how deadly it would turn out to be.  My sisters-in-law were stricken with it in 1918, and fortunately, being young, they  recovered. Some did.

As the war effort proceeded here in the United States much of it was funded by war bonds.  Bond drives became a way ordinary Americans helped in the effort and got in on the excitement and showed their patriotism.  Mega parades were organized with soldiers and sailors from the military and naval bases marching through the great cities of America, Boston, Philadelphia.  Men selling the bonds would milk the teeming crowds lining the streets. Some medical experts, alarmed, tried to get these called off. President Wilson was asked by worried doctors to stop the bond drive events, the rallies and parades.  It was to no avail. He wanted the patriotic shows and the bond sales. The “war effort” outweighed public health concerns. The result of the carelessness and ignorance of people who made these fatal decisions was a pandemic that ultimately killed, by some reckonings, 100 million men, women and children throughout the world.  Almost no hamlet in the remotest regions of the earth was immune. Wilson, himself, became infected in Paris at the peace negotiations. It is said he was never the same afterwards, and it wasn’t for the better. One could say that 100 million were killed by the arrogance of the people they foolishly trusted to safeguard their countries and protect them from harm.  

I just read a couple of articles about this deadly phenomenon of 1918.  They aren’t contemporary, actually, they were both written long before this epidemic - one on the centennial, two years ago and one a year before that, so they are not “political” - they are historically factual accounts.  It is interesting because two years ago, long before Coronavirus became a thing, an account of the same folly of over-confidence and bluster that drove various mayors of our great cities to expose their people to a deadly disease and an idiotic president to order the continuation of events which were custom-made to spread illness, is apparent right now.  Indeed, you could almost just change the names and dates and have today’s news.

One really hates to pile on Rush Limbaugh.  He has a battle of his own right now and it almost seems wrong to attack him, but yet, he was right there on the radio anyway, telling his millions of listeners - who have inordinate faith in the truth of every word he utters - that coronavirus is a seasonal cold, that it is a stunt by the Democrats to ruin Trump and we shouldn’t fall for it.  So go on - go to the mass concerts, the sporting events, the rallies. It’s all a hoax. Except it really isn’t.  

We don’t know yet how deadly this will be.  For one thing, it seems to have gotten started in China, which is famous for clamping down on the news and managing it, letting out only what it thinks will benefit China and its elite leadership (not its people).  So we hear little about it. We find out more as it spreads. It is a telltale fact that Iran has become a major source now, which reveals how much back-and-forth there apparently is between Iran and Communist China.  

Israel is working on a vaccine and may be near to a breakthrough, which is not surprising inasmuch as they are very, very good at medical research and modern technology.  (That is why antisemite Jimmy Carter went to Israel for his life-saving brain surgery.) Of course this immediately draws fire - “They obviously ‘made’ the virus! They had the cure all along!” , which is nonsense.  The Israelis really aren’t a big presence in Wuhan. But such is the reaction when they do something good for humanity.

Since we know so little about Coronavirus, there wouldn’t be much point in writing about it here, except that this is the season of political rallies throughout the US.  It is also coming on to Spring Break, that jolly time when college campuses empty their students into the party culture of the Caribbean and Mexico, all flying across the country, maybe just home to visit family, maybe for a week-long boozer somewhere.  But they’ll all be flying, standing about in airports and other crowded places full of germs and viruses. And President Trump was foolish enough - yes, President Trump who should have been on the job - to allow an underling in the State Department to throw open our doors to the spectre by importing infected Americans from China and Japan, just as the mayors of Boston and Philadelphia did in 1918.  He also is out there at rallies, attracting thousands of people into close contact, like the parades to sell war bonds. He says it's “perfectly safe” just as Wilson did. Will we be stupid? People in 1918 can be excused - they literally didn’t know what was about to hit them. They found out.

One ominous difference between the Spanish Flu and the Coronavirus is that apparently the Spanish Flu was very fast-acting.  You were exposed and quickly developed symptoms. You didn’t get far before you knew you were very sick. With the current virus, it does not produce symptoms for a long period of time.  In addition, one is contagious even without the symptoms. So you can be exposed at an airport, say, at Christmas and get together with friends and family and weeks later you are sick and all the time you were socializing with others and you had no idea and neither did they, that you were exposing them.  

Michael Savage is on record blasting Rush Limbaugh.  One hates to - after all, Limbaugh just revealed his own life-threatening health issues and we don’t wish him anything less than full recovery, but here he is effectively putting others’ health at risk.  Where is his sense of civic responsibility? Is he really that arrogant? And all along most of us thought it was just an act. And what of Trump? He is a president. What is he thinking? He has entrusted the matter to Mike Pence, who is, in turn, leaving it up to God, it seems.  Mike Pence is not an epidemiologist. We should certainly encourage prayer and pray along with him, but is he the guy to handle this? Not even a medically trained guy like Ben Carson, perhaps? Maybe Trump should dig deeper. Maybe if he goes into the personnel files looking for a competent person to handle this mess he will find more people he should fire, like Dr. William Walters, the man who imported the disease from China itself and pats himself on the back for a job well done.  

We should not panic.  But we should be cautious, we should be vigilant.  And we should definitely not listen to Democrats who are railing that we should hold open our borders to floods of migrants from all over.  Trump congratulates himself on stopping a limited number of points of entry. It was not enough. It was the proverbial screen door on the submarine.  And meanwhile he set a terrible example by flying to India and rallying there. He has definitely mishandled this and he is, to all appearances, going to continue to do so, enticing his loyal fans in their little red hats to his monster rallies, soaking up the admiration and the cheers, taking delight in his own bon mots.  But in the end, we might find out that this was a huge mistake.

I hope that this will all wind down, that the virus will wither away and no more cases will be reported and that the death rate isn’t as bad as “scare mongers” predict.  We really don’t know and much will have to be learned later because of China’s antisocial system of government (the system they were congratulated for on the 70th anniversary by someone we know).  We can safely say that Coronavirus is not a “hoax” being perpetrated by Democrats to make Trump look bad. He can do that without any help from Democrats. How he handles things is up to him, he is not a victim of a Democrat flu hoax.  Besides, everything the Democrats say would be counter-intuitive to combating an epidemic. Open the borders? Really???

The pandemic which swept  the world at the end of and during WWI had the perfect setting - unhygienic conditions in trenches, large numbers of people crowded into mass hospital wards, travel from places where the infection was rampant into American and other ports and large cities.  At least the Spanish Flu didn’t have the advantage of air travel. Today’s illnesses can be spread instantaneously through air travel. College towns will have exposure if we allow travellers to return from outside the country without quarantine, and this will be the case with students on break.    The intelligent thing to do would be to close schools before they are hit. But that, you see, would be considered dumb. And the school districts would lose their state funding and in military impact cities, their federal funds. Can’t do that! So wait until it is too late and then close them. Smart.  We have a slight advantage - we can see what is happening in other parts of the world before we see it here, so one would think we’d be able to stem it or avoid it. It seems, though, that the people most of us listen to aren’t that smart.  

In the meantime, much as I hate to say it, everyone should arm himself with anti-bacterial products, avoid community foods (like pizza in a box at a party or a political event), avoid people who are coughing, eschew shaking hands for awhile, stay out of crowds (which includes rallies) and do your communicating by phone and computer instead, catch up on your reading, perhaps, instead of hanging out with friends.  And quit taking public health advice from the president or his favorite talk show host, neither of which has a clue what they’re talking about. 

The current “flu” season is near its end, but we can expect that about October or November it will hit with full force unless something is found in the meantime to combat it.   Michael Savage has a few suggestions. Panic won’t help but maybe an intelligent level of caution will. 

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