God be with you till we meet again (1918) | Hacker News Reader

God be with you till we meet again (1918)

lettersofnote.com

284 pointsportobello116 comments

Question, about this part of the letter: "I have four day nurses and five night nurses (female) a ward-master, and four orderlies".

Does anyone know why it was important to point out they were female? Were army nurses typically male?

Anyways, I'm reading about the 1918 flu a lot lately and came upon parts of this text multiple times. I'm still not sure if it's making me more or less paranoid about Covid-19, but it's definitely fascinating.

I'm sure if we start a Twitter storm about it, we can get him cancelled. /s

Personally I think it was just observational, perhaps they were the only women in the place, so they were the exception. From what I know, historically nurses have been mostly female - but would be interested to find out if this was different.

Yup that was my understanding as well. Not sure why I'm being downvoted, it was a genuine question lol

People are positively petrified of anything that even uses the same words as politically incorrect speech.

I wonder how well this approach is going to survive the current pandemic?

I mean, is it me, or the amount of posts calling to get someone cancelled subsided?

Are you kidding me? Look at the current hash tags on twitter. Miserable people never stop.

The canary I'm watching is the whole "Chinese" or "Wuhan" vs. "COVID" virus naming issue.

I think it is very clearly not the right time to point fingers. But when this is all past us, a post-mortem and finger pointing is probably warranted. I don't think we need to resort to name calling, but I'm curious to see how much people bend over backwards to absolve China of responsibility.

I think the most evenhanded answer would be to use the correct names (SARS-CoV-2 for the virus, Sars 2 for short, COVID-19 for the disease, Covid for short) while freely reminding people that China's initial cover-up was a necessary condition for the present global crisis.

While these are all correct and proper, everyone I know is on first terms with it and so we all call the virus and the disease Corona.

While I think that's a valid point to make. My perspective on that is that, given contradicting reports and initial confusion, you can't fault any organization or person not picking out the correct response in the total state space. Hindsight and all that.

I think a much more powerful complaint is pointing out that, despite numerous warnings, studies, SARS, and having successfully isolated the root cause of the SARS outbreak (Civets). Only four months later these animals were back on the menu. The government made a rational choice to allow the conditions for the current situation to exist. The whole world is paying the price for this rational, prolonged and often pointed out mistake. That, I think, is a complaint we can lay wholly on the government.

>My perspective on that is that, given contradicting reports and initial confusion, you can't fault any organization or person not picking out the correct response

You can fault an authoritarian, oppressive regime for covering up the virus and suppressing whistleblowers. Now the world is paying for the CCP's SOP.

As an American, I was really disappointed in the CDC response. Even in the initial confusion, it's their fundamental job to prepare for and monitor these crises. Despite SARS and MURS, they still weren't prepared on a basic level to confront a respiratory disease (no meaningful stockpile of N95 masks or ventilators nor plans for ramping up production of the same) and then the whole debacle with the CDC vs WHO tests. The experts seem to be saying that tests are the most important aspect of the response and we botched that royally; only recently has our testing capacity begun to trend toward adequate (failing to address this sooner means the loss of life is exponentially greater). Note that these failures are independent of whatever initial confusion there may have been about this particular disease.

And I don't think this is a simple case of hindsight: we've had several respiratory epidemics in the last couple of decades and we were still caught unprepared.

I'm no expert and perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for all of this, but I suspect it was really negligence to the tune of thousands of American lives and who knows how much economic damage.

The maddening part is that we had the capability to deal with this and the systematically destroyed it.

There was a stockpile, but it was allowed to be depleted. There was a pandemic response team, but they got laid off. Hell, the Obama-Trump transition teams even wargamed this exact scenario but it wasn't taken seriously.

On our priority list, containing the virus is way higher than making sure China takes responsibility (how is this even a debate?), but the US Executive branch leader (and everyone who follows that lead) has a major priority inversion.

The virus will be contained at some point, and then we can talk about responsibility. If China's policy on wildlife led to this pandemic, then they absolutely deserve to be shamed into changing their policies (permanently this time). They knew better.

Sure, but that shouldn't be used to dodge responsibility in other areas, like the abysmally slow response in many countries including the USA.

Amusingly, if you look at the talk section [1] of the Wikipedia article on the Spanish flu, some folks really (suddenly, recently, completely by coincidence) want to call it the 1918 flu.

There's no con job like a retcon job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spanish_flu

Seems fair enough:

> To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII, and these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit. This gave rise to the pandemic's nickname, "Spanish flu". Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic's geographic origin, with varying views as to the origin.

It's not like we call syphilis "French pox" any more.

Lyme disease, Ebola, et al would like to have a word.

Ebola is actually named that to avoid naming it after a specific village, to reduce the stigma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704633

Lyme disease was around in humans long before its identification in Old Lyme, CT, so it too is an inaccurate name.

(We've also learned a few things since the 1970s, let alone 1918. Now, we have a standard: https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the-deadl...)

Marburg.

"Marburg virus was first described in 1967."

And shall we rename it?

Marburg's name is at least accurate.

There are two separate issues here: Place-based names cause a stigma (an issue for new diseases, less so for historical ones) and that "Spanish flu" is actually completely wrong on the origins of that specific disease.

So why the timing to rename it? Why now?

I am asking that because you did not address it in my original comment, so I am going to harp on it again. Why now?

Why not?

It was a global pandemic that didn't even start in Spain. We happen to be paying a lot of attention to it because it's the last really global pandemic of similar severity/spread to the COVID-19 outbreak. The increased attention to this little bit of history has us asking whether we should correct the inaccuracy in its name.

Even the CDC calls it the "1918 flu pandemic". https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoratio...

Not as a reaction to COVID-19, either: "Page last reviewed: March 21, 2018"

That isn't what I was asking. I asked, why now. What about this instance in time has prompted this? Also, I was talking about Wikipedia. Please do not move the goalposts on me.

I guess the Socratic method isn't going to work here.

Bluntly put, some folks are full Ministry-of-Truthing away at Wikipedia to help justify their attempts at erasure of the "Wuhan flu," China connection. That's why it is happening now. "See, we don't call it the 'Spanish flu,' so why should we call it ..."

It's terribly skeezy.

You’re reading a lot of malice into “let’s call it what the CDC called it two years before all this”.

The timeline doesn’t work.

I demand we stop naming hurricanes after people. I don't know how to handle a reality where my first name is associated with a bad thing.

We actually do exactly that: we retire hurricane names for being associated with a bad one.

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

Not what the poster asked for. We actually don't do that.

"Spanish" Flu is not derogatory when used in the context of explaining the Spanish press were progressive and free to report on their surroundings without gov oppression.

Unlike the rest of world, who were covering up their military losses due to illness.

Yeah. The only illness called by a place where it didn't start or was discovered. Totally fair.

I don't know, now seems like a great time to point fingers at the small percentage of the Chinese population that is obsessed with eating weird shit like pangolin(probably the same people who are driving certain African wildlife extinct as well). Or that the authoritarian government cover up of the virus helped take it from a local emergency to a global pandemic.

No one has any issues saying that the US bungled the early stages of response for coronavirus.

Let's not give racists any opportunities here. Calling it China virus or similar does exactly that, while confusing people with yet another name for this virus.

The Chinese government needs to be called out, but specifically and unambiguously the government.

The government can only do so much to change culture, though, right?

It needs to be made unambiguously clear that you do not eat or recreationally touch bat or pangolin. Government needs to outlaw it yes, and culture also need to shun it.

As another example the Chinese slaughter of endangered species and sharks is a failure of both government and culture. I'm not sure there is a totally PC way to express that.

All of this is done by a small percent of people but they need to be educated or shamed into compliance. We don't have to allow bad behavior because it could be un-PC to call it out.

Yes, that's true. There is a cultural element that is to blame as well. My point is that the term "China virus" is not the right way to place blame where blame is due. There will be a lot of collateral damage if it becomes popular.

The government can only do so much to change culture, though, right?

The Chinese government is famous for having done it.

Explains the “playing the straight man” story recently in another thread.

Is this going to go away with the virus?

Often a valid tangentialy comment gets rightly downvoted simply because its current vote total puts it higher on the page than more relevant comments.

Don't read anything into downvoting, especially soon after your comment is posted. Give it time to settle out.

This gives me a cert warning, but it quotes something in a way that implies that may have been sort of the formal designation: Nurses Corps (female)

https://history.amedd.army.mil/ANCWebsite/articles/malenurse...

I've googled around a bit and when Florence Nightingale did her thing, it was mostly male nurses in the military. By early 1900s, this had changed, at least in the US, and most nurses were female.

Thanks, I suppose that might have been why indeed!

Is he referring to the ward-master? Which maybe is more often male?

> It is salutary to remember that we do not really understand why the devastating pandemic of 1918-19 was so severe, and that we cannot therefore be confident that our modern medical measures would succeed against a similar future challenge.

From the introduction to the letter in the British Medical Journal published 1979. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1599810/pdf/brm...

This still seems to be the case for Covid-19.

Could it be that very dangerous viruses emerge more often, but only when they fall on "(very) fertile ground", that they then spread? The WW1-circumstances (a lot of men together on small space and harsh conditions) have contributed a lot, that the "spanish flu" spread, while others did not spread and so never became known to us ?

Here's a study that exactly goes into your question:

https://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/epi/oxford05.pdf

The conclusion of that article is that the basic lessons we learn today, were - in part - learned in 1918...

Back then, researchers had already traced the emergence of outbreaks to an encampment in France where men and animals were living in close quarters and unsanitary conditions.

As to the first part of your question, the answer is that more people encroaching on the animal and wildlife territory while not adhering to basic sanitary practices will increase the chance of new strains appearing and making the jump to humans.

Vox did an excellent video on how this works for Corona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54

Such events do not only happen in China in particular but they can happen virtually anywhere in the world.

Another ongoing pandemic is HIV/AIDS. Well, it is generally accepted that the jump to humans occurred in West-Africa in the 1920's. But it took time and globalization - increasing mobility - before HIV finally spread across the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

May be a complete digression but it's much easier for me to believe the virus escaped from Wuhan Virology Institute than made the jump from a fish market.

There's a hypothesis that the Spanish Flu originated in China and was brought to North America with the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...

It could also be that cytokine storms were not known in 1979. The source I see on wikipedia is for 1991, but you can read the article if you like. [1]

This is what essentially causes the "W" curve as opposed to Covid-19's "J" curve.

Edit: Also as opposed to normal flu's "V" curve.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome

I found a newspaper message from the 19th century that described a flu that gave pneumonia and undertakers hadn’t seen anything like it since the Cholera epidemics, this article was from Spain around 1840’s.

do you have a copy?

I have, but it is old Dutch. Don’t know if that is of help... I am still going through the archives for older mentions.

Can you provide specific dates to try and find something in Spanish?

Wikipedia says there were three outbreaks 1833 and 1834, then in 1855:

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemias_de_c%C3%B3lera_en_Es...

Edit: it seems I misunderstood. The original comment didn't talk about cholera, but used it as a comparison.

True, it was under the header “news from Spain” , I added a translation.

Facinating. There's a lot of Dutch people here. Some might want to translate

Old Dutch is actually a lot like Old English, they’re both sister languages. Supposedly speakers of those languages were able to (mostly) understand each other, similarly to a dialect.

That's Old in the sense of the first millennium AD. This is "old" in the sense of two hundred years ago. Very different.

Old English is not similar enough to English for English speakers to understand, so this isn't particularly helpful.

https://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/hel/orosius.html

https://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/hel/chron.html

The article states under the header “news from Spain” : “In the last days a terrible [amount of] dying has transpired that the gravediggers state that they have no recollection [of such a thing] since the Cholera. Most people die of lung and chest complications that follow from the flu.” 27-01-1848

I added a translation in this thread.

Does anyone know what happened to the doctor? Did he make it out ok?

This would be quite hard to discover bar someone having access to army records of that time or having a family connection, I think. Not only has more than a century passed, there's also the issue of the letter simply being signed "(Sgd) Roy". Roy isn't that uncommon of a first or last name.

One fact that could help the search is in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703434

If, indeed, the Burt that the letter is addressed to has the surname Bouell or worked with someone named Bouell, that could help narrow things down substantially. If Burt is found, the Roy in question could be found as well.

Just a usage note for grammar/spelling obsessed. Is the usage of till correct? Yes it is.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%27til

Thanks for sharing. I'm a complete etymology nerd and myself had no idea.

Indeed. “Until” is originally a compound of “till” (prefixed), so “till” came first.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/until

What does "Keep the Bouells open" mean?

Might be "keep the bowels open"? A very medical greeting, so would be fitting here...

Unless it's something specific between them, perhaps it means to keep the heart open, to stay in kindness and compassion. Which would be a traditional, positive thing to say to a dear friend at the end of a letter. Or a physician joke between them, alternatively.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/bowel

KYBO is a common acronym in Scouting.

"Keep Your Bowels Open"

Whether Bouells is a typo or pun I don't know.

But what does it mean/come from?

It literally means to make sure you avoid getting constipated.

Bowel seems to originate from old French “Bouel,” which I guess are related?

Since "Bouell" isn't a word, but it is a name, and "Bouells" is a plausible misspelling of "bowels", it could be a pun connecting the two. (medical bowel care and a person named Bouell)

So, going beyond the depressing, I think one good thing that will come out of all this since this situation isn't experienced in any of our lifetimes (including our elders) we have to reach back to history to find comparisons. Maybe this will spark a curiosity in history!

There's a number of really great history channels on YouTube; I particularly like "The Armchair Historian".

Hundreds of hours in eu4 and wikipedia will do the trick too haha

Thousands* of hours in EU4 where you listen to an immersive playlist æsthetic to the nation/region you're playing and spend 80% of the time paused and reading Wikipedia about said nation/region.

Relevant combos:

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

https://youtu.be/NpCCYadZCNQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_crosses_(Brugherio)#Bac...

https://youtu.be/BNnrRGNR0Ok

I'm more of a heavy metal EU4 player actually haha! I'm not a big fan of the cultural music while I'm playing but for some reason heavy metal just amps me up when I'm playing that game. It's (obviously) Sabaton, Black Label Society, Iron Maiden, and Rammstein most of the time. Otherwise I'll have hip hop or deutschrap on. If I'm in the HRE, it's most definitely deustchrap lol.

An historian on Twitter suggested people should keep journals of how COVID-19 affects their everyday lives.

I've been doing it as a method of self-reflection, and found it really valuable. I end up not just enumerating the changes to my life, but exploring how I am responding to them, trying to describe how they're affecting me emotionally, etc.

It's just for me, so I don't worry about missing days or being dramatic, or writing in an organized manner. But it's been really interesting, and not at all the chore I expected.

I'm doing something similar too! Morning / afternoon / evening pages on my personal blog: https://blog.yingw787.com

I don't think I've ever shared my personal blog before, it's my personal scratchpad as opposed to my professional content on Bytes by Ying, but if it helps people understand how one rando on the Internet processes emotions during this time, maybe I can do some good.

> There's a number of really great history channels on YouTube

I really rate Drunk History (I generally don’t like Hollywood humour, nor American history, but somehow it is done brilliantly and is super informative).

Typhoid Mary episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12wh0lfHb2U

PS: Typhoid is a bacterial infection, so only somewhat relevant.

This "unprecedented in our memory" thing gets me.

Polio was feared in the 1950s, and pools and movie theaters closed and physical distancing was recommended.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/10/16/1626708...

(The covid-19 numbers FAR outstrip the polio numbers.)

Of similar historical interest is "A journal of the plague year" about the great plague in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Journal_of_the_Plague_Year

The book is free to read on project Gutenberg.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm

I find the language very beautiful. How come we don’t write like this anymore? Where does one learn to speak like that? We don’t see beautiful language on emails.

Strange how nature works sometimes. An arrangement of proteins sheathed by a layer of lipids can kill billions of people.

That's what we all are.

Proteins killing proteins at the macro and micro level

damn... staff of 7-8 and 168 beds. that's a biblical scene.

The Spanish flu from Kansas.

I wonder if, like with the 1918 pandemic, we'll find later that the first cases were somewhere other than China, but that place was better at keeping it under wraps.

Given how contagious it is and how much faster information moves today, that is highly unlikely.

A shrimp vendor at the Wuhan seafood market reported symptoms starting Dec. 10, so unless someone finds earlier cases elsewhere, I think that's as good a place as any to call the starting point.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/cor...

https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-investigators-one-... Reports of a 70+ year old that had the disease on Nov. 17th. Patient zero probably originated in October or thereabouts, and was probably never tested for it.

Better article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...

But website has a touch of ad cancer.

1. The 1918 Flu origin is still up for debate, in my opinion the China origin theory is still the most plausible, but we'd need to find a corpse that died from the virus in 1917 to prove that it was the migration of laborers to the French frontlines.

2. China is probably the country best equipped at "keeping it under wraps".

3. There's many reports and tweets of it outbreaking in early December and the CPC covering it up for over a month.

Mid January they were still saying it wasn't transmissible and refused to shut down the market. They let at least 5 million come and leave the city.

They let a doctor die from it that blew the whistle on them.

Then they tried to blame it on US troops.

Isn't that one theory? Or is that generally accepted as the leading theory.

I think the leading theory, here's another: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...

That's one theory. Another is it came from China from the transport of 96,000 laborers to the French frontlines.

There was a respiratory disease outbreak in China in 1917 that had symptoms identical to the Spanish Flu.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com