90 years after Great Flu Pandemic, CDC issues book and new warnings

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 No, not AIDS.

 

Influenza. Flu, the nasty bout of muscle aches, cough and fever that seasonally keeps thousands in bed and annually sends more than 200,000 Americans to the hospital.

 

In 1918, it spread around the world, killed more people than World War I and became known as "one the largest scourges ever on human kind." And it became the basis for preparing for today's worst-case scenarios.

 

On the 90th anniversary of the killer, the nation's public health guardians -- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- today released on-line "Pandemic Influenza Storybook."

 

It's filled with compelling and informative personal accounts of how the 1918 pandemic, also known as the Spanish Flu, swept across the country and forever left its mark on family after family. Grandchildren never knowing their grandparents, Siblings separated forever because one or both of their parents died. An entire family of eight buried side by side. Doctors and other health-care workers die answering their duty call.  Surviving relatives inspired to become doctors, researchers, epidemiologists fueled by "never-again" determination.

 

There's a good reason the CDC is telling this rather dated story in new up-close-and-personal accounts in non-medicalese terms and explanations. It wants you to Get Prepared.

 

Remember the fears, concerns and predictions of the avian flu a few years back? How experts predicted it was a matter of not "if" but when it would leap around the globe? The threat is still around. And every public health department -- from the federally-funded CDC that is based in Atlanta because of malaria malaise of the 1940s-- to King County that has avian flu alerts in 12 languages -- knows it.

 

This particular deadly influenza strain, known as H5N1, has been found in birds throughout Asia, Europe, the Near East and Africa. First detected more than ten years ago in Hong Kong when farmers and others became sick, sporadic outbreaks continue to  occur among humans and wild and domestic birds in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Azerbaijan and other countries.  To date, 243 have died.

 

For now, this strain continues to mostly sicken people who have direct contact with infected poultry, But scientists fear it still has the potential to mutate and "jump" to person-to-person transmission.

 

"Complacency is enemy number one when it comes to preparing for another influenza pandemic," said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.  "These stories, told so eloquently by survivors, family members, and friends from past pandemics, serve as a sobering reminder of the devastating impact that influenza can have and reading them is a must for anyone involved in public health preparedness."

 

Public health officials have many emergency and quarantine plans in place to quell the hysteria, confusion and transmission rate that occurred in 1918.

 

In October of that year, Washington state officials closed school --- many didn't open for months -- and banned public gatherings, including church. This prompted complaints from ministers, leading the then-mayor to  say, "Religion which won't keep for two weeks, is not worth having."

 

Seattle's old City Hall and University of Washington dormitories became emergency hospitals. By October 29, citizens in Seattle were told they must wear masks in public; the state mandated similar protection the next day. Around the country, people tried many elixirs to stay alive -- herbs, goats milk, moonshine -- stories also recounted in the CDC narrative.

 

One reason for the 1918 pandemic's astounding toll deadly: No antibiotics existed to treat the bacterial pneumonia that influenza commonly triggers. Most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following influenza virus infection, a report released Wednesday from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases concluded. When subsequent flu epidemics erupted in 1957 and 1967, far fewer people died. The CDC is also collecting stories about these later outbreaks.

Submissions can still be sent to the federal agency here.

 

 

 

 Here's a few excerpts from the "storytellers" of the CDC's 1918 Pandemic Influenza Storybook:

 

Jim Helmkamp, Washington: My father, George M. Helmkamp was born on December 4, 1918 in Spokane Washington. Two weeks later his mother died from the flu. As a result of her death, my grief-stricken grandfather determined that he could not raise my Dad and his older sister. The children were sent to live with relatives in Illinois where they were raised separately, never to effectively live as brother and sister in the same household. Subsequently, as my Dad was raising his four children, we never got to know our grandfather. I saw him only twice before he died in 1967.

 

 

 

Vanessa Short Bull, North and South Dakota: This is the story of the 1918 flu pandemic as told by my 97-year-old grandmother, Sadie Afraid of His Horses–Janis. Sadie′s father, Frank Afraid of His Horses, is the son of Young Man Afraid of His Horses*; both men were influential Sioux leaders.

 

In September 1918, Sadie′s grandmother, Nancy Poor Elk– Red Cloud (wife of Jack Red Cloud) went with her family to Alliance, Nebraska to pick potatoes. The journey from Pine Ridge, South Dakota to Alliance was a five-day journey by wagon. "Spud Pickin" was an economic venture for the Indians on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; it was a way to earn money and to buy food for the winter....The Red Cloud family had just finished picking potatoes at the end of October 1918 when they were told of "a real bad sickness that was coming and that they should start for home." They had just started to break camp when the middle-aged members of the family started to get sick with the flu. The family decided to stay encamped at Alliance until they got well enough to travel back home to Pine Ridge.

   

 

Dr. Kathleen Toomey, Pennsylvania: Although my father's dad died before he was born, the death left a lasting impression him. My father Raymond was born in September 1919. Earlier that year, his father, also named Raymond, died quickly after contracting influenza relatively late in the pandemic and in fact died several months before my father was born. Subsequently, my father was raised by his grandmother, since his mother soon remarried and had three additional children with her new husband. The death of his father and the separation from his mother had a life-long impact on my father. He told me this story when I was a child and it contributed greatly to my decision as an adult to enter the field of public health. (Toomey has held many key positions at the CDC and served as head of Georgia's Division of Public Health.) 

 

For more info: Seattle  and King County has developed a 12-page comic book on pandemic flu.