How did the world survive the 1918 flu pandemic? (war, general, Chinese)
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How did the world survive the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918 that killed millions of people without creating mass anarchy and the collapse of civilization?
The outbreak occurred in Western Europe while the Great War was still in progress. There was considerable censorship among the combatants hence the popular term Spanish Flu as Spain was neutral and the outbreak was widely reported there and so believed to have started there.
They didn't have the media broadcasting ominous details all around the world every day via tv and the internet, scaring the tar out of people and generally not being helpful. And that epidemic affected the US as well as Europe.
How did the world survive the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918 that killed millions of people without creating mass anarchy and the collapse of civilization?
Because Fox News didn't exist?
By the way, as a species we have gone through a number of apocalyptic crises and extant "civilization" and has rarely if ever descended into "anarchy." We are a social species and contrary to the contemporary meme, we have always depended upon society remaining in tact (however imperfect) for our very survival.
If that's the case, then sometimes censorship can be a good thing.
Somehow the pandemic ended, though, without wiping out the entire world.
It truly was worldwide. I think the source has still not be substantiated.--Pre-dating the war in China. Or Chinese rear echelon workers in France. Or U.S. troops in Kansas due to contamination from the stock yards, ....
How did the world survive the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918 that killed millions of people without creating mass anarchy and the collapse of civilization?
In the United States, the influenza killed roughly one-half of one percent of the population, over a period of roughly 10 months. The deaths were not evenly spread out, but they did not all come at once. These death rates were similar in developed countries, hardly enough to cause civilization to collapse even now. And then, there were significantly fewer commercial and personal connections both domestically and internationally, and there was less specialization than now, all of which mitigated the social effects of the population loss.
Per capita deaths were higher in other places (India, for example), but an even less integrated society there, with far more immediate independence of towns and villages as far as various goods and services, again mitigated the disruptive effects upon society.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mouldy Old Schmo
If that's the case, then sometimes censorship can be a good thing.
Somehow the pandemic ended, though, without wiping out the entire world.
That 'somehow' is the fact that even in the most abyssmal condition, the mortality rate did not approach 50%, and survivors became immune to further infection. Even aside from basic quarantine techniques, there is no way it could wipe out the entire world.
It did what very lethal diseases do - wreak havoc, then burn themselves out by either killing or immunizing so much of the population that they can no longer effectively spread.
Many famines have killed greater portions of populations, and societies still muddled through.
Probably the same way the great plagues ended and then later returned after a new generation had been born and immunity was low. Mass diseases erupt in clusters. If no real medical intervention is available, frequently true if the 1918 flu, the percentage with some resistance survived, and those who had none died. But once the concentration of new bodies to infect dropped, the outbreaks ended by themselves. Most of those who survived either were ill and became immune or resistant from that cause, or had some natural immunity, but while the virus remained, cases grew rare.
That strain of flu predated modern biochemistry, and thus its only from unearthing victums that the virus can be compared to modern flu strains, but its believed it has never really returned. Some of the more virulant types of flu may be related, but without a good copy of the origional it can't be said for sure.
Mass epidemics kill a lot of people. Today we are still vulnerable, thought modern medicine could lessen the death toll. But they render the survivors unable to start a new one until the pool of new victums is large enough and that is customarily decades. Plague ravaged Europe in smaller waves between the large outbreaks but they ran about fifty years apart, just long enough for a new supply of succeptable bodies.
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