I would have been twelve back in 1969. My only memories of the Hong Kong flu are all the jokes that were told about it at the time.
In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so, though we shall have to wait to see.
“In 1968,” says Nathaniel L. Moir in National Interest, “the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the U.S. than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.”
And this happened in the lifetimes of every American over 52 years of age.
I was 5 years old and have no memory of this at all. My mother vaguely remembers being careful and washing surfaces, and encouraging her mom and dad to be careful. Otherwise, it’s mostly forgotten today. Why is that?
Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.
Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.
Media covered the pandemic but it never became a big issue.
Go here to read the rest. The idea of shutting the nation down for a very nasty flu bug would have been uttered back in 1969 only by late night comedians or people in an insane asylum. I want that country back. With all its grave problems and unrest, it was not a country of snowflakes. This Vale of Tears was never meant to be a safe space, and it takes faith and courage to make your way through it.
My husband was about 14 at the time. He knows all about Woodstock, but had only “head of” Hong Kong Flu.
Afraid we have become a nation of majority “snowflakes”. I want to curse at the talking TV heads who begin every sentence with “keeping us safe”. Apparently, the phrase “except in times of pandemic” was inadvertently omitted from the Bill of Rights. Want to be real safe, move a cop into your spare bedroom, maybe a doctor too.
Want to be real safe, move a cop into your spare bedroom
Repeal the Third Amendment! For the Children!
Our country is in a State of Emergency not Martial Law though I think the Democrats would love the latter with curfews and mandatory quarantines in all states. There’s a reason for the 3rd Amendment: Back to the Revolutionary War when Hessian troops mercenaries for the British were forced upon residents of NJ and elsewhere in the Colonies. Occupation Union Forces were billeted in southern homes during War Between the States. The last 4 Confederate states were readmitted to the Union in 1870. Final withdrawal of Federal troops was in 1877.
This may be a stretch re 3rd Amendment but my retired cousin in San Francisco owns a small apartment building c.1919 with 4 one bedroom apartments and 2 garages in a decent neighborhood. He lives on site but would like to sell and move into a planned community. However In one apartment the renter of 31 years is now disabled. His adult daughter has moved in with him and she is now disabled or so they say. When her father passes on she will inherit the lease. It is a rent controlled building. I suggested that the 2 second floor apts. be combined into a 2 bedroom apt. However the city will not allow the removal of any rentals from the market. It sounds to me like the People’s Socialist Bear Republic.
To quote my formerly NE liberal cousin, “This is no longer America.”
That’s correct, Ernst. It takes a village, doesn’t it, to raise our children. Pronounced chill-run if Mrs. Clinton is speaking in her fake Southern accent.
Six months from I wonder how many folks will agree that shutting the country down was a good idea?
My opinion has evolved over the present crisis. Maybe you’ll now call me a conspiracy theorist, nevertheless…….I am becoming persuaded that the current tyranny enacted in response to COVID-19 is a trial run by global elitists for the establishment of a planetary dictatorship that will said to be necessitated by a future similar (and contrived) pandemic. The devil has two horns for a reason and we see both here in this crisis: the first horn is the fear of dying from an unknown and unbeatable virus, and the second horn claims that to not self-isolate and shut the economy down would be injurious to our neighbor, so in Christian charity (as the devil’s lie goes) we must be quarantined. Do you not see the strategy?
(1) You’ll die if you aren’t quarantined.
(2) You hate your neighbor if you don’t agree to be quarantined.
Who benefits from exaggerating the perceived impacts of the China Murder Virus?
It’s a weapon meant to wreck DJT and elect president a drooling idiot/semi-retired sex abuser.
The 1969 and 2020 national death tolls round to zero. Even in hardest-hit NY the rate is 0.098% (19,200 / 19,500,000 * 100) rounds to zero – one in 1,016 New Yorkers. Conversely, the survival rate 99.9% rounds to 100%.
Anyhow, I’m shocked. Nixon was president in 1969 and the media wasn’t out to get him – yet. Of course, he was a big-government proponent.
Today, the China gang (in academia, democrats, media) is providing cover for the CCP and hammer and tongs libeling/slandering DJT.
I think when it comes to the shutdown itself, Trump is part of the problem. He was on the Fox virtual townhall defending the shutdown as the right thing. He believes that between one or two million deaths would have occurred without it.
Whatever his instincts might be, he seems to believe everything Fauci and Birx are telling him.
I hear conservative commentators rip on Fauci while giving Trump a pass, even though they praise Brian Kemp for doing what Trump berated him for. Dennis Prager acknowledged Trump berated Kemp while saying Trump was forced into the shutdown. How was Trump forced into this?
If we are going to complain about the shutdown and not acknowledge Trump’s contribution to it, what right do we have to be taken seriously?
Trump’s initial instincts were correct, to do as little as possible. Then the stock market went into meltdown and Trump reluctantly went along with the shutdowns. I doubt if Trump actually believes that millions were saved. He will say it, because he views it as necessary to make his next deal, which is his reelection. That is why he will also press to have the country up and running as quickly as possible. Trump is a tactician and not a strategist. He will contradict himself a million times if that is what it takes to get that next deal accomplished. To be fair to Trump, when the stock market began emulating 1929, I think he had little option but to go along with this nonsense. Our investor class is just as much infected with snowflakism as the rest of our country.
The why did Trump go out of his way to berate Gov. Kemp for taking small steps to open up his state? You can make the argument that initially he had little choice. But as this unfolded, he did not have to continue this.
Because all his experts, plus Pence, lined up against Georgia reopening. Thus Trump threw the Georgia governor under the bus, just as he eventually will throw the experts under the bus, once he believes public sentiment makes it safe for him to do that. Not pretty, but Trump will get where he wants to go, and sentiment is shifting in favor of reopening. We are probably at the tipping point in most of the country this week, with warmer weather speeding the process.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-its-safe-to-reopen-states-as-governors-grapple-with-loosening-restrictions/ar-BB13ymiw?ocid=ientp
This is the problem with Trump supporters. It’s never his fault. It’s either Pence’s fault or the experts fault, although Trump is ultimately responsible as the president and allows Fauci Birx et al dictate policy. If he throws the experts under the bus, he will be throwing his credibility under the bus as well. Problem is, he has sycophants in conservative media and think tanks willing to cover for him.
Among Trump’s accomplishments will be the exposure of many conservatives as being the two faced intellectually dishonest sell outs they really are.
This is the problem with Trump supporters.
It’s called analysis Greg. I explained why Trump did what he did. You apparently want Trump to act like a statesman and that simply is not Trump. He is a deal maker, operating in a very hostile environment, who has accomplished more for conservatism than any president since Reagan. If the 2016 campaign taught us anything it should have taught us that Trump is very good at getting what he wants, and what he wants right now is winning in November. Trump makes mistakes and I do not believe he is always playing fifth dimensional chess, but I would not bet against his getting what he wants in November.
First of all, I am not denying the good Trump has done. My problem with Trump is not so much Trump himself as much as it is with the unwillingness of many of his supporters to see him as anything other than a quasi God.
And to refuse to acknowledge that Trump himself contributed to economic devastation of these shutdowns to refuse to acknowledge reality.
Who is denying it? I explained that the stock market melt down forced his hand. Are you denying Greg that is why Trump went along with this, because I believe the time sequence is clear.
I don’t see how the market initial downturn FORCED his hand. The market has been something of a yo yo after the shutdown. The unemployment crash, which has a greater impact on the average American, occurred afterward. That’s not on the stock market, that’s on those who decided to shutdown businesses.
Any evidence of Trump being ill-served by Pence? By all appearances, Pence has been absolutely loyal to Trump.
The stock market melt down began on February 20 prior to the lockdowns and was unlike anything we had seen since the Great Depression. The recovery in the stock market has been both while the lockdowns and the stimulus bills were put into effect. The investors simply were not going to be satisfied with Trump doing a ride it out strategy with the virus. There is no reasoning with either a stampeding herd of cattle or a stampeding herd of investors.
I don’t see how a complete shutdown of the economy placates the stock market. During the Spanish Flu pandemic, in addition to social distancing measures, businesses staggered their hours. To do something like this would not be a simple riding out the virus.
One thing I will say about Trump is that he often believes what he says. When he says he believes we would have seen a million to two million deaths without the shutdown, he actually believes it.
I don’t see how a complete shutdown of the economy placates the stock market.
Rationally it shouldn’t, but the stock market recovery indicates that it has, along with creating several trillion dollars out of thin air.
It’s easy to imagine the alternate universe where President Rodham-Clinton tells Birx and Fauci she can’t do what they want because the social and economic upheaval would be too damaging to her reelection. That, instead, they were just going to have to manage the politics of upwards of a million SARS-CoV2 related deaths. And see Birx and Fauci and the rest of the bureaucracy fall in line. A couple of phone made to friends in the media, and the story becomes this proves why we need single payer because markets don’t work and why does the Republican Congress want people to die –only more and bigger government can save us!
Similarly, it is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which Trump does other than he has done and still fins himself re-elected to a second term.
The fall campaign is going to be a near run thing.
Economic suicide wasn’t the answer.
Silver Lining Factor: If things go according to plan, I’m buying for pennies on the dollar a house on a lake and a bass boat. And, I’ll finance it with a near-zero interest rate mortgage. Never let a pandemic or its hysterical government reaction go to waste.
Economic suicide wasn’t the answer.
It was if the question were “how do we keep Trump from being reelected?”