1918 Spanish Flu historical documentary
"The first wave wasn't too bad. But the second and third waves were extremely dangerous."
- "The government pressured the media to hide and downplay the severity of the virus."
- "The health-board didn't want people to panic. They downplayed the severity of the disease. After the death of several sailors and civilians the health board confidently declared the disease had reached it zenit and had already begun to decline - Philadelphia was ready to hold a parade to sell war bonds. Public doctors begged the city to cancel the parade - The city government ignored them. - Within 76 hours the city's 31 hospitals had run out of bed-space."
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This can happen again. Bits of what happened in 1918 are happening now.
CommunityTom
Level 7
Apr 8, 2020
1
I am not surprised that the governments around the world don’t want its population to know. They need to go out and buy up all the toilet paper before people start hoarding.
Jolanta
Level 9
Apr 6, 2020
6
Would that be to do with the need to clean up governmental excreta? 
@anglophone unfortunately not, they have very poorly paid
“slaves” for that.
They are already buying up all the toilet paper and for what? WTF is behind all that toilet paper buying? Do sick people shit more? I'm sorry, but I just do not get it and I've heard of the "clean" and "in control" psychology they say is behind it. This is pandemic hoarding at its best and I know of situations where those who have hoarded toilet paper start playing nice and give some to their friends. Articles on the Internet are now trying to explain it but they are sometimes putting the cart before the horse with their explanations.
Varn:
Just listened to an unbelievable BBC interview of pure denial by the spokesman for Turkey’s Erdogan. I know our guy trump envies that dictator’s iron-fisted tactics … but if Turkey continues denying the seriousness of this pandemic.. they’ll lose a substantially high percentage of people 
@DenoPenno I must say, the toilet paper hoarding has been the most baffling aspect of this whole thing so far.
Interesting. I have encountered people who I frequently interact with who claim that the pandemic is a hoax. Not that the disease doesn't exist but that it's being hyped up to enable the government to impose draconian measures. Then there are others who claim that the opposite is true: that we aren't being told how bad it really is.
As for me, I'm left scratching my head. By the numbers, it isn't too terrible. So far the number of people who have died, according to official reports, is a small percentage compared to other diseases and compared to the population as a whole. And yet you have Wuhan, Italy and New York whose hospitals have been overwhelmed. It's not quite adding up.
DeCryingShame
Level 4
Apr 5, 2020
4
As far as I can see, the governments in Australia are taking appropriate measures, and are in my view proportionate to the news that is being reported in this country and elsewhere. They also accord with my somewhat limited understanding of epidemiology.
The video shows what happens when medical resources are overwhelmed. The measures taken here take into account two objectives: keeping the spread of Covid-19 low enough to allow the available medical resources to cope, and to keep the economy going as best it can under the current circumstances.
There is a need to distinguish between rates of hospitalisation and death rates.
(Just my 2-cents' worth.)
The disease we have now isn't really the problem. What worries me is how disastrously we have responded to it. It makes you wonder what will happen when the next REAL pandemic hits, and what will happen if we're hit by increasingly harsh consequences of climate change.
When everything is so unstable a series of unfortunately close natural disasters could be devastating. Let's say we get a wild fire like Australia i the summer, combined with a few more hurricanes and a second wave of virus at the same time. Given the likely impending depression, our resources and our response time would be nowhere near enough to maintain food and water for everyone.
@anglophone Thanks for pointing that out. It appears the hospitalizations rates for COVID are considerably higher than for the regular flu. That makes more sense.
@MLinoge I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying the response is too much? What would a "real" pandemic look like?
@powder I had heard elsewhere that the number of new cases in New York was beginning to decline already. Did I hear wrong?
Pulling it up on prime now. I'm reading a book on it as well. Really fascinating stuff, and the similarities are eerie with this new pandemic.
Emerald
Level 7
Apr 5, 2020
4
@Jetty well I treat the uninsured every day. The hospital can bill them all they want, but ultimately will eat the cost. If it gets so bad that hospitals across the country are facing bankruptcy, I suspect there will be no choice but a government bailout. Ultimately my hope, futile tho it may be, is that there will be a total overhaul of the healthcare system in this country. The waste is as mind-boggling as the administrators' salaries. For every $30 tylenol tablet there's a pencil pusher making $200k whose job it is to slash nurse-to-patient ratios.We are getting mindless platitudes and encouraging emails from administrators written from the safety of their couches. I guarantee when this ends, they will hold awards ceremonies to congratulate themselves on how well they managed this crisis. I know this is far more than you asked,so I'll end my rant. But yeah, the costs are huge and the solutions are tiny.
Yes! Strangely, I’d watched that around a year ago.. Then again last week! What I recall as chilling was both it’s virulence, and mutations. People having symptoms ‘that morning,’ then dying ‘that evening!’
So when our idiot president proclaims something like ‘this has never happened before,’ yes, it has. And if it’s not limited, will mutate, too.
And yes, same cover ups. As various nations didn’t want their enemies to know how bad it had hit, they wouldn’t allow newspapers to describe it - while it dug deeper into their societies..
I’d recommend it … though at the moment.. a scary experience
Varn
Level 8
Apr 5, 2020
3
Yes!!!
There are always a second wave of infection and possibly a third wave!!!
The 1917-1918 Pandemic there were only 1.5 Billion individuals on this planet!!!
It took fourteen months to encircle this planet!!!
Now there are 6.78 billion individuals living on this planet now!!!
It only took less than four months to encircle this planet this time!!!
Is there an ethical moral here???
of-the-mountain
Level 9
Apr 5, 2020
2
Courtesy of the air planes, and jet set life style we didn't need 14 months for the virus to circle the globe. Morals, I don't know.
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