A century on, why are we forgetting the deaths of 100M? | Hacker News Reader

A century on, why are we forgetting the deaths of 100M?

theguardian.com

56 pointsindogooner24 comments

I fail to see how "we" are forgetting. I also fail to see how "something similar could strike again" is news, since it's a recurrent -scary- topic every flu season.

The 1918 flu outbreak is regularly in the news, especially when the flu season is about to start, and there have been some serious worries about a possible similar nasty flu version in the last past years.

Just last week, I read an article in a magazine about it. Among other things, it explained that the origin of the flu was probably not Spain, but they were "scapegoated" because nobody wanted to be held "responsible" for it.

That is not quite accurate. There was a war in progress at the time and news media was heavily censored. Spain was a neutral and did not censor their press. The Spanish press reported the early ravages of the illness while this news was censored in other countries; by the time it could no longer be hidden by the war powers it was already associated with Spain because that is where it was first reported. It was not about scapegoating or blame, just a consequence of how the public learned about the disease.

Somewhat off-topic: This reminds me of some compelling argument I've read about how the "Florida Man” meme is the result of Florida’s strong freedom of information laws. It’s interesting how the free flow of information/reporting can easily distort public perception when compared to places with more barriers.

I think we do forget it. More specifically, we forget the responses to disease which work, and as a result have dismantled our ability to respond. I read Laurie Garret's book "The Coming Plague" where she described the many things which were done to control the spread of disease. None of those things exist anymore, and would take a lot of time to re-create. No consideration is given to them in a "profit oriented" society, where return on investment is more important than people's lives.

> I fail to see how "we" are forgetting.

Anytime a journalist writes "we," you should read that as "we journalists." That has the nice advantage of subverting the rhetorical intent, and keeping the blood pressure low.

This is a cliche designed to close the outrage loop in a quick and satisfying way. There's a problem with most people, with a nice progressive solution, which you are already implementing, because you're a better person. End of story. Or, if you actually had forgotten or never knew, tada, the article has rescued you from the potentially embarrassing state of embodying what's wrong with the world.

I always found this possible correlation of the high mortality to aspirin to be interesting. If true the high mortality might have been a side effect due to the high dosages given during that time.

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/49/9/1405/301441

So where might the average American learn about a significant 20th century event like this? One might think, having been significant in terms of number of deaths or role in public health, that it would be covered in say, high school social studies or history class. But I suspect it gets at most a brief mention as a "Thing that happened in 1918." Much of what gets taught in public high schools is really with a theme of Manifest Destiny: the pioneers came and conquered, threw off the yolk of foreign royalty, sought to create freedom from sea to shining sea. Under that theme, the flu isn't something that could be beaten or conquered. It isn't some foreign menace that we can beat back with bombs. So, it doesn't get any coverage, it's really that simple.

Much of what gets taught in public high schools is really with a theme of Manifest Destiny: the pioneers came and conquered, threw off the yolk of foreign royalty, sought to create freedom from sea to shining sea

I think that's what people remember when they think back to their own history classes, because that's all they were prepared to assimilate and remember when they were teenagers. This comes up often when somebody learns about something horribly imperialist the United States did, or something horribly racist or otherwise corrupt that happened here. Their first reaction is, "Why didn't they teach us THAT in high school? It would have made history class so much more interesting and personally meaningful to me!" Of course they WERE taught that in high school, and odds are they had a nice idealistic teacher who did their best to help them personally connect with it, but it didn't make any impression on them because they were teenagers and didn't give a shit.

tl;dr They did teach you that and you were bored out of your skull and forgot it as fast as you could.

I disagree - my daughter is at this age now and I’ve reviewed the materials they cover. My mother was also a junior high history teacher for about fourty years, so I saw a lot of history textbooks. So while a datapoint of one, especially after reading books like “lies my teachers told me”, I’m pretty well convinced my data is not an outlier

* Because it was a century ago

* Because we have public agencies watching for this

* Because it's a rare event

We didn't forget. We dealt with it.

You're not wrong. But what people tend to mean is that for an event that killed so many people in the not really dim past, people as a whole are relatively unaware of it. It probably killed fewer than the Black Death (of a significantly larger population) but the number of victims was of the same order of magnitude.

But that's precisely because percentages are what matter, right? The Black Death wiped out a big chunk of Europe at the time (25% plus). While the Spanish Flu killed 100M people, the world simply was much larger 600 years later. Only Samoa was as badly hit (in percentage terms) by the flu as all of Europe was by the plague.

Lots of people got sick, and it was a worldwide pandemic, but the black death was much more deadly.

The BBC just did 'The Flu That Killed 50 Million' [1] – I watched it myself a couple of weeks ago

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0blmn5l/ad/the-flu-th... (I would guess UK only)

Could we somehow target the mechanism that makes viruses airborn, and since there's no real we would want viruses to have that quality(right?), and defeat all airborn viruses for good ?

People are the mechanism. Wear a mask.

Humans have a tremendous bias towards good stories with heroes and villains. World War II is a great story, and Hitler is a memorable villain who has come to symbolize evil. A flu outbreak is just a massive tragedy without anyone to take the blame. It doesn't survive as a story.

It's well known that acts of God cause much less long term stress in people than acts of people.

The flu was an act of God, and people easily moved on, unlike the other deaths mentioned there.

Act of God? What The Flu! Massing millions of young men in dirty trenches, no washing, no sleeping, extreme stress hence weakened immune systems, was the perfect breeding ground for the virus. I would leave God out of this if I were you, or it may cough in your general direction!

While I get your point, the grandparent is quite correct about why the Spanish Flu doesn't provoke the anxiety that, say, WWII does.

The human psyche is easily made comfortable with bad results if they don't appear to originate in human evil. Even when, as you correctly point out, it actually does.

It's summed up well by the Joker in the 2nd Christopher Nolan batman movie:

JOKER: You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! I just do things. The mob has plans. The cops have plans. Gordon's got plans. Y'know they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know I'm telling the truth. It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and, uh, look where that got you.

I just did what I do best. I took your little plan, and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets, hmm? You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even when the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I told the press that, like, a gang-banger would get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everybody loses their minds!

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