PNEUMONIC INFLUENZA OF 1918

I have been watching the documentary on the ABC Australian Story program of the Spanish flu of 1918. I have watched the report about 5 times, taking notes each time.

The pandemic was parallel to the pandemic of 2019 with millions of people dying across the world. It was a vicious affliction with people dying within a few days and faces coloured blue probably the result of oxygen starvation to face and brain. They died of pneumonia.

The virus hit the soldiers on the European battle front and spread across the trenches to infect allied and German troops. The flu was more deadly than bombs and bullets.

The flu came to Australia in two directions from Europe and America. I have just realized the significance of quarantine stations located on the shorelines of the Australian capital cities. I have known of these from my early years but did not understand their significance.

There are many parallels to the response of the Government in the present Coronavirus pandemic. There was isolation and masks. Shops and schools were closed.

The documentary showed the mass graves in the USA located with surface radar showing hundreds of bodies lying side by side. There were soldiers, citizens, doctors and nurses who were infected and died within a week.

At the end of the war, thousands gathered to cheer and celebrate the end of slaughter. Many went home to die with the virus.

The virus flared up with the cold of winter. But then suddenly it disappeared at the end of 2 years. Will the Coronavirus do the same or return annually as a seasonal virus?

People suffered poverty but not given Government help as we see at the present.

I recall that the Nazis blamed the Jews for the German defeat in World War 1. The claim was that the Germans were winning. Not with the late arrival of the American troops.

My grandfather died in 1924. He never really recovered from sickness as a soldier. His wife and children caught a train to Quilpie in outback Queensland but were not allowed to enter the town. 

They spent many years living on the river bank in a tent. My father never lived in a house until after he returned from the war.

The Australian Government may well have had a long corporate memory on the flu of 1918.