According to this new story over at City Lab, the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 was 'the mother of all pandemics' that swept across America and the world in three waves, the first hitting New York city during the spring when residents and doctors thought it was only another round of seasonal flu. While summer arrived with very few casualties, leaving doctors and residents there forgetting all about the spring outbreak, by the time the 2nd wave arrived in September, a process had begun that would leave between 50 and 100 million around the world dead, with October of 1918 one of the deadliest months in the history of our planet.
As their story reported, September 15th of 1918 marked a frightening turning point after NY city reported their first death from Spanish flu, one of more than 33,000 to eventually die from it in the city, and their story also pointed out why New York had become the perfect environment for such a deadly flu to carry out its wrath: "In the densely packed metropolis with 5 million people—then the largest population of any city—large families crowded inside small homes, and children and workers crammed inside schools, workshops, and into the subway."
And while New York, America and the entire world are much more populated in 2018 than they were in 1918, and much more closely linked with millions of people traveling on airlines between cities and countries every day, the speed at which the virus killed was summed up perfectly by one Victor Vaughan, a doctor within the US Army, who made the following dire prediction according to John Barry, author of the book "The Great Influenza": “Civilization could have disappeared within a few more weeks.”
In this new story over at USA Today that Steve Quayle linked to on his website Sunday morning, they report upon the end of September being the anniversary of the 1918 Spanish flu which killed more than twice the amount of people around the world in 24 months than died in 4+ years of World War 1, while warning that everyone agrees such a deadly outbreak will surely one day happen again.
Reporting that in the month of October of 1918 alone, an unthinkable 100,000 Americans died, many of them young and healthy adults in the prime of their lives, the first sentence of the USA Today story held back no punches: "One hundred years ago, death came with astonishing speed and horrifying agony."
As we had reported on ANP back on September 7th, according to one doctor who treated patients during the sudden pandemic outbreak, "it killed violently, and struck down the most healthy people suddenly, as if they had been shot". And as we also reported within that story, back in 2005, the US government published the entire genome of the 1918 Spanish flu online. From that story:
All the way back on September 7th of 2005, the NY Times published a story titled simply "Recipe For Destruction" within which the authors began: AFTER a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide (ANP: Current estimates are that up to 100 million died). Like the flu viruses (then in 2005) raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database.
With the story authors warning then how extremely foolish it was for the US government to publish the genome online as they essentially permitted the design for a weapon of mass destruction to be published for anyone to see and use, their story then went on to explain why doing so could lead straight to catastrophe with labs around the world having the ability to culture it.:
No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.
First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.
Second, release of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions.
A Science staff writer, Jocelyn Kaiser, said, "Both the authors and Science's editors acknowledge concerns that terrorists could, in theory, use the information to reconstruct the 1918 flu virus." And yet the journal required that the full genome sequence be made available on the GenBank database as a condition for publishing the paper.
So in this day and age of CRISPR gene editing technology as close by as an Amazon delivery and terrorists announcing they'd like to weaponize a killer virus to cause maximum deaths across the planet, was it really wise to publish that genome online for absolutely anybody to potentially get a hold of?
As we see in the graphic above, the 1918 Spanish flu really kicked off in the US and around the world during the first week of October, spiking to catastrophic death numbers by the end of October before rapidly declining almost as quickly as the casualty numbers began spiking.
While according to the CDC, peak flu months are between December and March here in the US, Fortune reports that the US Food and Drug Administration has just announced that the 2018-2019 'flu season' has officially begun with their story warning that last year's flu killed 80,000 people, the highest influenza death toll in 40 years, leaving many questioning just how effective the flu shot really is.
Too often when people are sick, they just don't know what to do. More and more people are starting to distrust doctors and their drugs, but in a time of illness or infection they're unsure where to turn. Unfortunately, this uncertainty leads many people to doctors' offices for drugs that ultimately do more harm than good. So, here's some simple advice: if you need something that functions like an antibiotic, turn to garlic instead. Garlic is a powerful, natural antibiotic - and it doesn't kill off our healthy bacteria like drug antibiotics do. Unlike chemical antibiotics, garlic is also an effective antiviral and antifungal - and taking just a few cloves of garlic each day can really speed infections away.
In one small trial, seven AIDS patients all had normal T-cell activity after three months of taking the equivalent of two or four garlic cloves each day - and T-cell activity is a key indicator of the AIDS infection. While AIDS may not be your infliction, as one of the most dreaded conditions around, it's helpful to use it to demonstrate the powerful effects of garlic. The patients also showed improvement with other problems like chronic diarrhea, candida overgrowth, genital herpes and a chronic sinus infection. Garlic has also been found to be helpful for conditions including diabetes, high blood pressure, allergies, infections, toothaches, cancer, impotence, colds, heart disease, MRSA, and high cholesterol. And a one month supply is a few bucks at your local organic market.
The fact that garlic is able to help with so many seemingly unrelated problems also demonstrates how connected different diseases are. The medical establishment likes to isolate diseases and target each with different drugs - just because they produce different symptoms and occur in different areas of the body. But the root causes of diseases that can appear very different are often the same. It's all far more intertwined than you might think.
(ANP: This next excerpt is EXTREMELY important!!!)
For garlic to be effective as a healing agent and general antibiotic, it needs to be raw. It should also be crushed and exposed to air for ten minutes before it's consumed to fully activate its key germ-killing compound. And don't worry; raw garlic doesn't have to taste awful. A simple recipe is to juice four cloves of garlic, two tomatoes, and a lemon to make a delicious antibacterial and antiviral drink. If you don't have a juicer, simply toss the ingredients into a blender and make a tomato and garlic soup. To either, just add some sea salt; it'll be delicious. If you have an infection, you can enjoy several of these drinks or soups each day to battle it away without the use of chemical antibiotics that are known to destroy our protective healthy bacteria - often in one fell swoop.
While the exact location of where the outbreak began in 1918 has never been officially determined, historians agree that it was largely spread across the planet due to World War 1 and quite literally millions of soldiers traveling from place to place.
Causing serious social and economic devastation, the lessons of the 1918 flu pandemic can be valuable learning experiences for all of us in 2018, whether or not the much talked about 'disease X' arrives or not. As the Sun reported back on September 21st, the next global pandemic could be much deadlier than the Spanish flu with death toll estimates as high as 400 million or more worldwide.
And as we see detailed below and within the first video at the bottom of this story, the sudden arrival of the Spanish flu quite literally led to the end of life as they knew it for millions of Americans and people across the planet as much travel was halted and public assemblies banned.
As the Seattle Daily Times reported back in 1918, the deadly pandemic forced the shuttering of nearly all public gatherings across much of the country and while NY city was one of the few to keep schools open, what happened in 1918 is clear proof of how quickly life as we know it can come to a complete standstill should a deadly pandemic strike.
With researchers now thinking about the collapse of society and how to prepare for it as Bloomberg Businessweek reports in this new story subtitled "How to Adapt to the End of the World" giving us another sign that indeed the 'elite' are prepping for something huge, preppers should all be in the position to wall ourselves off from the rest of society for at least a month to ride out the storm in that worst case scenario.
Like in the movie "Contagion", as we hear in the 1st video below, a video which takes a historical look at the 1918 Spanish flu and a speculative look at what might happen should the hypothetical 'disease X' that the World Health Organization has been warning about suddenly breakout across the planet, all it takes is one cough to start a catastrophic chain of transmissions.
And with the world now much more closely linked than it was in 1918, and a potential pandemic arriving on airplanes at any point in time should a worst-case scenario come about like it did 100 years ago, the USA Today reminds us that pandemics ignore national borders, social class, economic status, and even age, proving to us once again we have so much more in common with each other that unite us than differences that divide us in the eyes of time and history.
The 2nd and final video below from the History Channel titled "After Armageddon" takes a look at what America might look like should that 'worst case scenario' come true and a pandemic break out across the country.
NOTE TO READERS: ANP Needs Your Help. With digital media revenue spiraling downward, especially hitting those in Independent Media, it has become apparent that traditional advertising simply isn't going to fully cover the costs and expenses for many smaller independent websites.
Any extra readers may be able to spare for donations is greatly appreciated.
One time donations or monthly, via Paypal or Credit Card:
