These strange Epidemics still raise questions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Let's look at mysterious epidemics, some of which were solved only after many years, and some of them have remained a mystery. You are on the Kramola canal and we start.

Spaniard

Starting at the end of the First World War and lasting only 18 months, it led to the death of 25 million people in the first 25 weeks alone. The disease turned out to be more terrible than war: in total, the virus claimed about 100 million lives. Despite the fact that almost 550 million people were infected, the "Spanish flu" killed selectively - mostly young people from 20 to 35 years old. Doctors considered the ailment pneumonia. But this was a strange "pneumonia". It proceeded rapidly. Against the background of the scorching heat, the patients literally choked with blood. Blood flowed from the nose, mouth, ears and even eyes. The cough was so strong that it tore the abdominal muscles. The last hours passed in agonizing suffocation. The skin was so blue that racial characteristics were erased. They did not have time to bury the dead. Cities were drowning in mountains of corpses. In the British Isles, the disease is called "three-day fever." Because she killed the young and the strong in three days. And on the mainland, for a bloody cough, she was dubbed "the purple death." By analogy with the plague - "black death".

But why did they end up calling her “Spanish flu”?

Contrary to logic, the homeland of the "Spanish" is not Spain, but the United States. The first type of this virus was isolated at Fort Riley, Kansas. In the New World, it was defined as purulent bronchitis. The flu quickly spread to the countries of the Old, captured Africa and India, and in the fall of 1918 it already rampaged in the territories of Russia and Ukraine. But the gears of war were still spinning, grinding the leading players in the world slaughter. Any information was reflected by the cap of the military censorship. But Spain, which held neutrality, did not weave conspiracy networks. And when by May 1918 in Madrid every third person was sick, and in the country 8 million people were infected (including King Alphonse XIII), the press exploded. So the planet learned about the deadly "Spanish flu".

Soon, the military leadership of the Western Front was forced to make public the numbers "who died from lung infection in the units of the active army." And it turned out that the losses from the "harmless rhinitis" many times exceeded the number of those who remained on the battlefield and were injured. Especially the disease did not spare the sailors. And the British fleet withdrew from the fighting. Only 10 years later - in 1928 - the English bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming will discover penicillin. And in 1918, defenseless humanity had nothing to respond to the challenges of the "Spanish woman". Quarantine, isolation, personal hygiene, disinfection, a ban on mass gatherings - that's the whole arsenal.

Some countries even imposed fines and imprisoned those who coughed and sneezed without covering their faces. The few who risked going out got respirators. "Black America" fought in voodoo rites. Aristocratic Europe wore diamond necklaces, as there was a rumor that "the infection cannot stand the presence of diamonds." The people are simpler - they ate dried chicken stomachs and onions, hid raw potatoes in their pockets, and bags of camphor around their necks. The health services of the world's leading powers were at a loss. The number of doctors killed was already in the thousands. The press looked for the causes of the epidemic - either in "poisonous secretions from rotting corpses on the battlefields", then in "toxic fumes from exploding mustard shells."

The version of the German sabotage, as if "the infection was brought in through aspirin" produced by the German pharmaceutical company "Bayer", was also actively exaggerated. But the "Spaniard" got on an equal footing and the Kaisers. So the "aspirin" version faded away. The version of the laboratory nature of the "Spanish flu" introduced "through vaccination" was also voiced. After all, the mortality and morbidity rate among compulsorily vaccinated soldiers was four times higher than among unvaccinated civilians. One way or another, completely unexpected for everyone, in the spring of 1919, the epidemic began to fade.

What is the reason? Medicine has not yet been able to answer this question. It is believed that the human population has developed what we call immunity. But besides all this, an equally mysterious ghost epidemic is associated with the Spanish flu.

Ghost epidemic or sleeping sickness

In April 1917, the Austrian neurologist Konstantin von Economo first described a new disease, an epidemic of which broke out in France and Austria, and from there spread to all European countries to Russia. The disease had a very high mortality rate - 30%, and the survivors in most cases turned into "living statues" unable to engage in any meaningful activity.