Running the Numbers

 I found myself involved in a bit of an online dispute the other day when I replied to a comment on a friend’s Facebook thread about the coronavirus. I’m sure you’ve heard this one: the conventional flu kills thousands of people every year too. The implication is, of course, that what’s happening now is overblown by the media. But even the President has had to concede that this virus is a “thing.” If we do a good job, he and the experts say, we can limit deaths to maybe 80 thousand people, or perhaps 100- or 200 thousand.

Shocking numbers indeed, but it all depends on what we’re measuring against. This week, we were told, the US death toll for the coronavirus surged past the number killed on 9/11. Well, that was an apple, and this is a pretty big orange. If we’re going to compare it to anything, the obvious candidate is the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918 and ’19. Yes, it covered portions of two years, and there were three waves of it, killing some 675,000 Americans. So if we lose “only” 150K now, we will be doing relatively well.

One thing that’s curious to me is why the Spanish Flu didn’t rank higher in our history books. Even today, if you say 1918, I bet most people first think of World War I, Armistice Day and related events. But it’s also said that many of the US troops President Woodrow Wilson sent abroad to fight the war in Europe were carrying the deadly flu, and that the disease killed more soldiers than war did.

If geographic correctness were applied, it should have been called the American Flu, because it likely started here. There are different versions of its origins. One says it was caused by a nasty cloud created by the burning of a huge pile of hog manure at Fort Riley, Kansas; another says it was the result of vaccine experiments conducted on troops stationed there.

The number 675,000 was a very significant portion of the US population at the time, I bet if many of us today were to shake our family trees just a little, it would be no surprise to find someone who fell out of one of its branches, lost to that plague of more than a century ago.

I have a strong feeling that COVID-19 will get the attention it deserves in new history books and other media products devoted to reminding future generations of what went on here. That’s a good thing if it keeps our descendants from making the same mistakes some of us are making now – things we should have learned from 1918.