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How the Spanish Flu Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there, there's Jerry
0:17
Speaker 1: over there, and well, well you guys are feeling fine.
0:21
Speaker 1: I'm a little under the weather, but it's still stuff
0:23
Speaker 1: you should know, the two thousand nineteen Flu edition, that's right.
0:28
Speaker 1: And this is dangerously close to published date for us. Yeah,
0:33
Speaker 1: a little a little close for comfort if you ask me.
0:35
Speaker 1: But you know what, this gives us the opportunity to
0:37
Speaker 1: do real time stuff. Yeah, like say Seattle, Portland in
0:43
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Yeah, we're gonna be in your town next week.
0:48
Speaker 1: Uh the week, No, you're right, dude, next week when
0:52
Speaker 1: this comes out. Yeah, so uh more Theater on January,
0:57
Speaker 1: uh in Seattle, Revolution Hall in Portland on je X,
1:01
Speaker 1: and then our annual Sketch Fest show at the Castro
1:04
Speaker 1: on January. Tickets are moving kind of slow, guys, And
1:07
Speaker 1: I think there's been, uh, there's been people writing in
1:09
Speaker 1: saying they didn't even know that you were coming. Yeah, so, uh,
1:14
Speaker 1: I don't know what the problem is. We're coming, We're coming. Yeah,
1:17
Speaker 1: We're still troubleshooting what the deal was, what, because we
1:20
Speaker 1: don't ever want to happen again. But um, I just
1:23
Speaker 1: feel good knowing that everybody's not mad at us out
1:26
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest. Well, I hope not. I would
1:29
Speaker 1: hope not too, but it was kind of luck in
1:31
Speaker 1: that way for a second. We think it might be
1:33
Speaker 1: something to do with our promos, who knows, so we
1:36
Speaker 1: wanted to put it in this episode, right, like in
1:39
Speaker 1: the body of the episode, like you can't miss it.
1:43
Speaker 1: So now you know, go to s y s K
1:46
Speaker 1: live dot com and there will be links out to
1:50
Speaker 1: go get tickets, info all that stuff, and we'll see
1:53
Speaker 1: you guys next week. So hurry, hurry, hurry, go get
1:56
Speaker 1: your tickets. We'll see you next week next Tuesday, Wednesday
2:00
Speaker 1: and Thursday, right, and I will be feeling better by then,
2:03
Speaker 1: I'm hoping, ye. So, um, the chuck is kind of
2:07
Speaker 1: appropriate that we're talking about the flu, because I don't
2:10
Speaker 1: have the flu, but I'm a little sick, a little funky. Um,
2:14
Speaker 1: I'm not contagious, so don't worry. Well, I appreciate you
2:17
Speaker 1: wearing the face mask anyway, which it turns out, according
2:21
Speaker 1: to this uh this article that ed wrote, um it, Uh,
2:25
Speaker 1: it's yeah, useless. It doesn't do anything. Yeah, I don't.
2:28
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's truly useless, is it? Yes?
2:31
Speaker 1: I think it is actually quite useless. Um. If it's
2:34
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection, it might do something because bacteria is
2:38
Speaker 1: much larger than viruses. But viruses are very very small,
2:41
Speaker 1: certainly small enough to be expelled through the mash of
2:44
Speaker 1: a gauze when you cougher sneeze into it, sneeze and
2:48
Speaker 1: that mask puffs out and little particles spew. Maybe just
2:52
Speaker 1: not as far. Yeah, yeah, they might be slowed down
2:56
Speaker 1: a little bit. Who knows, maybe like being pushed through
2:58
Speaker 1: like a little channel beats them up and increases their
3:02
Speaker 1: tragic Oh my god, we don't know yet. Uh. Yeah,
3:07
Speaker 1: but this is a flu centric episode, and I can't remember.
3:11
Speaker 1: I think I was turned onto this idea. You were
3:14
Speaker 1: turned on by this idea to this idea? Um, I
3:19
Speaker 1: think it was when I was sort of going down
3:21
Speaker 1: a World War One rabbit hole. Oh yeah, you were
3:23
Speaker 1: talking about that in some episode. I think that was
3:26
Speaker 1: what it was. So this is pretty appropriate that we're
3:29
Speaker 1: talking about this because exactly a hundred years ago today,
3:34
Speaker 1: basically the United States. The world really was standing there, stricken,
3:40
Speaker 1: picking up the pieces of basically shattered societies all around
3:44
Speaker 1: the globe that has just been leveled, absolutely leveled by
3:50
Speaker 1: a flu epidemic that came through and killed so many people,
3:55
Speaker 1: made so many people sick. It's widely seen as possibly
3:59
Speaker 1: tied for for if not, it's a very close second
4:02
Speaker 1: to the worst natural disaster and the worst pandemic to
4:06
Speaker 1: ever hit human kind in the history of our species. Yeah,
4:11
Speaker 1: that's how bad it was, and it happened just a
4:13
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. Yeah. I've seen estimates as high as
4:17
Speaker 1: fifty million people dead. Yeah, I've seen I've seen it
4:20
Speaker 1: up to a hundred million. I think fifty million. Is
4:23
Speaker 1: it used to be like the low end and now
4:25
Speaker 1: or the high end? And now it's starting to become
4:27
Speaker 1: clear it's probably about the low end. I think the
4:30
Speaker 1: low end is twenty Oh is that right? Uh? And
4:33
Speaker 1: I'm gonna name the high end. Five million people. That's
4:37
Speaker 1: supposedly from what I've seen, how many were actually infected? Oh?
4:41
Speaker 1: Well possibly, And not only that, like, when that many
4:46
Speaker 1: people die, it changes the course of world history. Yeah,
4:53
Speaker 1: it changes it. Basically, it unravels the fabric of society
4:58
Speaker 1: as we'll see sociding cultures and rules and uh, just
5:03
Speaker 1: how humans looked at the earth. It like it it
5:06
Speaker 1: really turned the forward march of humanity in a certain direction.
5:12
Speaker 1: It definitely did. And like this, it's really difficult. Like
5:15
Speaker 1: this is one of the most fascinating pieces of of
5:18
Speaker 1: world history to me because it was like it's it was.
5:22
Speaker 1: It's pretty well documented because it happened only a hundred
5:25
Speaker 1: years ago, and because it's just so insane what happened,
5:30
Speaker 1: Like the Spanish flu was so bad chuck that um
5:35
Speaker 1: people were dying of thirst because there was no one
5:39
Speaker 1: around them to take care of them. The people who
5:42
Speaker 1: were still healthy were so afraid of catching the flu
5:45
Speaker 1: they would basically let their neighbors die alone in their
5:48
Speaker 1: homes rather than go help them and take care of
5:51
Speaker 1: them and give them water. Like that's that's how bad
5:54
Speaker 1: it was. Like people were dying of thirst from being
5:56
Speaker 1: so laid up by the flu and not being able
5:58
Speaker 1: to get water themselves and not having anyone to take
6:01
Speaker 1: care of them. And it happened in the United States
6:03
Speaker 1: hundred years ago and all over the world. And despite
6:07
Speaker 1: all of this horrific thing, Uh, we're about to talk
6:10
Speaker 1: about the Grabster started his article writing about hockey as
6:14
Speaker 1: he is from Buffalo, and then later on he's like,
6:18
Speaker 1: it's the third wave that that canceled the NHL playoffs. Yeah,
6:22
Speaker 1: I mean it is a footnote though. The Stanley Cup,
6:25
Speaker 1: the very famous Stanley Cup, the trophy of the NHL
6:29
Speaker 1: uh that has all the winning teams etched into it
6:33
Speaker 1: says series not completed. That's all it says. And unless
6:37
Speaker 1: you know what's going on, you might just scratch your
6:40
Speaker 1: head and say, why was the series not completed that year?
6:43
Speaker 1: And the reason is because the Spanish flu literally killed
6:47
Speaker 1: one of the players and got quite a few of
6:51
Speaker 1: them sick on both sides of the Seattle Metropolitans. In
6:54
Speaker 1: the Montreal Canadiens, yeah, I guess, like right before the
6:58
Speaker 1: fifth game was going to be played, um or the
7:00
Speaker 1: sixth game was going to be played, they like four
7:04
Speaker 1: of them were in the hospital. One died, and they're like, yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: we'll just go ahead and canceled the series this year.
7:11
Speaker 1: But what's what is crazy is like, that's pretty bad
7:13
Speaker 1: because think about it, you're a hockey player, you're probably young,
7:17
Speaker 1: you're probably pretty healthy. That's really weird to die from
7:20
Speaker 1: the flu. Uh, and that was a big hallmark of
7:23
Speaker 1: the Spanish flu as we'll see. But this was also
7:26
Speaker 1: like a third wave. This is the third like roundhouse
7:29
Speaker 1: that the Spanish fluid delivered to the global population when
7:33
Speaker 1: the when the Stanley Cup was canceled or the the
7:36
Speaker 1: NHL Playoffs was canceled that year in amazing. So let's
7:41
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about flues normally, shall we. Yeah,
7:46
Speaker 1: I mean, I think everyone understands that the flu is
7:48
Speaker 1: not bacterial like you were talking about. It is a virus,
7:51
Speaker 1: and ordinarily like the flu that you have, is that
7:55
Speaker 1: the flu you have are cold. It's just like a cold.
7:57
Speaker 1: It's just funk, you know what I mean? You me
8:00
Speaker 1: and I went to Vegas for her birthday, um, to
8:03
Speaker 1: go see Dave Chappelle and John Mayer, and I think
8:06
Speaker 1: just being on the plane and being kind of run
8:08
Speaker 1: down and everything, we we both kind of picked up
8:10
Speaker 1: a little bit funk. I think it's a tummy year.
8:13
Speaker 1: It's a funky kind of year. Emily gets sick every January. Yeah.
8:17
Speaker 1: I think it's also has to do with the holidays, uh,
8:21
Speaker 1: just because they're as fun and and unadulterated ly enjoyable
8:26
Speaker 1: as they are, they're also a taed stressful sometimes. Well yeah,
8:30
Speaker 1: and her that's her busy time of year for her business,
8:32
Speaker 1: so oh yeah, that's it's it's almost inevitable that she'll
8:34
Speaker 1: get sick every January, just like her body's fighting and
8:37
Speaker 1: fighting all through December and then just goes literally the
8:42
Speaker 1: day after Christmas. It's like sniff, yeah, he just crashed.
8:45
Speaker 1: Here it comes. Yeah. So the flu was a virus,
8:49
Speaker 1: and in most cases, like I was saying, you have
8:51
Speaker 1: the you know, you have your eggs and your fever
8:54
Speaker 1: and your coughing, and you're tired, and uh, sometimes it
8:57
Speaker 1: may be affect your stomach some sometimes it may not,
9:00
Speaker 1: but it's usually in and out in a few days,
9:03
Speaker 1: and that's sort of the end of it. Um. If
9:06
Speaker 1: you're like you mentioned, if you're elderly, or if you're
9:09
Speaker 1: a little little tiny one, uh, the flu can be
9:12
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous in any case, but ordinarily in healthy adults,
9:16
Speaker 1: is just a regular sickness that comes and goes. Yeah,
9:19
Speaker 1: especially like if you look at you know, a graph
9:22
Speaker 1: of ages starting at an infant all the way say
9:24
Speaker 1: two hundred year olds. If you if you look at
9:27
Speaker 1: flu deaths, it goes down in the middle and then
9:30
Speaker 1: goes back up. It's high on one end, high on
9:32
Speaker 1: the other end, very low to non existent in the middle,
9:35
Speaker 1: like healthy, like middle aged and younger adults don't die
9:41
Speaker 1: from the flu normally, right. Uh So, there are many
9:44
Speaker 1: types of flu. Uh, many strains of this virus. And
9:49
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen, for the Spanish flu, which we'll get
9:53
Speaker 1: to the naming of that in a second, it was
9:56
Speaker 1: type A subtype H one in one because they have
9:59
Speaker 1: subtype designations, and then within those subtypes there are other strains.
10:03
Speaker 1: Because the flu is constantly trying to outrun humans and
10:08
Speaker 1: humans trying to beat it down. Yeah, I guess so.
10:12
Speaker 1: So it's like I'm just gonna change a little Yeah,
10:14
Speaker 1: watch this, and it goes big boom boom boop, and
10:17
Speaker 1: now it's Bumblebee from Transformers exactly. Uh So, this was
10:24
Speaker 1: a genuine pandemic called the Spanish flu. And I never
10:28
Speaker 1: knew this at all, but it had really had nothing
10:30
Speaker 1: to do with being out of Spain or have anything
10:35
Speaker 1: to do with Spain other than the fact that Spain
10:38
Speaker 1: was neutral in World War two, I'm sorry, world War One,
10:42
Speaker 1: and while other newspapers around the world were really censoring
10:45
Speaker 1: things and not so free. Spain was just reporting. The
10:49
Speaker 1: only country really reporting about the flu. Yeah right, I
10:52
Speaker 1: didn't call the Spanish flu. I didn't realize this either.
10:55
Speaker 1: In the Spanish were like no, no, wait, wait, you
10:57
Speaker 1: guys aren't getting this. It's all just disproportionately on us.
11:00
Speaker 1: But it started in Kansas, it right. It seems like
11:04
Speaker 1: the um the that Spain had the worst of it because,
11:08
Speaker 1: like you said, they were the only ones who were
11:10
Speaker 1: openly reporting on it. And some of the Axis and
11:13
Speaker 1: Allied actually that might have been World War two, but
11:15
Speaker 1: some like France, Germany, Great Britain, the US, the governments
11:19
Speaker 1: were at war and their propaganda machines were in full swing.
11:22
Speaker 1: They didn't want to do anything to impact morale. They
11:25
Speaker 1: also didn't want to give the enemy any indication that
11:27
Speaker 1: their troops were sick, that there was a flu virus
11:30
Speaker 1: spreading through their their ranks, so they just downplayed it
11:34
Speaker 1: at home and everywhere. But since Spain was neutral, they
11:37
Speaker 1: talked about it. It It seemed like Spain had the worst
11:39
Speaker 1: of it. That's totally not the case. It's just it
11:42
Speaker 1: was all just reporting. Spain just reported on it openly.
11:46
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. To me. Yeah, totally fascinating, and uh, it
11:49
Speaker 1: was a legit pandemic because it touched UM kind of
11:53
Speaker 1: every corner of the globe, except for notably two places
11:56
Speaker 1: that were able to successfully quarantine themselves. What was that
12:01
Speaker 1: American Samoa, Yeah, in New Caledonia. Are those even places?
12:06
Speaker 1: They still are places thanks to those quarantines. Yeah, it
12:10
Speaker 1: could have wiped them out. Oh yeah, I think some
12:12
Speaker 1: places did get wiped out. I believe Western Samoa UM
12:15
Speaker 1: was basically wiped out by the Spanish flu. There were
12:18
Speaker 1: plenty of UM like settlements, especially Native American settlements in
12:23
Speaker 1: more remote places like Alaska, that were almost entirely if
12:27
Speaker 1: not entirely wiped out UM. And then you know if
12:31
Speaker 1: depending on where you went around the world, like Japan
12:34
Speaker 1: got hit, but they they had like a one percent
12:37
Speaker 1: infection rate or something like that, where other places had
12:40
Speaker 1: like like I think globally it was about thirty. So
12:44
Speaker 1: it was strange how it hit people differently. But it
12:46
Speaker 1: was definitely, like you said, it was a real pandemic
12:49
Speaker 1: in that it was everywhere around the world that this
12:52
Speaker 1: strain of the flu was leveling people. Yeah, and there's
12:55
Speaker 1: a couple of other kind of startling stats. That five
12:59
Speaker 1: million in fact that you were talking about not dead
13:01
Speaker 1: but infected. That was about a thirty three percent of
13:04
Speaker 1: the world's population, which is startling. And in the United
13:09
Speaker 1: States life expects you know how it talked about it
13:12
Speaker 1: just changing everything. Oh yeah, it actually altered life expectancy
13:15
Speaker 1: in the US by twelve years. Yeah, from nineteen eighteen
13:20
Speaker 1: and nineteen nineteen, they expected average expected or the life
13:25
Speaker 1: expectancy like you said, it went from it went to
13:28
Speaker 1: thirty six point six for men and forty two point
13:31
Speaker 1: two for women man, which is pretty like the the
13:35
Speaker 1: what it had been before was still pretty low, but
13:37
Speaker 1: to drop twelve years overnight, basically because I don't think
13:42
Speaker 1: we've gotten this across yet, Chuck. What we're talking about
13:45
Speaker 1: happened in less than a year. In less than a year,
13:49
Speaker 1: a third of the world's population came down with this
13:52
Speaker 1: very virulent flu and as much as five percent of
13:55
Speaker 1: the world's population died from that flu in less than
13:58
Speaker 1: a year. Yeah, and the we'll talk about the different waves,
14:01
Speaker 1: but the second deadliest wave really was about four months
14:07
Speaker 1: and and the amount of people that died within a
14:08
Speaker 1: four month period all over the world was just like
14:11
Speaker 1: it's hard to really grasp it really is. And the
14:15
Speaker 1: other thing about it too, is largely because of that
14:18
Speaker 1: propaganda machine, that was the propaganda machines that were in
14:22
Speaker 1: full operation in all those different countries, along with um
14:27
Speaker 1: kind of exuberance for the war being over or just
14:30
Speaker 1: basically being focused on the war. Because the Spanish flu
14:33
Speaker 1: happened at the same time World War One was going
14:35
Speaker 1: on and ending. Um, it wasn't. It's not remembered like
14:40
Speaker 1: you think it would be. Like you would think this
14:41
Speaker 1: would be like everyone would know about this and be
14:43
Speaker 1: talking about it, and it's not. It just kind of
14:46
Speaker 1: got swept under the rug historically speaking in a lot
14:49
Speaker 1: of ways. You want to take a break. Yeah, I
14:52
Speaker 1: think that was a uh wonderful, long winded setup. That's
14:57
Speaker 1: what we do. That's how we do things, alright, Chuck.
15:30
Speaker 1: So let's start at what maybe the beginning. There's this
15:33
Speaker 1: guy named John M. Barry, and he is a not
15:38
Speaker 1: Embury by the way, his meddle initials M, and his
15:41
Speaker 1: last name is Barry. Uh. He is an historian, and
15:46
Speaker 1: he wrote a book called The Great Influenza, and he
15:50
Speaker 1: wrote an article based on his research called how the
15:52
Speaker 1: Horrific en flew spread across America. It's on Smithsonian magazine. UM,
15:58
Speaker 1: and this guy's done some leg work and he has
16:02
Speaker 1: created a theory that's starting in about January of nineteen eighteen,
16:06
Speaker 1: the beginning of nineteen eighteen, uh, there was a flu
16:09
Speaker 1: outbreak in Haskell County, Kansas, which is a very rural
16:14
Speaker 1: agricultural area, and that some of those farm boys who
16:18
Speaker 1: came down with the same flu made their way to
16:21
Speaker 1: Camp Funston, which is part of Fort Riley, Kansas now
16:25
Speaker 1: Santa Fe in particular, was is the town if you
16:28
Speaker 1: want to even pinpointed further in Kansas, not New Mexico,
16:32
Speaker 1: Santa Fe, Haskell County, Kansas, three miles west of Camp Funston, YEP.
16:38
Speaker 1: So some of these farm boys who were sick with
16:40
Speaker 1: this flu ended up being drafted and sent to Camp Funston.
16:45
Speaker 1: And it was Camp Funston where they think the first
16:50
Speaker 1: cases of the Spanish flu started to break out. That
16:54
Speaker 1: first wave happened in about the spring and then traveling
16:57
Speaker 1: over to Europe into the summer of nineteen unique teen.
17:00
Speaker 1: And it wasn't that first wave wasn't particularly bad, It
17:03
Speaker 1: wasn't any particularly noteworthy, and it was mostly confined to um,
17:08
Speaker 1: two dough boys basically people who worked on on military
17:12
Speaker 1: basis as well. Um, and then maybe towns near military basis.
17:17
Speaker 1: But that was about it. And then it went away
17:19
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like had it just been that, it
17:22
Speaker 1: probably would not have been remarkable historically at all. Yeah,
17:27
Speaker 1: and you know this, we may not even know about
17:30
Speaker 1: any of this as far as its origin. And there
17:32
Speaker 1: have been a lot of other theories over the years
17:35
Speaker 1: about its origin, but this one seems to hold the
17:37
Speaker 1: most water now. But we may not have ever known
17:40
Speaker 1: anything about any of the origin if it had not
17:42
Speaker 1: been for Dr Loring Minor, who was a great for
17:49
Speaker 1: a small of a county in town as this was.
17:52
Speaker 1: He was a really great town doctor. Uh. And he
17:55
Speaker 1: was like at the time, flew just would come and go,
17:59
Speaker 1: like I said. So was never reported on in journals.
18:02
Speaker 1: It was never uh, it was never really a big deal.
18:05
Speaker 1: It was never published. But Dr Loring Minor was so
18:08
Speaker 1: alarmed at the rate of spread in his small town
18:13
Speaker 1: and the how much of a wallop that it packed.
18:16
Speaker 1: He actually published his concerns in a in a journal
18:20
Speaker 1: called the Public Health Reports journal has a different name today,
18:23
Speaker 1: but he was the only person in the world expressing concern.
18:28
Speaker 1: And I believe this is still the very first case
18:30
Speaker 1: of influenza being reported because of how like unusual and
18:35
Speaker 1: and deadly that they thought it could be. Yeah. I
18:37
Speaker 1: saw that too, that the very fact that this guy
18:40
Speaker 1: reported it at all is remarkable. Yeah. So they kind
18:43
Speaker 1: of trace it back and say, we we now think
18:46
Speaker 1: we know where ground zero was, Haskell County, Kansas. So
18:51
Speaker 1: from Haskell County, Kansas, it went to Camp fund Stone
18:55
Speaker 1: and then it went over to Europe. This is the
18:57
Speaker 1: first way that we're talking about. They hadn't changed their
18:59
Speaker 1: name because that used to be we put the fun
19:01
Speaker 1: in fun Stone, right, and then after that they were like, yeah,
19:05
Speaker 1: we gotta go to Fort Riley. So um, over in Europe,
19:10
Speaker 1: something happened to this, to this flu I mutated in
19:15
Speaker 1: some way, it did something. It mixed with some other
19:18
Speaker 1: flu maybe from Asia, maybe something that was present in Europe,
19:22
Speaker 1: who knows, but there you know, there was a flu
19:25
Speaker 1: outbreaks over there in um in Europe, particularly at one
19:30
Speaker 1: called a Topoa. I think I added a little extra
19:35
Speaker 1: mustard on that, but um, it's generally how you say it.
19:38
Speaker 1: It was a huge British camp that held up to
19:41
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand troops and it was packed elbow to
19:44
Speaker 1: elbow in the summer of nineteen eighteen, and so that
19:48
Speaker 1: definitely did not help UM keep the flu under wraps.
19:52
Speaker 1: It's spread pretty quickly. And then some of those dough boys,
19:56
Speaker 1: those American UM soldiers fighting in World War One who
20:00
Speaker 1: were in Europe made their way back to the United States,
20:04
Speaker 1: and so this this strain of flu that had made
20:07
Speaker 1: its first wave out of Kansas over to Europe came back.
20:10
Speaker 1: And when it came back, it was different in all
20:13
Speaker 1: the worst ways. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about
20:16
Speaker 1: how it got overshadowed by World War One, but it
20:19
Speaker 1: may not have even happened had it not been for
20:21
Speaker 1: World War One, because the conditions of of army boot
20:26
Speaker 1: camp and in shuttling soldiers overseas, like you were saying,
20:30
Speaker 1: it's tight quarters, it's like just dude stacked on each other,
20:35
Speaker 1: all up in each other's faces, and it was just
20:39
Speaker 1: sort of a recipe for disaster. Yeah, while this war
20:42
Speaker 1: was you know, not unfolding, it had unfolded by that point,
20:45
Speaker 1: but it was really just a confluence of factors. It
20:49
Speaker 1: was really kind of staggering. Well, plus also you can
20:51
Speaker 1: make the case that those Kansas farm boys never would
20:54
Speaker 1: have made their way to Camp fund Ston, and they
20:56
Speaker 1: certainly never would have made their way to Europe. So
20:59
Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't have happened, especially if the thing mutated
21:03
Speaker 1: in Europe and got worse. The Spanish flu, Yeah, probably
21:06
Speaker 1: never would have happened had it not been for the
21:08
Speaker 1: First World War. Yeah. The other problem was and there
21:11
Speaker 1: were a lot of factors to why it spread so quickly,
21:13
Speaker 1: but one was because that it didn't really look like
21:17
Speaker 1: the flu in a lot of cases. Uh doctors really
21:20
Speaker 1: quite you know. They they were slow to diagnose as
21:24
Speaker 1: a flu and then as an epidemic because a lot
21:27
Speaker 1: of people were dying from pneumonia and uh sometimes for
21:31
Speaker 1: a while they thought it was bacterial in nature. So
21:34
Speaker 1: they were coming up with vaccines and all this stuff,
21:36
Speaker 1: and none of that was working, and so it kind
21:39
Speaker 1: of took a long time. Even though doctor uh Minor
21:43
Speaker 1: in Kansas was kind of ringing the bell, no one
21:46
Speaker 1: was still paying attention. So it took a long time
21:47
Speaker 1: for them to kind of sound the alarm and say,
21:50
Speaker 1: all right, we got a real problem here, right, And
21:52
Speaker 1: at the time they knew that viruses existed but they
21:56
Speaker 1: still weren't sure what they were. They called virus is
21:59
Speaker 1: filterable agents because they had figured out and I think
22:03
Speaker 1: back in that if you've filtered an infection through something
22:07
Speaker 1: called a Chamberlain candle, which can filter out any in
22:10
Speaker 1: all bacteria, some infections still persist, which shouldn't be the
22:15
Speaker 1: case because you've just filtered out all the bacteria. So
22:18
Speaker 1: that means that there's something smaller than bacteria that they
22:22
Speaker 1: we don't really know about that can cause infection. There's
22:25
Speaker 1: some other pathogen out there, and this is the way
22:28
Speaker 1: that they that they approached viruses um. I think by
22:32
Speaker 1: the time the Spanish fleet was still around, we knew
22:34
Speaker 1: that there was something out there, but no one had
22:35
Speaker 1: actually ever seen a virus, and wouldn't see a virus
22:37
Speaker 1: until I think the nineteen thirties because they're too small
22:40
Speaker 1: for optical microscopes. So the the idea that this was
22:45
Speaker 1: caused by a bacterial agent, it makes a lot of sense.
22:48
Speaker 1: That's what humanity had experience in dealing with entreating. But
22:52
Speaker 1: then on top of it, like you said, so many
22:54
Speaker 1: people were dying or getting pneumonia that it just appeared
22:58
Speaker 1: like it was a horrible material pandemic rather than a
23:02
Speaker 1: viral one or typhoid or cholera, like it was misdiagnosed
23:06
Speaker 1: all over the place because some of these symptoms were
23:09
Speaker 1: just unusual, Like bleeding out of the ears. It's so bad.
23:15
Speaker 1: When you're bleeding out of your ears, things are going
23:18
Speaker 1: badly for you. Like, it doesn't get much worse than
23:21
Speaker 1: bleeding out of your ear. You have serious issues if
23:24
Speaker 1: you're bleeding, unless, of course you've like you know, nicked
23:27
Speaker 1: the inside of your ear with your fingernail. If you're
23:30
Speaker 1: bleeding out of your ear from inside of your head,
23:33
Speaker 1: that's bad news. Yeah, I just want to make sure
23:36
Speaker 1: I'm on the record as being having that position. I'm
23:40
Speaker 1: bleeding out of your ears anti ear bleeding pretty much.
23:43
Speaker 1: Um and with the war effort, Like again, it's just
23:46
Speaker 1: all these things are kind of happening at once. So
23:48
Speaker 1: it was sort of just kind of sneaking through the
23:51
Speaker 1: back door and like the worst way you could ever imagine.
23:55
Speaker 1: So this is all going on. Uh, the reason we
23:58
Speaker 1: we do know so much of aut it and I
24:01
Speaker 1: know that it hasn't gotten all the attention of like
24:03
Speaker 1: the plague and things like that, but in the medical
24:06
Speaker 1: community it has they weren't like, all right, well that
24:09
Speaker 1: went away. That's great. Like here in modern times, like
24:12
Speaker 1: starting in the nineteen thirties, they started, you know, on
24:16
Speaker 1: the download collecting blood samples and examining tissue slides and
24:20
Speaker 1: getting you know, either from from people who had died,
24:23
Speaker 1: like from the bodies, or from people that were still
24:25
Speaker 1: alive that survived it. And they have really been doing
24:28
Speaker 1: all this kind of cool like almost like a criminal
24:32
Speaker 1: case like this research to try and learn because you
24:36
Speaker 1: know you can only you don't want something like this
24:38
Speaker 1: to ever happen again, right right, Well that one of
24:41
Speaker 1: the scary things, Chuck, is that like most people who
24:44
Speaker 1: are in public health and epidemiology and virology say like, yeah,
24:48
Speaker 1: this could totally happen again, and it would probably be
24:51
Speaker 1: way worse because of our connectibility, how connected we are. Um,
24:57
Speaker 1: we probably have a greater chance of containing it, just
25:00
Speaker 1: because of the the advances in public health that we've
25:03
Speaker 1: we've undertaken thus far. Um. But the it could, it
25:08
Speaker 1: could happen. I actually talk about this a lot, including
25:11
Speaker 1: the Spanish flu and um this one biotech episode of
25:14
Speaker 1: the End of the World, and it it from what
25:17
Speaker 1: I saw it, it could very well happen just about
25:20
Speaker 1: any time. Well this other part I don't quite get,
25:23
Speaker 1: Um does it does this strain still exist or not?
25:27
Speaker 1: Because it was a little confusing in that part. Okay,
25:30
Speaker 1: get this too. It had gone totally extinct it it
25:35
Speaker 1: had come and gone as we'll see it just basically,
25:37
Speaker 1: maybe it burned through everybody, It killed off everybody so
25:41
Speaker 1: fast that it couldn't spread any longer. And like you said,
25:44
Speaker 1: flu viruses mutate like very frequently, so also our body.
25:50
Speaker 1: Like if you survive a viral infection, you typically are
25:53
Speaker 1: conferred immunity for the rest of your life. So the
25:56
Speaker 1: people who are left, we're not going to catch the
25:57
Speaker 1: Spanish flu again. Okay. So um. And it had run,
26:02
Speaker 1: it run its course, gone extincts so much so that
26:05
Speaker 1: not even just the strain of flu, but all H
26:08
Speaker 1: one N one flus left human circulation. By the fifties
26:11
Speaker 1: nine fifties. Somebody, this dude named Johann Houlton, who was
26:16
Speaker 1: a microbiologist in the fifties and then later on in
26:18
Speaker 1: the nineties, he went to a little town called Brevig, Mission, Alaska,
26:23
Speaker 1: and he dug up the corpse of a Native American
26:26
Speaker 1: woman and an upac woman who had died and who
26:29
Speaker 1: had been buried in a mass grave from the Spanish flu,
26:32
Speaker 1: and took samples of her lung tissue and took it
26:35
Speaker 1: back to another microbiologist whose name I cannot remember, who
26:39
Speaker 1: basically synthesized the genome of it. Okay, great, we understand
26:44
Speaker 1: it genetically, we've got it. No, they went one step
26:46
Speaker 1: further and actually created the Spanish flu virus again, resurrected
26:51
Speaker 1: it from extinction. And yes, the Spanish flu is still
26:54
Speaker 1: around because humans brought it back to life. All right,
26:57
Speaker 1: Well that makes more sense now, I mean in one way, right,
27:01
Speaker 1: Not not that it's a great thing to do, but well,
27:04
Speaker 1: what's funny is like, if you depending on what you read,
27:06
Speaker 1: like if you read like a popular mechanics article about
27:08
Speaker 1: it's it's like, this is an amazing, great achievement. But
27:12
Speaker 1: for my money, it was a terrible achievement. I don't
27:14
Speaker 1: I really don't think we should have taken that extra
27:16
Speaker 1: step and resynthesized it. Although admittedly we have learned a
27:20
Speaker 1: lot about the Spanish flu from that process, but I
27:24
Speaker 1: think there you could have still stopped short from resurrecting
27:26
Speaker 1: it from Extinctioneez. Yeah, alright, So we talked a lot
27:30
Speaker 1: about the three waves, which is really unusual, uh for
27:34
Speaker 1: an epidemic like this. Um it, I mean it had
27:38
Speaker 1: happened before. I'm thinking the sixteen hundreds and eighteen hundreds. Um,
27:44
Speaker 1: but this was a whole different sort of beast. So
27:47
Speaker 1: that first wave hit in the spring of nineteen eighteen, uh,
27:52
Speaker 1: specifically like March and April. It was in the US,
27:56
Speaker 1: it was in Europe, and it was in Asia. So
27:59
Speaker 1: it's already I mean, that's some serious ground that it's
28:02
Speaker 1: covered already, thanks again to World War One. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,
28:07
Speaker 1: this this one wasn't like super super deadly. Uh. Military
28:12
Speaker 1: bases and camps was where it was mostly found. But
28:15
Speaker 1: again with these troops moving everywhere, it was really kind
28:17
Speaker 1: of moving fast. The second wave was the really really
28:20
Speaker 1: deadly one, and that's one where I mentioned it. Over
28:23
Speaker 1: about a four week I'm sorry, four months, sixteen week period,
28:27
Speaker 1: it did most of the killing, uh that fall, with
28:30
Speaker 1: October being the most deadly month in the United States
28:33
Speaker 1: in the history of the United States. To this day,
28:36
Speaker 1: it's the deadliest month. A hundred and ninety five thousand
28:40
Speaker 1: people died in America from the flu in October of nineteen. Yeah,
28:44
Speaker 1: like literally everyone was touched in their family, like there's
28:48
Speaker 1: no way to escape it almost at that point. Yeah,
28:50
Speaker 1: and I mean like we'll talk about it later, but
28:52
Speaker 1: like this is that's how a society can can crumble.
28:56
Speaker 1: That's how like a small community can crumble when that
28:59
Speaker 1: many people die, I that quickly, Like things, things just
29:03
Speaker 1: get out of whack for to say the least. Yeah,
29:06
Speaker 1: So this one. They think that the reason this one
29:08
Speaker 1: came back so deadly was because it mutated over that
29:11
Speaker 1: summer and came back even more lethal than it was before.
29:16
Speaker 1: And uh, some people who had been infected by that
29:19
Speaker 1: first wave did have some immunity on that second wave,
29:23
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess
29:28
Speaker 1: if you survived the first wave, you would, especially if
29:32
Speaker 1: it was just a slightly mutated version of the exact
29:34
Speaker 1: same strain. I could see that. Well. That's what I
29:36
Speaker 1: wondered though, is like how much does something have to
29:38
Speaker 1: mutate before that immunity doesn't count? Well, I don't know,
29:42
Speaker 1: we should say chuck two um, Like we're speculating here
29:47
Speaker 1: that the first wave and the second wave were the
29:50
Speaker 1: same strain of fluid um. That's never been proven in
29:53
Speaker 1: the same the like fluid samples and the tissue samples
29:57
Speaker 1: that you said they took back in the thirties, those
30:00
Speaker 1: were all from second wave victims and survivors. We don't
30:02
Speaker 1: have any samples from the first and maybe not even
30:05
Speaker 1: the third wave, but definitely the bulk, if not all,
30:08
Speaker 1: of the samples we have, and so all the studying
30:11
Speaker 1: we've done has been from that second most deadly wave.
30:14
Speaker 1: So they may not have been the exact same strain,
30:16
Speaker 1: but it is weird that people would have had an
30:18
Speaker 1: immunity to that second wave if they've been through the first. Yeah,
30:21
Speaker 1: I think it was connected for sure. I do too.
30:23
Speaker 1: So third wave hits after a short period of time.
30:27
Speaker 1: This was less widespread, not as severe as the deadly
30:31
Speaker 1: second wave, but worse than that first wave, which was
30:34
Speaker 1: not so deadly. And um, this was mainly through like
30:39
Speaker 1: the beginning of nineteen nineteen through April of nineteen nineteen. Yeah.
30:44
Speaker 1: Ed points out that, like, it depends on where you're
30:46
Speaker 1: talking about, but it was much more sporadic geographically. It
30:52
Speaker 1: wasn't like all from from January to April the whole
30:55
Speaker 1: world didn't have the flu It's just around the world
30:58
Speaker 1: that that that flew outbreak is still going on, but
31:01
Speaker 1: not everywhere. Should we take another break? Let's all right,
31:05
Speaker 1: We're gonna take another quickie and then talk about kind
31:09
Speaker 1: of what also made this especially deadly. Right after this,
31:43
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to talk about what made this
31:46
Speaker 1: so deadly in addition to the war going on at
31:49
Speaker 1: the same time, there was some other weird, weird factors
31:53
Speaker 1: and characteristics of this this flu. Right, we mentioned young
31:57
Speaker 1: and healthy people already, but it bear saying again. The
32:01
Speaker 1: death rate for people between twenty five and thirty four
32:04
Speaker 1: was really really high. And conversely, uh, children were infected
32:09
Speaker 1: at a high high rate. It's not like they weren't
32:12
Speaker 1: getting it, but they had a low mortality rate. And
32:15
Speaker 1: nothing about that makes sense. Yeah, So for for the
32:18
Speaker 1: twenty five to thirty four age group, who you would
32:21
Speaker 1: think would probably be the the the um, the highest
32:25
Speaker 1: group of survivors, they had a two times higher death
32:29
Speaker 1: rate than the forty five to sixty four age group
32:32
Speaker 1: during the Spanish flu, which was ancient. Yeah yeah, really,
32:36
Speaker 1: I mean, if the average life expectancy normally was something
32:39
Speaker 1: in the forties to the fifties, that is kind of ancient. Actually,
32:43
Speaker 1: I would be on death's door in n Yeah, and
32:46
Speaker 1: and just like with a just like with a typical
32:51
Speaker 1: flu infants and the very elderly and people with compromised
32:55
Speaker 1: immune systems. Uh, they died in the greatest numbers. But
33:00
Speaker 1: when you look at that graph that there's a huge
33:02
Speaker 1: spike among like young healthy adults, UM, where they're normally
33:07
Speaker 1: shouldn't be. And there's a lot of theories about why
33:10
Speaker 1: that happened. UM. One reason is because it was spread
33:16
Speaker 1: among soldiers, and those soldiers were starting to come home
33:19
Speaker 1: at the time, so they spread it to their wives
33:20
Speaker 1: who were about the same age. Uh, they spread it
33:23
Speaker 1: to their children, they spread it to their friends, So
33:26
Speaker 1: it definitely was hanging around a specific age group. But
33:30
Speaker 1: they also think that there was a large amount of
33:32
Speaker 1: deaths and that this also accounts for the pneumonia deaths
33:36
Speaker 1: that killed so many people. UM something called the pyto
33:39
Speaker 1: keine storm, which sounds like terrifying to me. Yeah, that
33:45
Speaker 1: is uh, when you have such an overstimulation of immune
33:47
Speaker 1: cells that it just generates. Basically, you you drown in
33:52
Speaker 1: your own flegm because of an over stimulation of immune cells,
33:55
Speaker 1: creating so much fluid, like your immune system is so
33:58
Speaker 1: good and so healthy it kills you. Your immune response
34:02
Speaker 1: is so massive. And this is that they're just starting
34:06
Speaker 1: to understand cytokine storms. Cytokines activate immune cells, and they
34:10
Speaker 1: that's what causes the inflammation, the the the water on
34:14
Speaker 1: the lungs, which then gets infected by bacteria, which gives
34:16
Speaker 1: you pneumonia, which can kill you. Um. They they're just
34:20
Speaker 1: starting to understand this, but they have linked it to
34:23
Speaker 1: the appearance of new flues that people haven't been exposed
34:26
Speaker 1: to before. And this is probably the number one reason
34:29
Speaker 1: why people UM who were young and healthy adults died
34:34
Speaker 1: in such numbers because their age group hadn't been exposed
34:38
Speaker 1: to any H one N one flu before. So not
34:41
Speaker 1: only was this a new h new strain of H
34:44
Speaker 1: O and N one to their bodies, this is a
34:47
Speaker 1: brand new type of virus that they've never been exposed to.
34:50
Speaker 1: And so people whose immune systems were um overamped died
34:56
Speaker 1: from these cytokine storms. They think, Man, Another usual thing
35:00
Speaker 1: was how fast it killed you. U. There were cases
35:04
Speaker 1: where you would literally say, I'm not feeling so good
35:08
Speaker 1: and then twelve hours later you were dead. Can you
35:11
Speaker 1: believe that? Yeah, it's victims died very very fast, um,
35:17
Speaker 1: which you know, when people are dying this quickly, it
35:21
Speaker 1: just compounds. And then you've got like hospitals and overflowing
35:25
Speaker 1: with people, and then you can't care for them, and
35:27
Speaker 1: then people being turned away because they're too full, and
35:31
Speaker 1: then they spread it more. And I mean there were
35:34
Speaker 1: reports of people toe tagging people that were still alive.
35:37
Speaker 1: They just knew that they were going to be dead soon.
35:40
Speaker 1: Did you see that American Experience documentary. It was really tough,
35:44
Speaker 1: like what the apparently bedside manners just developed in the
35:48
Speaker 1: last couple of decades. Because but did it well, yeah,
35:51
Speaker 1: that's a good question. But I mean, can you imagine
35:54
Speaker 1: going to the doctrine, the doctor saying like, better get
35:57
Speaker 1: in line for a casket. Son. Yeah, it's of year old. Yeah,
36:00
Speaker 1: we're telling your twelve year old that you just punched
36:03
Speaker 1: that doctor in the mouth or putting a toe tag
36:06
Speaker 1: on a live person. That's just nuts. But that's that's
36:09
Speaker 1: there's verifiable reports that they did this. Of course back then,
36:13
Speaker 1: if you were twelve, you've you've seen a lot of
36:15
Speaker 1: life kid here middle eight, you you you've had two
36:19
Speaker 1: full careers, right, you retired from coal mining at seven,
36:23
Speaker 1: but get yourself fitted for that casket because you're not
36:25
Speaker 1: going to live to see thirty like your old man.
36:27
Speaker 1: And here's the lollipop. So sad. I know we're making
36:30
Speaker 1: fun of this, but that's the only way I can
36:32
Speaker 1: get through it. Another thing that it did was, um, well,
36:36
Speaker 1: we've we've already kind of hit on this a lot,
36:38
Speaker 1: but how far, how quickly it went so far? Uh
36:43
Speaker 1: And again, largely because of this war and because it
36:46
Speaker 1: was it was attacking people so violently and quickly like US,
36:51
Speaker 1: towns in the United States tried to quarantine themselves, but
36:54
Speaker 1: it was just too late. Like it was, you couldn't
36:56
Speaker 1: stem that tied at that point, you couldn't. There was
36:59
Speaker 1: a guy on the American Experienced documentaries who lived through
37:02
Speaker 1: it as a boy, and he was saying, like it was,
37:05
Speaker 1: it was coming our way. It was coming down the
37:06
Speaker 1: highway toward US. Just town after town would get his
37:09
Speaker 1: flu outbreaks, and his town tried to quarantine themselves, but
37:14
Speaker 1: the mailman brought it in. And you know, if it's
37:16
Speaker 1: not the mailman, it's gonna be somebody else. If you
37:18
Speaker 1: have a soldier returning from home from Europe, you're not
37:21
Speaker 1: gonna be like, you can't come home yet. We gotta
37:24
Speaker 1: wait till this this potentially never ending flu epidemic goes
37:27
Speaker 1: away before you can come back home. Like there's just
37:30
Speaker 1: some way it's going to get through. And it got
37:32
Speaker 1: through apparently everywhere except New Caledonia and American Samoa. Yeah. Um.
37:39
Speaker 1: Another thing, another characteristic of it was the symptoms that
37:42
Speaker 1: had so like, in addition to bleeding out of your ears,
37:46
Speaker 1: you would get mahogany cheeks, these weird brown spots on
37:50
Speaker 1: your cheekbones. You would turn blue because your your lungs
37:54
Speaker 1: were not oxygen eating the blood nearly enough, so your
37:57
Speaker 1: extremities and your face and lips would turn blue. Um. You.
38:02
Speaker 1: There was a nurse in that documentary that said you
38:05
Speaker 1: needed to basically be on guard at all times because
38:07
Speaker 1: people would shoot blood out of their nose across the
38:12
Speaker 1: room and like you would just have to step out
38:14
Speaker 1: of the way to not get splattered by it. Um.
38:18
Speaker 1: Like people would scream when they were touched even lightly.
38:22
Speaker 1: It was just an astoundingly bad flu. There was vomiting, nausea,
38:29
Speaker 1: um like, delirium, just every every horrible symptom you can
38:34
Speaker 1: think of. People basically had and this is like if
38:37
Speaker 1: you're a doctor at the time, you're not like, oh,
38:39
Speaker 1: this is the flu. You were like, what is this,
38:41
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like this before. Well, and again
38:44
Speaker 1: that led to it getting even worse because of the
38:47
Speaker 1: confusion again over symptoms. How slow they reacted because of
38:51
Speaker 1: the war, Like it's really hard to imagine a pandemic
38:55
Speaker 1: outbreak coinciding with the World War. Yeah, like the likes
38:59
Speaker 1: of which the war the world had never seen at
39:01
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, you know, and they said that, you know,
39:04
Speaker 1: people had room to really focus on one thing, and
39:08
Speaker 1: they had to choose between the war and the flu pandemic,
39:10
Speaker 1: and they chose the war instead. Well, because it was
39:12
Speaker 1: also a time I mean, not to make two light
39:14
Speaker 1: of it, but back then it was when you know,
39:17
Speaker 1: like you're not really sick, like pull yourself up by
39:20
Speaker 1: your bootstraps and get to work, right, you know, people
39:23
Speaker 1: dying over there. People didn't have the most sympathy for
39:27
Speaker 1: for you know, sickness like this, get yourself fitted for
39:30
Speaker 1: a cast, get stuff complaining. So eventually they did, but
39:34
Speaker 1: it was just that slow slowness to react that that
39:37
Speaker 1: made it such a health crisis, especially in the US. Yeah,
39:40
Speaker 1: it's not like they didn't know that there was such
39:43
Speaker 1: thing as infectious disease, and that if you banned public
39:45
Speaker 1: gatherings and said no, you you know, we got to
39:48
Speaker 1: close these movie theaters or these bars, or not hold
39:50
Speaker 1: these parades, that it would have a positive effect on
39:53
Speaker 1: public health. But they chose willfully, uh, the people in
39:58
Speaker 1: charge chose not to out of a sense of patriotism
40:01
Speaker 1: and nationalism and um the idea that you didn't want
40:04
Speaker 1: to have any impact on morale. That public health commissioners
40:08
Speaker 1: around the country were just ignoring it, and in in
40:12
Speaker 1: cases where they weren't ignoring it, they were outright downplaying
40:15
Speaker 1: it in the press, saying this is not this is
40:17
Speaker 1: not a thing. It's fine, like any any reports you're
40:20
Speaker 1: hearing are overblown. And there was one commissioner in particular,
40:24
Speaker 1: guy named Wilmer Krussen, who was the health commissioner of Philadelphia.
40:30
Speaker 1: Hard They got hit the worst out of any American city,
40:32
Speaker 1: and it was because of this guy and the moves
40:35
Speaker 1: that he made, and one of the big ones, one
40:37
Speaker 1: of the biggest mistakes he made, knowing full well that
40:40
Speaker 1: there was a flu pandemic going on in his city,
40:42
Speaker 1: he allowed a Liberty Parade to take place in Philadelphia
40:46
Speaker 1: in September late September um, where two hundred thousand people
40:51
Speaker 1: showed up to the parade, and within a few days
40:54
Speaker 1: Philadelphia had it worse than anybody. In one day, seven
40:59
Speaker 1: d fifteen time people died in Philadelphia and one day
41:03
Speaker 1: within a week or two of this parade taking place,
41:07
Speaker 1: like the parade was, was you know, moment zero for
41:10
Speaker 1: the real spread of the pandemic in Philadelphia. And it
41:13
Speaker 1: was this guy's fault. Yeah. That and with his declaration
41:18
Speaker 1: a virus and every cheese steak, I don't know, it
41:23
Speaker 1: depends on the virus. I might still eat the cheese
41:25
Speaker 1: steak to tell you that. Oh man, I love a
41:27
Speaker 1: good cheese steak. Oh yeah, it's hard to find him
41:29
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. It really is pretty good. Ones. What he's,
41:33
Speaker 1: of course, over near the park is kind of the
41:36
Speaker 1: the old standard. Do you like it? Though? What he's
41:38
Speaker 1: it's all right, I mean it's pretty traditionally Philly like,
41:42
Speaker 1: is it. I thought they like left off the cheese
41:45
Speaker 1: was and put on ketchup. Really they don't put on ketchup.
41:49
Speaker 1: I think they do well. I just had one and
41:52
Speaker 1: had no ketchup. On it. Well, maybe they changed the recipe,
41:55
Speaker 1: because I swear to God that I've had one with
41:56
Speaker 1: ketchupon it there really I know. Did you ask for
42:00
Speaker 1: a bloody Oh yeah, that was the problem. I asked
42:03
Speaker 1: for it with ketchup. They do. They do bastardize it
42:07
Speaker 1: with the They have one version with bacon. Uh, that
42:12
Speaker 1: is not as good as you would think, Like everything
42:14
Speaker 1: isn't better with bacon. That's absolutely true because what they
42:19
Speaker 1: do is a it's not like strips of bacon wedged
42:23
Speaker 1: in the role. It's it's diced up and cooked with
42:26
Speaker 1: the meat. And normally I would say like, oh man,
42:29
Speaker 1: sign me up, but it's something about it just didn't
42:31
Speaker 1: work here. Yeah, I think. Plus the fact that pigs
42:34
Speaker 1: are smarter than dogs also makes makes things less good
42:38
Speaker 1: with bacon sometimes too. What yeah, there's really smart, I know,
42:43
Speaker 1: But well you gotta bring dogs into this. Have you
42:47
Speaker 1: seen like that that peta ad it's like a pig. No,
42:52
Speaker 1: it's a a labrador's body with the pig's head on it.
42:56
Speaker 1: And it said like if if pigs looked like this,
42:59
Speaker 1: would you eat them? Or so then they got a
43:00
Speaker 1: bunch of a bunch of stuff for it. It's a
43:04
Speaker 1: pretty weird looking at too. Yeah, I would say, so. Um,
43:08
Speaker 1: all right, so let's let's talk about let's wrap this
43:10
Speaker 1: puppy up, okay, and the legacy of of the pandemic
43:15
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighteen, the Spanish flu also called the Spanish
43:18
Speaker 1: Lady and the Blue Death, and I think Flanders disease
43:23
Speaker 1: in Germany, Flanders. Not sure why. Maybe it started h
43:29
Speaker 1: near a place called Flanders. Yeah, and in Belgium, I belief.
43:32
Speaker 1: But that's I mean, that's a pretty long standing tradition
43:35
Speaker 1: is blame some neighbor you don't really like for the
43:37
Speaker 1: flu that's killing off your population. You know, well, this
43:40
Speaker 1: was all blamed on Spain. They had nothing to do
43:42
Speaker 1: with it. You don't want to call it like us
43:43
Speaker 1: flu or anything now. So I want to say one
43:46
Speaker 1: more thing though, Chuck. So we talked a little bit
43:49
Speaker 1: about the um about the society breaking down, right, you
43:53
Speaker 1: said that people ran out of caskets. I don't think
43:56
Speaker 1: like we really got that across. Like, put yourself in
43:58
Speaker 1: a mind where they're so many dead people all of
44:01
Speaker 1: a sudden that you don't have any caskets to put
44:04
Speaker 1: them in anymore. You have to wait for them to
44:07
Speaker 1: to hurriedly build more caskets unless the people that build
44:10
Speaker 1: the caskets are dead. Yeah, that's another real possibility to
44:14
Speaker 1: like imagine building a casket, falling into it from the flu,
44:18
Speaker 1: and well they just leave you in there because you
44:20
Speaker 1: are dead. Now. Well, but that's what I mean, Like
44:23
Speaker 1: we're kind of kidding. But when I said it altered humanity,
44:27
Speaker 1: Like in a small town, what if the doctors died
44:30
Speaker 1: and the teachers died, and then there were towns that
44:34
Speaker 1: may have survived, but they had no infrastructure because there
44:38
Speaker 1: were no cops or doctors or teachers or you know, police,
44:41
Speaker 1: like you know, it was it was killing everybody. So yeah,
44:44
Speaker 1: so you could just be left, you know, with a
44:47
Speaker 1: bunch of twelve year olds, right, yeah, yeah, it's children.
44:50
Speaker 1: Are the corn up in there? It kind of was.
44:52
Speaker 1: I'm sure that happened to a lot of towns that
44:54
Speaker 1: are now run by children as out of custom. Maybe,
44:57
Speaker 1: so that's probably where it started. But but the other
45:01
Speaker 1: thing that that was a casualty of the Spanish flu,
45:03
Speaker 1: especially in small towns, was like civic life because if
45:08
Speaker 1: you were healthy, you looked at other people on the
45:10
Speaker 1: street with suspicion. If you went out at all. You
45:13
Speaker 1: didn't stop and talk to people and say hi. Maybe
45:15
Speaker 1: you didn't do all the things that keep like a
45:17
Speaker 1: community glued together. And so communities started to fall apart.
45:21
Speaker 1: And then when public officials finally did start to react,
45:24
Speaker 1: they shut down schools, they shut down bars, they banned gathering.
45:27
Speaker 1: Some towns banned funerals, like you couldn't have a funeral
45:30
Speaker 1: for your your dear departed mother. You had to leave
45:33
Speaker 1: her in a box on your porch for the undertakers
45:35
Speaker 1: to come get on an open wagon, like it's the
45:39
Speaker 1: medieval plague collectors, you know. I mean, this was nineteen eighteen.
45:43
Speaker 1: I know that sounds like a long time ago. But
45:45
Speaker 1: this wasn't the sixteenth century. No, no, So this is
45:49
Speaker 1: this was going on, and at the same time, it
45:51
Speaker 1: wasn't leaving a genuine, lasting national impression on America or
45:57
Speaker 1: anywhere really in the world that I could see, which
45:59
Speaker 1: is bizarre. Well, yeah, that's one of the weird things
46:02
Speaker 1: about its legacy is and again we had to keep
46:05
Speaker 1: hammering this home. But because of the war, it wasn't
46:08
Speaker 1: like the Spanish flu went away, which was really weird.
46:11
Speaker 1: It went away very much. Uh, kind of quickly and
46:15
Speaker 1: no one really knew why. Um, but it's not like
46:17
Speaker 1: that happened. And then they were like, all right, well man,
46:20
Speaker 1: we really need to change public health policy, and we
46:23
Speaker 1: really need to to get all these breakthroughs and sanitation
46:27
Speaker 1: and vaccinations going and really really take care of things.
46:30
Speaker 1: Now they kind of were just like, oh, well, thank
46:32
Speaker 1: god that's gone, and it would be decades before they
46:35
Speaker 1: made real changes in policy to to help prevent something
46:38
Speaker 1: like this, which is bizarre because you would think, like,
46:41
Speaker 1: you know, when something like that happened, it would have
46:43
Speaker 1: that effect, but it didn't. It just didn't like there
46:46
Speaker 1: were there were no teachable Oprah moments from it. It
46:49
Speaker 1: was just like you said, everybody was glad it was gone. Yeah.
46:52
Speaker 1: I thought the bit that Ed included about Woodrow Wilson
46:55
Speaker 1: had I had heard this before. It was really interesting. Um.
46:59
Speaker 1: He was was US president at the time. He got
47:02
Speaker 1: the flu in January of nineteen nineteen. Obviously did not
47:05
Speaker 1: die from it, but there are people and historians that
47:09
Speaker 1: say that it altered him so much, um, that it
47:13
Speaker 1: left him very paranoid, very secretive, and even caused him
47:17
Speaker 1: to impose harsher reparation reparations on Germany uh in the
47:24
Speaker 1: Treaty of Versailles, which basically crippled Germany, which led to
47:28
Speaker 1: the right of the rise of Nazism and the Nazi Party,
47:31
Speaker 1: which led to World War Two. So World War Two
47:34
Speaker 1: may have never even happened. Who knows had it not
47:37
Speaker 1: been for Woodrow Wilson being sick with the Spanish flu.
47:41
Speaker 1: Maybe it's bizarre, it's a bit of a leap, but
47:43
Speaker 1: I have other people I've heard that case made. I've
47:47
Speaker 1: seen it too, that he he just kind of changed
47:49
Speaker 1: and apparently took a completely different tack than he originally
47:52
Speaker 1: had intended as reparations against Germany. Yeah, and in in
47:56
Speaker 1: US towns, it wasn't. I mean, this was the time
47:59
Speaker 1: when people opened up their door to a stranger if
48:02
Speaker 1: and they were in need, and that really changed that.
48:05
Speaker 1: Like people were, like you said, they not only were
48:08
Speaker 1: they not hanging out on the street, but like people
48:10
Speaker 1: were turning people away at gunpoint, and people were taking
48:14
Speaker 1: their own lives and the lives of their family. It
48:17
Speaker 1: was just like it was brutal. Yep, it was brutal.
48:20
Speaker 1: And it's weird that it's not, you know, more recognized
48:23
Speaker 1: than it is. But hopefully we just contributed it to
48:26
Speaker 1: being remembered forever, that's right. But we now know today
48:29
Speaker 1: because we have continued to study the flu of uh
48:35
Speaker 1: really how a pandemic can play out. And it's not
48:38
Speaker 1: like uh science has forgotten. They are still studying the
48:42
Speaker 1: causes and the repercussions and what we can do better.
48:45
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating, is what it is.
48:49
Speaker 1: By God, If you want to know more about Spanish flu,
48:53
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to it. We talked about everything
48:56
Speaker 1: we possibly could, but there's it's just big. So you
49:00
Speaker 1: can go search for it in your handy search bar
49:02
Speaker 1: of your handy UM search engine on your handy computer.
49:07
Speaker 1: Do that. And since I said that, it's time for chuck. Oh, yes,
49:14
Speaker 1: you say it? Okay, administrative details, all right, everybody, This
49:31
Speaker 1: is the time of the show. Every quarter or so's
49:37
Speaker 1: it quarterly? Roughly? Yeah? Definitely after um uh the holidays,
49:42
Speaker 1: because we're thankful for everybody who thought of us over
49:45
Speaker 1: the holidays, that's right. So we want to begin by
49:47
Speaker 1: saying we got a lot of Christmas cards and letters,
49:50
Speaker 1: and rather than list all of those individually like we should,
49:56
Speaker 1: we're just gonna give a blanket thank you for Christmas
49:58
Speaker 1: cards and let and well wishes in the form of
50:02
Speaker 1: a written or typed letter. It's always nice to get those. Still,
50:05
Speaker 1: I should say we're pretty thankful after the whole days. Uh.
50:11
Speaker 1: Let's see Dan Yell and Adam. They sent us a
50:13
Speaker 1: wedding invitation and they got married in Phoenix, Uh, the
50:17
Speaker 1: weekend after our live show in Atlanta. So Mazel Tov
50:21
Speaker 1: and congratulations and best wishes to Dan Yell and Adam.
50:25
Speaker 1: That's right, we got a very special gift. We got
50:28
Speaker 1: a real deal American flag that was flown in battle,
50:32
Speaker 1: in combat. Major Mike Wilkes of the United States Air
50:35
Speaker 1: Force sent usis flag flown by Special Forces Ops crew
50:39
Speaker 1: on actual combat missions. Uh. And it came with a
50:43
Speaker 1: certificate of its legitimacy signed by four of the crew members. Right.
50:48
Speaker 1: That's about as legitimate as it gets. Um. John Hank
50:53
Speaker 1: sent us some of his Ready Bamb lip balm. That's
50:56
Speaker 1: I feel bad for John. That's a tough act to follow,
50:59
Speaker 1: but you can check out it's good lip bomb. You
51:01
Speaker 1: can check it out at ready bomb r e a
51:03
Speaker 1: d y bomb be a LM fine dot com. Ready
51:08
Speaker 1: Bamb dot com by John Hank We got a lot
51:12
Speaker 1: of pens everybody. We did our episode on Ballpoint pens
51:16
Speaker 1: and people felt the need to share their favorites, which
51:19
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. So there will be some pins scattered
51:22
Speaker 1: throughout here. But first up, Christina Twig sent us her
51:25
Speaker 1: favorite pilot easy blue colored Pilot, easy touch, fine point.
51:31
Speaker 1: Not bad. It's still no pilot G twos, but it's
51:34
Speaker 1: not bad. Yeah, I've been I've been trying out these
51:36
Speaker 1: different pins. Oh that's interesting. Another dude, uh named I
51:40
Speaker 1: can't try. I try them, but then they just like
51:42
Speaker 1: cramp my hand and I start bleeding from under my
51:45
Speaker 1: fingernails something like that. You know, I just can't do it.
51:48
Speaker 1: Another guy who sent us pens is Ryan Pinto, who
51:51
Speaker 1: has a great name. Thanks Ryan, that's right. Marcus Claytor
51:55
Speaker 1: from the UK sent me a hand drawn film still
51:59
Speaker 1: from the movie Rushmore. He's a movie crush fan as well,
52:02
Speaker 1: and he said he draws film stills by hand and
52:06
Speaker 1: send me one that you want me to do. So
52:08
Speaker 1: I picked the very famous last shot of Rushmore of
52:12
Speaker 1: of Max and his teacher Um standing in front of
52:17
Speaker 1: each other to dance at the at the Big Dance
52:19
Speaker 1: while everyone else is dancing around them and it's really
52:22
Speaker 1: really pretty. I gotta see it. I haven't seen it.
52:25
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Our old buddy van Nostrin, one of the
52:29
Speaker 1: original fans, I would say, and now a pal. Yeah. Um,
52:34
Speaker 1: he and Lee are both pals. Uh. He sent us
52:36
Speaker 1: a Satanic skull as his you know, the usual, and
52:40
Speaker 1: a vintage relief map of Puget Sound, his beloved sound. Yeah.
52:44
Speaker 1: That's because he's a big kayaker now and I've hit
52:47
Speaker 1: him up yesterday and I said thanks for the map,
52:49
Speaker 1: and he said, now you will know where to find
52:51
Speaker 1: my body one day or something like. Yeah, at the
52:54
Speaker 1: very least we'll find his foot floating and sound. That's right. Uh,
52:58
Speaker 1: Aaron Cooper are speaking of old friends and listeners. Uh.
53:03
Speaker 1: Coop has been around with us for many, many years
53:05
Speaker 1: and is very famous within our community for for doing
53:09
Speaker 1: the excellent photoshops of us. And he's still every Christmas
53:14
Speaker 1: sends us the selects and nice large printed form and
53:20
Speaker 1: he sent us another bounty of posters this year. But
53:22
Speaker 1: a great guy. He's also an administrator on the s
53:25
Speaker 1: Y s k Army Facebook page. Yes, and also designs
53:28
Speaker 1: a lot of the T shirts and just all around
53:31
Speaker 1: great guy. Yeah, good guy, great father, nice goatee. Who
53:37
Speaker 1: else do we have, Chuck? Rebecca Rube. Yes, that's Robe,
53:41
Speaker 1: believe it or not. Okay, good. I'm glad you you
53:44
Speaker 1: corrected me because it's R O O B. And I
53:46
Speaker 1: was like, I feel bad, but I'm not calling Rebecca
53:49
Speaker 1: Rube and I'm glad it's Robe. So Rebecca Robe sent
53:52
Speaker 1: us a box full of goodies from South Dakota, and
53:56
Speaker 1: especially for Chuck, a ween poster from the artist Change Rotor,
54:01
Speaker 1: who can be found at s H A I N
54:04
Speaker 1: E A RT dot com Shane art dot com. That's right.
54:08
Speaker 1: And if you live in South Dakota, particularly near a
54:12
Speaker 1: story of South Dakota, you can do a lot worse
54:14
Speaker 1: than R and R landscape design, which is Rebecca's jam.
54:18
Speaker 1: She works out in gardens for people. Nice. That's very
54:21
Speaker 1: lovely work. That's good work for sure. Mimi Bailey of Greenville,
54:25
Speaker 1: South Carolina, send a lot of a lot of cool things.
54:28
Speaker 1: They sent a toy for Momo, thank you. They sent
54:31
Speaker 1: some Neco wafers for me and this, and I think
54:35
Speaker 1: tiny Tabasco as well. And then Jerry didn't get a
54:38
Speaker 1: little tiny miso miso because we always laugh about the
54:42
Speaker 1: Miso soup with tree she loves. Yeah, that's for Mimi
54:46
Speaker 1: Bailey of Greenville. Siggy Holmgren, who also has a wonderful name,
54:52
Speaker 1: sent us some glass jewelry for our ladies and glass
54:56
Speaker 1: art by Siggy on Etsy is where you can find
54:59
Speaker 1: that stuff. Thanks Siggy. Cameron Henley sent me I've been
55:02
Speaker 1: talking a lot about my love for Australian rules football,
55:06
Speaker 1: specifically the Melbourne Football Club, so he sent me a
55:09
Speaker 1: Melbourne Football Club calendar. While those hunky men, I'm gonna
55:14
Speaker 1: get out on the wall right. Uh, let's see our
55:17
Speaker 1: buddy Sweetwater Dave who has now become Badger Dave, who
55:20
Speaker 1: has now become new Hampshire Representative Dave. Did we ever
55:24
Speaker 1: say that Dave won his his UM his election. I
55:27
Speaker 1: think we did, But if they're saying again he won
55:29
Speaker 1: his election, congratulations Dave. Uh. He sent us some olive
55:33
Speaker 1: oil from Spain. That Badger, which is a company he
55:36
Speaker 1: works for, UM uses in some of their products and
55:39
Speaker 1: they also sell the olive oil straight up and he
55:42
Speaker 1: says it's great and Dave is right, So thanks Dave,
55:45
Speaker 1: hope you're doing well. We also got tiny Tabasco bottles
55:48
Speaker 1: from Nikki Carl and Jackson Russell. Nice nice family. Who
55:52
Speaker 1: else Alison Gallagher who uh is also a movie crusher
55:56
Speaker 1: and stuff you should know listener who recently moved to Atlanta.
56:00
Speaker 1: So welcome Allison. Oh, yeah, welcome. She sent a shirt
56:04
Speaker 1: that says, with great beard comes great responsibility to me
56:09
Speaker 1: and a little iPhone plug in fan because I gets
56:12
Speaker 1: so hot. You know, you literally just plug it into
56:14
Speaker 1: where you charge your iPhone and it spends a fan
56:18
Speaker 1: blade because and I shall never be hot again. It's
56:23
Speaker 1: it's ear piercing everybody. It's loud. Laura Stewart sent some
56:28
Speaker 1: very nice gifts. She adopted an elephant in your daughter
56:32
Speaker 1: Ruby's name, Chuck from the World Wildlife Foundation. That's right.
56:36
Speaker 1: And she also adopted a honey bee in mine and
56:40
Speaker 1: Yumi's and Momo's name. So thank you very much, Laura.
56:43
Speaker 1: That was very kind of you. That was very sweet.
56:45
Speaker 1: This one came with an elephant plushy. Uh and my
56:49
Speaker 1: kid loves this thing, named it Navy. We we didn't
56:52
Speaker 1: get a plushy. She said that she looked for a
56:54
Speaker 1: plush honey bee forest but couldn't find one, so she
56:56
Speaker 1: just sent us a dead bee. Oh well, that's nice.
57:00
Speaker 1: I'm just getting a stinger still intact, right right, with
57:03
Speaker 1: a post it note with you written on it. Thanks Laura.
57:07
Speaker 1: I'm just teaching well and thanks to everybody. That's all
57:10
Speaker 1: we have for now. The slate is clean. If we
57:12
Speaker 1: did forget you, then uh bother us on email and
57:15
Speaker 1: we'll get you in the next round for sure. And
57:18
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this, you
57:19
Speaker 1: can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and
57:21
Speaker 1: check out all of our social links. You can also
57:23
Speaker 1: find me at the Josh Clarkway dot com and you
57:26
Speaker 1: can send me Jerry Chuck and everyone involved an email
57:30
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com. For
57:38
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
57:41
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.