What Past Pandemics Reveal

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Past pandemics demonstrated an ability to strike quickly—almost literally overnight—overwhelming medical services. Such was the 1918 Spanish Influenza.

This early twentieth-century pandemic started much the same as the one in 2009. Three years before the 1918 virus took its worst toll, it first surfaced in birds, according to the CDC.

From 1915 to 1916, the United States suffered a catastrophic respiratory disease epidemic, which significantly increased the death toll resulting from pneumonia and influenza complications. Although mortality rates decreased by 1917, the populace’s weakened immune systems paved the way for the pandemic’s first wave in March 1918.

The pandemic continued in three stages over a 12-month period: the first wave reached Europe, the U.S. and Asia in late spring and summer; a second—and more deadly—strain appeared approximately six months later, wiping out entire families from September to November 1918; and a third wave struck in the early spring of 1919.

Unlike most viruses, which normally affect the very young, the weak and the elderly, the 1918 influenza targeted healthy adults between the ages of 20 and 40. Victims suffocated as their immune systems broke down, filling their lungs with a reddish liquid, which often bubbled out of them as they died.

In 1918, many churches in America closed, schools also closed, the government banned public meetings, businesses collapsed from lack of customers, state institutions became overrun with orphaned children, and infected postal carriers were unable to deliver mail. Heaps of rancid garbage lined city streets. Decomposing bodies overflowed from morgues and had to be stored in nearby elementary schools. Wherever people ventured, the smell of rotting flesh haunted them.

Imagine this and the following horrific scenarios playing out today—unfolding on the very streets of your hometown. Imagine the disease taking someone close to you—an acquaintance, co-worker, friend or family member.

A letter written by a military doctor on September 29, 1918, described the dreadful conditions at Fort Devens, near Boston: “These men start with what appears to be an attack of la grippe or influenza, and when brought to the hospital they very rapidly develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen. Two hours after admission they have the mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white. It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate.”

Later he wrote, “It takes special trains to carry away the dead. For several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce, we used to go down to the morgue...and look at the boys laid out in long rows. It beats any sight they ever had in France after a battle. An extra long barracks has been vacated for the use of the morgue, and it would make any man sit up and take notice to walk down the long lines of dead soldiers all dressed up and laid out in double rows” (PBS).

One pandemic survivor recounted the bodies that stacked up in Vancouver, Canada: “The undertaking parlours couldn’t handle the bodies as people died...they were having to use school auditoriums and places like that to store bodies temporarily” (The Canadian Press).

In the book Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It, Gina Kolata, a reporter for The New York Times, stated that if the Spanish Influenza were to strike the U.S. now, it would have devastating results: “If such a plague came today, killing a similar fraction of the U.S. population, 1.5 million Americans would die, which is more than the number felled in a single year by heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS, and Alzheimer’s disease combined.”

Most experts put this estimate much higher. Remember, these numbers are specific to a highly stable, First World nation. Imagine the multiple hundreds of millions who could die worldwide.

This pandemic—and the virus that caused it—is just one of many that have left their mark on society. Here is another.

The Black Death

You have probably heard that “The past is prologue.” Pandemics of massive proportions can—and will—happen again.

One of the deadliest diseases in history was the Black Death—which reached virtually all parts of the world from AD 1347 to 1350. This pandemic was thought to be brought by the same bacteria that caused the bubonic plague! In Mediterranean Europe—including large countries such as Italy, France and Spain—between one-third and three-quarters of the population died. In China, one-third perished, as was also the case in the Middle East. Many, many nations were affected. The death toll worldwide was estimated at up to a staggering 200 million, or possibly half the world’s population at the time. Europe’s population alone took a century and a half—150 years!—to recover. Tremendous religious, social and economic upheavals were triggered, which had a profound impact on the course of world history.

Most are unaware that famine afflicted many areas of the world prior to the plague, and thus set it up. Also, extreme violence and truly bizarre behaviour accompanied a general pandemonium in society that always surrounds widespread disease outbreaks. And scapegoats were needed. Jews and others were attacked. Thousands of Jews were burned at the stake—20,000 in just one city. It became every man for himself, including authority figures who almost all bailed out into isolation in the countryside. This included noblemen, generals, civil officials and even the pope.

All this from just one pandemic!

Although a number of theories exist regarding the Black Death, many medical historians believe it was the result of a combination of two deadly diseases: bubonic plague (spread by rats) and possibly anthrax (spread by cattle).

In his book, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, author Norman F. Cantor explains in graphic detail how the plague affected individuals as it spread in three waves across the continent, similar to the Spanish Influenza: “All over Western Europe commoners were buried in mass graves with bodies stacked horizontally five layers deep. Archaeologists have discovered such layered mass graves in many places, including central London. Since the earth covering the mass graves was thin, the stench rising from the cemeteries was initially unbearable.”

Do not be lulled into thinking that such pestilence could not happen today. Jesus Christ said it will!

Graham Mooney of Johns Hopkins University told The History Channel, “There’s absolutely no way that organized health systems could cope with an epidemic of the proportions of the black plague.” Another disease expert stated that there is no medical “surge capacity” in society if something on this scale happens again.

Get this! This form of the plague is still alive and well in India and China—and in rodents throughout the American southwest now.

Another threat exists—as reported by MSNBC:

“American laboratories handling the world’s deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing steadily as more labs across the country are approved to do the work. “No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons so dangerous that illnesses they cause have no cure.”

Later, the article mentions several incidents in which scientists were either bitten by infected animals or exposed to deadly bacteria, including “an employee at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute [who] was bitten on the left hand by an infected monkey in September 2006. The animal was ill from an infection of bacteria that causes plague. ‘When the gloves were removed, the skin appeared to be broken in 2 or 3 places,’ the report said. The worker was referred to a doctor, but nothing more was disclosed.”

Imagine what would happen if just one worker caught this deadly plague unknowingly and returned to his home. An entire neighbourhood could quickly become infected—and wiped out!

Silent Carriers

One of the reasons certain diseases became so deadly in the past was their transmission by animals. Animal and insect-borne diseases have had a great impact on history. According to prominent Harvard bacteriologist Hans Zizsser, “Swords and lances, arrows, machine guns, and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of the nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea, and the yellow-fever mosquito.”

In the case of the Black Death, the main carriers were rats. In some cases fleas that came into contact with the rats also transferred it to human beings. In other cases, dogs began to eat infected people who could not be buried fast enough. They then passed the disease on to other human beings, continuing the fatal cycle. And house cats that became infected spread it to their owners by simple coughing when being held.

The idea of disease moving from animals to humans is not new. According to a joint United Nations-World Bank study, “An estimated 75 per cent of new human diseases originate in animals and an average of two new animal diseases with cross-over capabilities emerge every year.”

The 1918 Spanish influenza originated in birds and then was transferred to pigs, as was the case with the swine flu, which killed 17,700 people in 2009.

In fact, dozens of diseases once only found in animals have infected humans during the past 20 years, with more soon expected to cross over. Examples (that are emerging or re-emerging) include HIV, hantavirus (from rodents), bird flu, rabies, malaria, West Nile virus (from mosquitoes), H1N1, SARS, and Lyme disease (from ticks).

United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) experts warn that a growing spread of diseases could result from environmental changes and more people moving into rural areas.

“We appear to be undergoing a distinct change in global disease ecology,” Montira Pongsiri, an environmental health scientist at the EPA in Washington, told The Independent. “The recent emergence of infectious diseases [such as swine flu and SARS] appears to be driven by globalisation and ecological disruption.”

David Murrell, lecturer in ecology at University College London, said scientists have identified a shocking pattern: “Since 1940, over 300 new diseases have been identified, 60 per cent of which crossed to humans from animals and 70 per cent of these came from contact with wildlife,” he said. “I would expect the emergence of new diseases from contact with animals to continue in this century” (ibid.).

Think about the potential consequences, especially in cities where certain disease-carrying animals outnumber people! In Paris, for example, the population is over two million—yet the number of rats in its sewers is estimated at 8 million. How easy would it be for those living on the streets to contract any type of illness and then spread it?

The situation is much the same in New York City, where The New York Times reported that subway officials have been unable to control the pest population: “In the first study of its kind, officials scoured the city’s subway system to discover what accounts for the perennial presence of rodents, a scourge since the system opened more than a century ago…Rodents, it turns out, reside inside station walls, emerging occasionally from cracks in the tile to rummage for food.”

“Of 18 stations examined in Lower Manhattan, about half of the subway lines got a fair or poor rating for infestation, meaning they exhibited the telltale culprits—overflowing trash cans, too much track litter—that can lead to a rodent jamboree.”

“[Rodentologist Robert M.] Corrigan told health officials that while rats were a problem in the subways, the rodents inhabited many other public spaces, particularly parks. ‘Virtually all of New York,’ he said, ‘is vulnerable to this uncanny mammal.’”

Rats are of special concern to health officials, as they carry 40 different diseases, some of which are fatal to humans!

The potential for disease is not only in rats, but also in birds, cows, pigs—and even in household pets! As the world grows more and more amoral, there has also been a resurgence in bestiality. Human diseases such as brucellosis have been thought to have originated this way. A 1948 study showed a stunning 8 percent of all males—almost one in 12!—reportedly engaged in sexual intercourse with an animal. In the over 60 years that have elapsed since, how much has this likely increased, especially when all mankind is now awash in every conceivable kind of sexual pleasure, fantasy, perversion and pursuit?

Best-selling author Jared Diamond summarizes the correlation effect between diseases and animals in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: “The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history—smallpox, flu, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, measles, and cholera—are infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our own epidemic illnesses are paradoxically now almost confined to humans. Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have also been decisive shapers of history. Until World War II, more victims of war died of war-borne microbes than of battle wounds…the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies.”

In fact, in perhaps the earliest use of bio-terrorism, invading Mongols catapulted the infected corpses of their dead fellow soldiers over city walls during sieges of European cities in order to spread the plague into the city.