Limbaugh Said What?

“The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

       With this statement, Rush Limbaugh reaffirms his position within the sordid ranks of world class liars. He is, to be fair, simply echoing the sentiment of Pence, Trump and those others who have politicized and are continuing to politicize the widening world outbreak of coronavirus. On the other hand, an actual doctor, neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, put it in an actual medical perspective: "This is a brand-new virus. I think what Rush Limbaugh is referring to is the idea that it is from a family of coronaviruses. That is the family name of these viruses, and some of them in the past have caused systems that were more consistent with the common cold. But it’s also been the same family of viruses that caused SARS, that caused MERS."

       Lest we should view Limbaugh’s pettifogging as unprecedented, we must only go back about a century to 1918 to see that it is not. In early 1918, World War I was raging and both sides viewed the end as being in in sight. Germany, now on the defensive, largely due to the entry a year earlier, in 1917, of the United States, had morale problems, as by the end of the year, on the battlefields of France in spring 1918, war-weary and battered allied armies enthusiastically greeted fresh American troops arriving, as many as of 10,000 a day, at French and British ports.

       In the USA, while Woodrow Wilson had achieved his goal of entering the war for various reasons, political and fiscal, there was still some significant anti-war sentiment. The last straw, or at least the most publicized and anger inducing series of events, was Germany’s declaration on 31 January 1917 that its U-boats would target neutral shipping in designated warzones. By March of that year, five American flagged merchant freighters had been torpedoed, engendering the national outrage which preceded Wilson’s declaration which Congress approved, unanimously in the Senate and by 350 to 1 vote in the House.

       At this juncture, The US and its allies needed morale to remain high and Germany, fading fast by early 1918, needed morale to remain as high as possible. Both sides would see the involvement of an enemy which threatened them both and for which neither had a military solution.

       History sometimes “unfairly” tags persons places and even (in this case) diseases with a national moniker which is less that justified. Russian dressing isn’t “Russian,” it was invented in New Hampshire. So it was, with the “Spanish Flu” in 1918.

      In the spring of 1918, a new strain of influenza hit military camps in Europe on both sides of World War I. This (epidemics in military camps) was not a “new” phenomenon. Pneumonia, typhoid, diarrhea/dysentery, and malaria were all prevalent and epidemic at times during the Civil war, especially in encampments of new recruits. Altogether, two-thirds of the approximately 660,000 US Civil War deaths of soldiers on both sides were caused by uncontrolled infectious diseases, and several major campaigns were either abandoned or delayed by such outbreaks. While treatments for the Civil War illnesses were vastly improved, since 1865, there was no preparation even possible for what was soon to be labeled the “Spanish Flu.”

       This new strain of flu affected soldiers significantly, but with relatively few fatalities on the first go-round. This should be of no real surprise, as today, flu is more dangerous to the elderly or those already in poor health

       Even so, Britain, France, Germany and other European governments kept it (this first outbreak) a secret. They didn’t want to hand the other side a potential advantage. Spain, on the other hand, was a neutral country in the war. Consequently, when the disease hit there, the government and newspapers reported it accurately. Even the Spanish King Alfonso, a healthy 32-year-old, got sick, but recovered.

       Months later, however, a bigger and much deadlier wave swept across the globe. Since it seemed like it had started in Spain, even though it hadn’t, and because the Spanish told the truth, the new plague was called the “Spanish flu.” Even so, Britain, France, Germany and other European governments still kept it secret.

       Subsequent world events are well described by John M. Barry in “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.” He describes it thus: “When the second wave of Spanish flu hit globally, “there was outright censorship” in Europe. In the United States, they didn’t quite do that, but there was intense pressure not to say anything negative.”

       Since US entry into the War, news about the war had been carefully controlled and selectively rationed by the wartime Committee on Public Information (CPI), an independent federal agency whose architect, publicist Arthur Bullard, once said, “The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.” The “Committee” was, in essence, a national propaganda agency. Oddly enough, (and unrelated to the topic at hand) Bullard was also a closet socialist and admirer and chronicler of the Amana Society.

       Under Bullard’s aegis, The CPI wrote and released thousands of positive stories about the war effort, and newspapers often republished them verbatim. Consequently, when the Spanish flu spread across the United States in the fall of 1918, both the government and the media continued the same “Candide” strategy “to keep morale up.”

       Unlike the barrage of White House bloviation we are currently experiencing, Woodrow Wilson made or specifically endorsed, no public statements. His Surgeon General observed that there was “no cause for alarm” if proper precautions were observed.” Another top health official, Author Barry says, dismissed it as “ordinary influenza by another name.”

       But it wasn’t. The Spanish flu had a mortality rate of 2 percent — much higher than seasonal influenza strains, and similar to some early estimates about the coronavirus. It also differed in who died. Seasonal flu tends to be worst among the very young and very old. The Spanish flu was deadliest in young adults - You know, like soldiers crowded into military camps? (Note, this has not been, or so we’ve been told) the case with Coronavirus.)

        In the main, most, if not all,+ local media followed the government’s lead and censored bad news related to the epidemic. news. This had the effect of making matter worse.

       In Philadelphia, for a specific example, local officials were planning the largest parade in the city’s history. Shortly before this event, about 300 returning soldiers started spreading the virus in the city. Mr. Barry recounts, “Basically every doctor, they were telling reporters the parade shouldn’t happen. The reporters were writing the stories; editors were killing them,” he said. “The Philadelphia papers wouldn’t print anything about it.”

       The parade was held in spite of the suppressed warnings and, 48 hours later, Spanish flu slammed the city. Even after schools were closed and public gatherings were banned, city officials continued claiming it was “Not a public health measure,” and there was, “No cause for alarm.” (One can almost hear the chubby policeman in South Park reciting “Nothing to see here!”)

       By the time the epidemic had run its course, Philadelphia had become one of the hardest hit areas of the country. Bodies of the dead lay in their beds and, in some cases even on the streets for days; many if not most, eventually ending up in mass graves. More than 12,500 residents died, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s estimate. The flu can kill tens of millions of people. In 1918, that’s exactly what it did.


    Army camp in US set up as Flu hospital, 1918

       If a newspaper reported the truth, the government threatened it. The Jefferson County Union in Wisconsin warned about the seriousness of the flu on Sept. 27, 1918, less than 2 months before the armistice, which stopped the guns in France, Within days, an Army general began prosecution against the paper under a wartime sedition act, claiming it had “depressed morale.”

       The world-wide pandemic continued raged through October of 1918, and most Americans came to see that the “blind reassurances” coming from local and national officials were simply untrue. This predictable crisis of credibility led to wild rumors about bogus cures and unnecessary precautions, Author Barry says, and we are seeing them today in social media and even broadcast media. The disgraced, and epically loathsome, Jim Bakker is even huckstering a brand of colloidal silver which he has previously claimed “cures all venereal diseases” as a sure “corona virus killer.” Note: colloidal silver has no value, medicinal or otherwise, except to the seller.

       The Spanish flu ultimately killed about 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even President Wilson caught it, in the middle of negotiations to end the Great War. This outbreak (coronavirus) isn’t the Spanish Flu, by any means, but the present White House response is making the truth harder to discern.

       My point? Listen to your doctor, take sensible precautions, if and when they become necessary, and vote in November, because the current administration has, by putting Mike Pence in a position which should be held by a qualified medical expert, demonstrated their true allegiances - to the Dow Jones Industrials and their red hat, moron, cadre.