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America’s response to coronavirus pandemic is ‘incomprehensibly incoherent,’ says historian who stud

JacksinPA

JacksinPA

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...06391a-7b53-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html

America’s response to coronavirus pandemic is ‘incomprehensibly incoherent,’ says historian who studied the 1918 flu

John M. Barry, 73, is a historian and author of several books, including "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," about the 1918 flu pandemic. He lives in New Orleans.

The 1918 flu killed tens of millions of people, including more than half a million people in the United States, but I don’t remember being taught much of anything about it in school. Why are we not more familiar with how devastating it was?

Well, until a couple of decades ago, historians wrote only about what people did to people. It was very unusual for historians to write about what nature did to people. Another thing is because of the war and the infrastructure of propaganda that [President] Wilson had created, newspapers didn’t write about it. And if they did, it was some relatively inconsequential article.
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We expect this pandemic to change us in ways we don’t even conceive of yet. How did the 1918 flu change the way people lived and society overall?

I think it contributed to the culture of the Roaring Twenties, the idea that, you know, let’s not worry about tomorrow, a sense of fatalism. I think it contributed to that mood. Fitzgerald wrote, “All gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken.” It was part of the ennui that came over this country. But in terms of actual daily life changes, I don’t think there was anything measurable. It lasted a very short period, and people were distracted by the war then.

How would you characterize the United States’s response to the pandemic?

In a local paper I gave Trump a 3.5 a couple of days ago, but I was being overly generous.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...06391a-7b53-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html

America’s response to coronavirus pandemic is ‘incomprehensibly incoherent,’ says historian who studied the 1918 flu

John M. Barry, 73, is a historian and author of several books, including "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," about the 1918 flu pandemic. He lives in New Orleans.

The 1918 flu killed tens of millions of people, including more than half a million people in the United States, but I don’t remember being taught much of anything about it in school. Why are we not more familiar with how devastating it was?

Well, until a couple of decades ago, historians wrote only about what people did to people. It was very unusual for historians to write about what nature did to people. Another thing is because of the war and the infrastructure of propaganda that [President] Wilson had created, newspapers didn’t write about it. And if they did, it was some relatively inconsequential article.
============================================================================
We expect this pandemic to change us in ways we don’t even conceive of yet. How did the 1918 flu change the way people lived and society overall?

I think it contributed to the culture of the Roaring Twenties, the idea that, you know, let’s not worry about tomorrow, a sense of fatalism. I think it contributed to that mood. Fitzgerald wrote, “All gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken.” It was part of the ennui that came over this country. But in terms of actual daily life changes, I don’t think there was anything measurable. It lasted a very short period, and people were distracted by the war then.

How would you characterize the United States’s response to the pandemic?

In a local paper I gave Trump a 3.5 a couple of days ago, but I was being overly generous.
Click to expand...

You are looking back at a “Snowflake free” America. No safe rooms, no seat belts, strong fathers, tough mothers. A generation dying off that knew America was a country, not an economic “region”. Criticism of foreign policy stopped at the waters edge. The other party was referred to as “The loyal opposition” rather than racist, homophobic, xenophobic, bastards who should be destroyed.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...06391a-7b53-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html

America’s response to coronavirus pandemic is ‘incomprehensibly incoherent,’ says historian who studied the 1918 flu

John M. Barry, 73, is a historian and author of several books, including "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," about the 1918 flu pandemic. He lives in New Orleans.

The 1918 flu killed tens of millions of people, including more than half a million people in the United States, but I don’t remember being taught much of anything about it in school. Why are we not more familiar with how devastating it was?

Well, until a couple of decades ago, historians wrote only about what people did to people. It was very unusual for historians to write about what nature did to people. Another thing is because of the war and the infrastructure of propaganda that [President] Wilson had created, newspapers didn’t write about it. And if they did, it was some relatively inconsequential article.
============================================================================
We expect this pandemic to change us in ways we don’t even conceive of yet. How did the 1918 flu change the way people lived and society overall?

I think it contributed to the culture of the Roaring Twenties, the idea that, you know, let’s not worry about tomorrow, a sense of fatalism. I think it contributed to that mood. Fitzgerald wrote, “All gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken.” It was part of the ennui that came over this country. But in terms of actual daily life changes, I don’t think there was anything measurable. It lasted a very short period, and people were distracted by the war then.

How would you characterize the United States’s response to the pandemic?

In a local paper I gave Trump a 3.5 a couple of days ago, but I was being overly generous.
Click to expand...

This fool was born in 1947, almost 30 years after the Spanish Flu.
 
Well, we're smarter than that now and we know that we really can't have things like dine-in restaurants, bars, beaches, hotels and amusement parks any more. They are a threat to humanity and must be eliminated. We also know now that people need to stay away from one another. It could very well be a threat to your very life if someone else gets too close and I fully suspect that we'll see "social trespass" felony laws in the near future. Schools need to be closed. Movie theaters need to be closed. Grocery stores will have to be required to limit occupancy to no more than 1 person for every 144 square feet and they will need to have security guards strictly enforcing that limit. In fact, it's probably risky to allow cars to get too close to one another on the roadways as it's possible that some asshole will have their window open and be breathing on the public, contaminating thousands along the way.
 
Bucky said:
This fool was born in 1947, almost 30 years after the Spanish Flu.
Click to expand...

Historians go back to primary period sources. He doesn't claim to have lined through the 1918 flu.
 
One thing is certain: people like myself will become increasingly insular. My library & the computer are my primary diversions & outlets.

For the first 2 months of lockdown I bought 2 graduate-level virology textbooks & spent most evenings studying the biology of the coronaviruses. Even with my degree in chemistry & a basic understanding of molecular biology (self-taught), I'd learn something new every evening, like adding pieces to a jig-saw puzzle, assembling the virus in my mind into something I could understand in terms of considering potential therapeutics other than vaccines. Viruses this complex are like women: it takes a lot of work to get close to them.
 
JacksinPA said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...06391a-7b53-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html

America’s response to coronavirus pandemic is ‘incomprehensibly incoherent,’ says historian who studied the 1918 flu

John M. Barry, 73, is a historian and author of several books, including "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," about the 1918 flu pandemic. He lives in New Orleans.

The 1918 flu killed tens of millions of people, including more than half a million people in the United States, but I don’t remember being taught much of anything about it in school. Why are we not more familiar with how devastating it was?

Well, until a couple of decades ago, historians wrote only about what people did to people. It was very unusual for historians to write about what nature did to people. Another thing is because of the war and the infrastructure of propaganda that [President] Wilson had created, newspapers didn’t write about it. And if they did, it was some relatively inconsequential article.
============================================================================
We expect this pandemic to change us in ways we don’t even conceive of yet. How did the 1918 flu change the way people lived and society overall?

I think it contributed to the culture of the Roaring Twenties, the idea that, you know, let’s not worry about tomorrow, a sense of fatalism. I think it contributed to that mood. Fitzgerald wrote, “All gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken.” It was part of the ennui that came over this country. But in terms of actual daily life changes, I don’t think there was anything measurable. It lasted a very short period, and people were distracted by the war then.

How would you characterize the United States’s response to the pandemic?

In a local paper I gave Trump a 3.5 a couple of days ago, but I was being overly generous.
Click to expand...



Pretty much the same now as back then. We're repeating history. Or it's repeating us. "We have met the enemy And he is us" (My thanks to Walt Kelly's "Pogo" oft repeated cartoon line).
 
BTW, we lost 675,000 at least to the Spanish Flu 1918 pandemic. We lost 110,000 in WWI.
 
Poor leadership matters. When incompetence is empowered to muzzle or eliminate competence, there are real consequences. People die. Economies collapse. The dangers of making a patently unqualified and unequipped person president are real and we are suffering through that reality today.
 
JacksinPA said:
Well, until a couple of decades ago, historians wrote only about what people did to people. It was very unusual for historians to write about what nature did to people.
Click to expand...

One wonders if there's a lesson there.
 
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