1918 pandemic thoughts

[Damien]

In general:
* Viruses can be easily transmissible, take a long time to germinate, or have a high mortality rate - you usually get one of these, two is relatively common but three is pretty darn rare. As a result, serious diseases tend to burn themselves out very fast.
* The US government has a history of testing medical treatments on its military subjects, who have pretty much no legal right to object to the treatments.
* During the 1910's the world was in the middle of The Great War, aka World War I; 1918 saw the end of the war after a treaty on 11/11. Military forces start returning home.

So.. in 1918..
* The world was starting to recover from World War I, the first war that involved widespread use of chemical weapons.
* According to some researchers (http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/) the virus started in the USA, in Kansas and various military camps around the country, and progressed overseas to Spain and other countries.
* Spain was in the midst of an economic collapse, having lost several wars.
* The world had not accepted the practice of using vaccines to "prevent" disease.

After the "pandemic":
* People all over the world died in large numbers from allegedly the same virus.
* The world suddenly accepted using vaccines to "prevent" viruses and a massive industry mushroomed.

Questions:
* Did the American forces stop off in Spain on the way to the war?
* Was there any vaccine testing going in Kansas during early 1918?
* Was there any vaccine testing in Spain that year?
* What were the actual symptoms experienced by people in the different parts of the world affected by the pandemic?
* Is there any medical data, or even printed anecdotal reports, going back to that period which might discuss vaccination plans?

Simply put: was the 1918 pandemic man-made as either a naive attempt to protect people from a mild disease that went horribly wrong, or could it have been planned to cause massive numbers of illness to look to the vaccine industry as its saviour?

[Dozytoes]

Damien, have you read the webpage from John at Whale?

http://www.whale.to/v/spanish_flu.html

Very interesting and some contributions there from Hilary. :)

[Damien]

Thanks Dozytoes, some good articles there, fits inline with what I was starting to guess. Now to find some of this information in books published around that time..

[Fièvre]

Not an answer , but a - late - commentary ( which could be understood as a question as well...)


Bacterial vaccines of various sorts were widely used for both preventive and therapeutic purposes during the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19. Some were derived exclusively from the Pfeiffer's bacillus, the presumed cause of influenza, while others contained one or more other organisms found in the lungs of victims. Although initially most reports of the use of these vaccines claimed that they prevented influenza or pneumonia, the results were inconsistent and sometimes contradictory. During the course of the debates over the efficacy of these vaccines, it became clear that the medical profession had no consensus on what constituted a proper vaccine trial. Even among those who asserted that clinical impression was not enough, there was no agreement on how a trial ought to be conducted. The American Public Health Association, through its Working Program on Influenza, sought to establish standards for the profession. The standards the APHA set in December 1918 guided American vaccine trials for a quarter century.
http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/64/4/401

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Yes vaccine were used extensively in this country too in 1918, and you never hear a word about it. I only found out about it because it was mentioned in the 1919 appendices to parliamentary journals. You would have thought if they were worth Jack we'd have heard about it.

[Seaweed]

Yes vaccine were used extensively in this country too in 1918 The mind truly boggles knowing how little they know now, how much littler they would have known then. I did read some alarmingly low amount of syringes they used in some vaccine campaign in the 1920s in Africa for vaxing a very high number of people so there would have probably been similar hygeine issues going on back then as well.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

They didn't sterilize needles, and reused them until they were too blunt to go in.

[Seaweed]

Was it due to ignorance or not caring about who they were jabbing? So much for first do no harm!!!

[MinorityView]

I was chatting with a doctor one day and he described an older doctor who had practiced in just that way, using needles until they were blunt.

We are used to living in a world with a lot of resources, but equipment for injection used to be very expensive. I don't think it was feasible to obtain huge quantities and toss them after one use.

Tragic.

[Fièvre]

Montezuma Tuatara wrote
They didn't sterilize needles
Really !!!!!!!!???? Where could I check this ?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

it's all over the medical literature. And it still happens. There are SAGE reports on WHO website going back years which even today, talk about EPI needles being repackaged on-sold and again, used until blunt in unsterile circumstances. WHO has even calculated the cases of HIV, Hepatitis B, C etc from that practice... according to their "linear mathematical models" (which I think are dubious crystal ball gazing with error on both sides being "infinity" ) If you believe their statistics, recycled syringes cause horrific infection rates every year.

Seaweed, MV is right. It's called resource scarcity.

But using needles has become quite the juju thing amongst the traditional "medicine men" in undeveloped countries. According to Wyatt, even muddy water is used.

Indians also have an unfounded belief in the wonders of needles, which has been, and still is today, a major cause of provocation polio.

Do a google search of the medical doctor Wyatt HV, in particular concentrating on "unsterile injections" or "provocation polio".

When you've read what he was allowed to say in medical journals, compare that to what one polio researcher wrote to me 429 on 29 June 1990.

[Fièvre]

Thanks Montezuma Tuatara .

I know of Wyatt's work , having- rapidly- read some of his articles on his own web site some months ago... without being able to catch how his work is understood by mainstream research . I would have the feeling that although referenced, his work is understated . what is your opinion on Wyatt' s reputation among official scientists ?

In 1998 a French doctor H barennes already wrote :


Although the use of the same needle has decrea -
sed, using the same syringe for many patients, with only a rapid washing between, is still com -
monplace. Poor septic conditions and abuse of prescriptions also contribute to the transmission of
severe diseases (hepatitis, malaria, syphilis, filariasis, Ebola virus, tetanus and HIV).



Paralysis due to
injection is often confused with poliomyelitis and health workers are often not aware of the seque -
lae of injection. It seems important to prevent risk related to intramuscular injection in Africa
through educating health workers and the local population

http://www.pathexo.fr/documents/articles-bull/T92-1-1926.pdf

Barenne wrote " confused " : if I roughly understood Wyatt correctly , wouldn't he have stated ," it was poliomyelitis " ?

PS : if I am right ,same problem occured in Europe/USA... in early times of smallpox inoculation ; syphyllis was supposed to spread that way too ; officials who denied it at the time do aknowledge the fact today .

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Yes, he would have considered it provocation polio, which is polio, and isn't 'confused' with polio except by those who want to fiddle the books.

At the time Wyatt was and is considered relatively "respectable". After all, he's provaccine. So they tolerate a bit of "other" truth along with that.

Wasn't it ... Romania... which a few years back, had provocation polio from the DPT?