Solar flares, dust storms, streptococcus, starvation, and poison gas were just a few factors involved with the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic.
This hunger map of Europe from 1 December 1918 shows the coming catastrophe. Germany is listed as unclassified but even before the war had finished at least 400,000 Germans had died from starvation.
To blame 1918 flu for all the deaths after the war is making the disaster too simple.
The origins have been blamed on the Fort Riley training camp at the beginning of March 1918.
“Located on Fort Riley, Camp Funston was a massive training facility rapidly constructed after America’s entrance in the war. There, soldiers were prepared for combat in Europe. Due to the war effort, resources were limited and soldiers in 1918 found themselves overcrowded in poorly heated tents during an unusually cold winter. Along with poor sanitation and inadequate medical facilities, the circumstances proved ripe for an epidemic outbreak.
On March 4, a private at Funston (a cook) reported ill with a volatile form of influenza, and within three weeks, 1,100 soldiers on the post displayed similar symptoms.”
March 4th coincides with a massive solar flare because auroras followed.
Solar flares send out extreme pulses of X-rays which radiate us on earth in 8 minutes. A coronal mass ejection of solar plasma then takes 2 to 3 days to reach us. The Difference Between Flares and CMEs
So imagine you are training hard outside in the cold while on dodgy rations, you have been cooked by the sun and the main nutrients to stop radiation poisoning which are selenium and vitamin C have been used up.
Selenium is an antiviral and vitamin C holds our body together by making collagen and the immune system uses ascorbate to fight infections.
Selenium deficiency can be caused by protein deficiency, overdosing on selenium is toxic so eating protein or adding some garlic or only two Brazil nuts each day is enough for those looking for some viral protection or preventing hyperthyroid weight loss.
The Coronal Mass ejection from the sun reached us on March 7th.
‘Aurora of March 7th, 1918, practically visible over all the Northern Hemisphere of earth’
“March 9, 1918- Telegraph lines from New York to Buffalo were disrupted. Motors providing electricity for the telegraph wires were acting strangely. No one could understand how ‘atmospheric electricity’ could affect motors. [New York Times, March 9, 1918, p.9]. In London, the auroral light aided German bombers in seeing terrain over southern England. [New York Times, March 9, 1918, p. 3]. Strange light in sky watched by crowds [New York Times, March 8, 1918, p. 11]. Ojiway indians say celestial apparition portends great events [New York Times, March 9, 1918, p. 3]. Two officers chased aurora borealis thinking it fire [The Atlanta Constitution, March 8, 1918, p.1].Aurora on spree of color paints the sky red [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 8, 1918, p. p. 13]. An aurora borealis glows in northern sky startles capitol [The Washington Post, March 8, 1918, p.1]. Experts deny London raid due to aurora borealis [The Washington Post, March 11, 1918, p.3]”
Space Weather Newspaper Archives
And then a dust storm came in and soldiers started coughing.
“On March 9, 1918, a huge dust storm rolled across the plains toward Fort Riley.
The regular daily manure burning operation was going on when it hit; Fort Riley’s horses produced hundreds of tons of manure a week and the Army’s way of disposing of it was incineration.
According to a historical account from the PBS American Experience documentary Influenza 1918, “The dust, combining with the ash of burning manure, kicked up a stinging, stinking yellow haze. The sun was said to have gone dead black in Kansas that day.” Trains had to halt on the tracks.
Fort Riley was covered in soot and ash. Men were assigned to clean up the mess, but they did not know to wear masks.
Did a Virus in Horse Manure Launch the 1918 Influenza Epidemic?
Those coughing soldiers were then put on boats and sent to the trenches.
You can imagine the coughing on the ships and by 1918 everyone seems to have forgotten how lemons got Captain Cook to Australia and made Britain a superpower.
On March 9th in 1918 this article linking 1917 measles outbreaks in soldiers with streptococcus pneumonia infections was printed, the link with strep is important.
“We have recently had opportunity to study the incidence and symptoms of streptococcal infections following measles, tonsillitis and other conditions associated with lowered resistance in soldiers”
STREPTOCOCCAL INFECTIONS FOLLOWING MEASLES AND OTHER DISEASES
From 2015 “An outbreak investigation implicated measles and streptococcal co-infections in most deaths, and also characterised a parallel epidemic of primary streptococcal pneumonia in soldiers without measles.”
A forgotten epidemic that changed medicine: measles in the US Army, 1917–18
In my opinion there are close links with the presence of influenza, measles and streptococcus and other bacterial infections, indications are that any viral presence is merely an event before bacteria take hold and then the strep kills people.
Both measles and streptococcus are associated with dust events, and skin rash symptoms between measles and streptococcus are so similar as to confuse while the measles test can be positive for all sorts of rash.
‘A false positive IgM result may be obtained when serum is tested for measles or rubella IgM from patients with rash illnesses due to other causes’
Which comes first or do they come together? A virus needs to come with a living cell.
These are awkward anomaly questions that remain unanswered, an example for the nerds, is the presence of a virus attaching strep? Or is it just wrecking immunity?
Why are there so few studies checking what viruses are carried on bacteria?
Bacteria travel through the stratosphere on dust, so do viruses, dust from the Sahara reaches America sometimes. What does cosmic radiation do to bacteria on dust?
How much did dust from Katla volcano in Iceland affect people in Europe?
Were volcanoes affecting people in Alaska, why did an epidemic hit in November when it was too cold to travel?
‘The eruption in Katla occurred in 1918. The Southern coast was extended by 5 km by the laharic flood deposits.’
While focussing on viruses we may be simply missing environmental factors like pollution and sanitation since 2.5 billion people have no water taps or toilets.
‘Group A Streptococcus is among the top 10 infectious causes of human mortality, with more than 500,000 deaths annually.’
In the trenches the soldiers were up to their necks in bacteria, rotting flesh and faeces, the soil itself carries parasites like spirochetes.
My Irish grandad fought at Ypres and ended up with a bullet lodged in his spine.
In the shocking accounts of Ypres where a million men could have died you only had to slip off the boards into the mud and you could disappear, collecting corpses was not even possible. Anything could have caused trench fever.
‘In mid-1915, the medical officer Major J H P Graham made this important observation from the Western Front:
‘A private belonging to an infantry regiment was admitted to a casualty clearing station from a field ambulance where he had been detained suffering from a febrile illness of three days’ duration and of sudden onset.’
The characteristics of this condition were unlike anything that he had previously encountered: ‘the patient’s condition on admission was marked by frontal headache, dizziness, severe lumbago, a feeling of stiffness down the front of the thighs, and severe pains in the legs referred chiefly to the shins.’1 One of the most curious qualities was the relapsing fever.’
Trench fever: the British medical response in the Great War
Then there were gas gangrene infections where gas from bacteria burst out of wounds. It may be best not to look at the link as there are photos.
“Among these papers is a type-written report, “History of the Laboratory of Base Hospital No. 28,” with this striking statement: “The mode of most of the fighting in the present war, i.e., position warfare over fields which have been cultivated for centuries, inevitably resulted in a great prevalence of gas infections.” The author of that report was referring to gas gangrene, an almost uniformly fatal suffusion of tissues with noxious gases from specific bacterial wound infections. Gas gangrene must not be confused with poison gases, phosgene or mustard gas, or even with trench foot.
Gas gangrene is quite distinct and is caused by anaerobic bacteria, Clostridia, that do not require oxygen or air to survive. (Aerobic bacteria, on the other hand, require oxygen in order to survive and grow). Thus, when fields previously cultivated with manure lay uncultivated for centuries, Clostridia were buried deep underground and continued to grow and thrive. Trench warfare, spreading over large areas of both France and Belgium, was all that was needed to bring Clostridia to the surface by disrupting and churning up the soil. In fact, the whole front consisted of “churned-up” soil from artillery rounds and the digging of deep trenches.’
Gas Gangrene in the First World War
Then there was the treatment for syphilis, in my opinion it is impossible to tell if syphilis in soldiers came from prostitutes or from the soil as prostitutes were blamed for everything including TB from living in slums. Easy scapegoats.
If your genitals are soaking in mud and faeces for months, well….
The cure for syphilis was arsenic injections. Arsenic depletes selenium btw.
‘Those risks, it turned out, were very serious; treatments were often by injection and Salvarsan itself was poisonous and potentially deadly. As related by Dr. Wilhelm Wechselmann in his 1913 book The Pathogenesis of Salvarasan Fatalities:
Of all the clouds which have encompassed salvarsan therapy there yet remains one to darken the horizon, but this is the blackest, viz: the foudroyant fatalities in consequence of the intravenous injections of salvarsan. There cannot be the least doubt but that these patients would not have died at the time had it not been for the introduction of salvarsan into their veins.’
Then on top of that you had soldiers coughing with flu or strep getting gassed.
‘IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF April 22, 1915, members of a special unit of the German Army opened the valves on more than 6000 steel cylinders arrayed in trenches along their defensive perimeter at Ypres, Belgium. Within 10 minutes, 160 tons of chlorine gas drifted over the opposing French trenches, engulfing all those downwind.
[I watched] figures running wildly in confusion over the fields. Greenish-gray clouds swept down upon them, turning yellow as they traveled over the country blasting everything they touched and shriveling up the vegetation. . . . Then there staggered into our midst French soldiers, blinded, coughing, chests heaving, faces an ugly purple color, lips speechless with agony, and behind them in the gas soaked trenches, we learned that they had left hundreds of dead and dying comrades.
Chemical Warfare and Medical Response During World War I
You can read long winded accounts of the type of virus and how it worked and often the question asked, ‘Why Did the 1918 Virus Kill So Many Healthy Young Adults?’
Well who went to war and came back damaged? Old people?
All the young women lost their boyfriends and husbands, in those days that meant food and money as well. How about the grief, was that ever a factor?
The people sent to war also became smokers because tobacco was cheaper than food and nicotine is an appetite suppressant, useful savings for all war offices.
“Soldiers flocked to cigarettes due to their convenience and because British army tobacco (issued for pipes) was of poor quality. British soldiers were issued with 2oz of this tobacco per day.”
During the war and after there was a lack of food and starvation and the food provided was canned, what were the preservatives? Nutrient value?
“Food was often supplied in cans. Maconochie contained sliced turnips and carrots in a thin soup. As one soldier said: “Warmed in the tin, Maconochie was edible; cold it was a mankiller.” The British Army tried to hide this food shortage from the enemy. However, when they announced that British soldiers were being supplied with two hot meals a day, they received over 200,000 letters from angry soldiers pointing out the truth of the situation.’
The countries listed with the worst ‘epidemics’ after the war were Great Britain, India, Serbia, Mexico, Spain.
We know the British were hungry and sick, Germans starved, Russians starved, Serbians starved, so many millions of Iranians starved some called it deliberate genocide. Half of the Lebanese people starved to death, casually forgotten, you can add Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Turkey.
Most of the accounts just talk about the war in Mesopotamia and Turkey.
‘A young British infantryman watches as starving Turkish civilians writhe in pain.’
Serbia had a typhus epidemic in 1915 that killed 150,000, half their soldiers were brutalised in concentration camps during the war, everyone brutalised everyone.
Every country had camps of starving soldiers.
‘By the end of World War I, the Germans incarcerated approximately 2.8 million prisoners of war in military prison camps.’
First World War Central Power Prison Camps
Accounts of 1918 flu in India call it Bombay Fever but was it?
‘a new NOAA-funded study shows that the 1918/1919 El Niño was one of the strongest of the 20th century’
‘A severe drought took place in India in 1918, as the monsoon rains failed to develop that summer. The drought coincided with a flu pandemic that was sweeping the globe at that time – with tragic results. The influenza pandemic killed an estimated 18 million people in India. Globally, the 1918 pandemic is thought to have claimed about 50 million lives.
“1918 was one of the worst droughts of the 20th century in India. There was famine and a lack of potable water, thus a compromised population,” says Giese. “It is clear that climate played a role in the mortality of people in India.’
New Look at 1918/1919 El Niño Suggests Link to Flu Pandemic
From the British parliament on 30 April 1919 ‘Famine conditions exists in parts of the Bombay Presidency.’
And famine conditions kept going, this is when all the influenza historians talk about the second wave killing millions in India, some data was left out.
‘From 1919 through 1921, a combination of poor rice harvests and speculative buying caused unprecedented rice shortages in Southeast Asia and led to imposition of government controls over the rice industry. Because there were large workforces in South and Southeast Asia entirely dependent upon imported rice, the shortages were potentially very serious.’
The British Empire and the Southeast Asian Rice Crisis of 1919–1921
In Mexico a civil war was raging for years, was this influenza?
‘Shops closed their doors unable to pay the extraordinary taxes they had been imposed, since the successive governments demanded more and more money, with validity loss of the currency issued by the opponent group in power added. Coal became scarce, and the trees that once adorned the streets and avenues had to be resorted to. Supplies were scarce and crowds and lines were produced at grocery stores and warehouses; the police and soldiers had to intervene to maintain order and to prevent speculation and looting.’
‘Landa drew attention to the food shortage and the appearance of an epidemic during which a large number of patients started presenting with edemas. Initially, he didn’t find an explanation for it, but he noticed that it started with fluid accumulation at the lower limbs, that soon it passed from the ankles to the knees and thighs, to rapidly become generalized. Patients started arriving to public hospitals, particularly to the General Hospital, where Landa made his observations at ward number 9. Physicians reported that nearly all patients had large amounts of fluid in the abdominal cavity, which in no time became prominent. With a heavily compromised general status, patients were feeling very sick; they showed extreme weakness and asthenia and, as Landa referred, they had marked skin and conjunctival pallor. Collected histories agreed that during the previous months they had eaten poorly and that most times their nutrition had been restricted to weeds of the Amaranthus and Chenopodium genuses, prickly pears, chards, purslanes, mallows and plants of the Spinacia genus. There was no adequate material available to perform laboratory tests, and therefore only a few urinalyses could be carried out, which reported total albumin absence; without being able to count red blood cells, blood had a colorless and “aqueous” appearance.’
Diseases of hunger: Mexico 1915
Enough people died later to ask ‘The Mexican Revolution was a demographic disaster, but there is little agreement about the human cost or its demographic components. Were the missing millions due to war deaths, epidemics, emigration, lost births, or simply census error or evasion?’
Missing Millions: The Demographic Costs of the Mexican Revolution
Spain was well off but in trouble too.
‘Spain remained neutral during World War I. As the end of the war approached in 1918, the country faced a difficult social and political situation. Alfonso XIII, the King of Spain, ruled a socially divided country with most of its close to 20,000,000 citizens impoverished because of the lack of trade and supplies that resulted from World War I. In Spain, the inflation rate was the highest (20.1%) it had been since the beginning of the 20th century, and there was an increasing incidence of social class conflicts, including several general strikes.’
‘Public health measures adopted by political authorities included disinfection with phenolic oil or creoline (Zotal, a very popular disinfectant at the time)’
‘The small array of treatments prescribed included symptomatic therapy with salicilates and quinine and codeine for cough. For persons who developed pneumonia, the therapeutic options were even fewer and included intramuscular or intravenous treatment with silver or platinum colloid solutions, digitalis, alcamphor oil, or adrenaline. Bleeding was often used. Some experimental vaccines were also tried, notably those including mixtures of pneumococci, streptococci, and Pfeiffer bacillus (Haemophilus influenzae). All efforts proved to be nearly useless, and Spaniards started wondering again whether medical researchers and scientists had any idea of what was really happening.’
The 1918 “Spanish Flu” in Spain
To me it was interesting to find this comment about Zotal which is probably still being sprayed in Spain now, I used to work with phenol in a hearing aid factory.
Opening a jar of a glue with 10% phenol would immediately burn the eyes and lungs and you needed a gas mask. In the long run it caused such a shocking immune reaction I ended up with full body psoriasis for some years.
Phenol is basically acidic Benzene which also causes leukemia and lung damage.
The ingredients of Zotal are here
“p-Chloro-m-cresol is a substituted phenol bactericidal preservative”
‘2-Phenylphenol – SYMPTOMS: Symptoms of exposure to this compound include eye irritation with possible corneal injury (necrosis); paleness, cyanosis, weakness, sweating, headache, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, fainting, dark urine, central nervous system depression, and deoxyribonuclease inhibition. Chronic exposure may include irritation and lesions of the respiratory system. ACUTE/CHRONIC HAZARDS: This chemical is a skin and eye irritant.’
Were the Spaniards burning their lungs with disinfectants?
Are we doing the same now? Almost all sprays are acids.
Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2
China seemed to have been spared the worst of the 1918 influenza.
China’s involvement in the war was around 130,000 labourers and engineers who dug trenches and helped supply chains for the allies, perhaps they were not as badly damaged?
In this account it is interesting to note that scarlet fever was mentioned, and the doctor makes a presumptive comment that scarlet fever was misdiagnosed.
But maybe it was streptococcus from start to finish with everything else.
‘Dr A. Stanley who was employed by the Shanghai Health Bureau at that time, described in a private letter written on February 11, 1919 that, “At the end of May influenza started and lasted until June. In October to November the influenza reoccurred with more serious symptoms. Earlier, most of the patients had headache, extreme fatigue, sore throat and fever; these symptoms lasted 4 to 5 days. Erythema was found on the necks and the patients were usually misdiagnosed as scarlet fever. But from September onwards the pattern of the illness was changed suddenly; the number of influenza patients was sharply increased, often with serious symptoms. Some patients were complicated with bronchitis, pneumonia, and even hemolysis. However the death toll still remained low”.
What happened in China during the 1918 influenza pandemic?
Lots of questions.
For Grandad and all the others.
Cal Crilly