This chapter has a vignette about a devout but backward part of Spain, Zamora, that avoided mass gatherings but excepted church gatherings. Had a devout and anti-science bishop who catalyzed lots of masses and funeral parades. Ended up with the worst record in Spain.
-
-
Must be weird for authors like Spinney to suddenly see their obscure interests take over headlines. It’s like if 2x2s suddenly took over headlines and everybody started citing my 2x2 stuff.
Show this thread -
This part is a bit boring but would have been interesting in 2019. Authoritarianism vs democracy, role of newspapers, minorities and marginalized populations suspicious of health measures. All stuff we’ve been through live.
Show this thread -
One difference is that keeping schools open was a better bet then since kids otherwise lived in crowded tenements or ran around unsupervised.
Show this thread -
Extended description of New York’s relatively good performance despite early fumbles. It was full of particularly vulnerable Italian peasants at the time, living in slums and already disproportionately suffering from respiratory diseases like TB. Pandemic led to improvements.
Show this thread -
...Paired with similar extended description of events in Mashed, Persia, where things went much worse. At the time it was a medieval pilgrimage center and Persia was in a partial vacuum due to the collapse of Tsarist Russia and the Great Game.
Show this thread -
The British were filling the vacuum and doing their usual thing of simultaneously raiding the country (for troops) and trying to govern it. Two bad harvests and the people were already starving. It was set up to be a shitshow and it was.
Show this thread -
Weird time machine aspect here. 1918 was around the beginning of global synchronized time. Local stories ranging from nefyevsl to modern. Governance systems with similar range of vintages.
Show this thread -
Mashed appears to have been somewhere between Shanxi and South America in development terms. New York comes off most modern so far. As in Shanxi, Christian missionaries played a significant role. Targeting a Shiite holy spot for evangelism and being tolerated for medicine.
Show this thread -
We interrupt this thread to note that Trump and Melania apparently just tested positive. Well our own shitshow just got worse so I’m glad to read about even worse shitshow in Persia 102 years ago

Show this thread -
That Mashed vignette was interesting. A sense of modernity arriving alongside missionaries and medicine. Persia modernized shortly after in 1921 under Reza Khan. Seems like Spanish Flu triggered a lot of modernity arrivals. Covid might trigger a lot of anthropocene arrivals.
Show this thread -
We stop here tonight. Gotta check on what the Discourse is saying about Trump having Covid. This seems like an awful development to me. He might win on sympathy votes or die and trigger a civil war from the grave. Ugh. BoJo, Bolsanaro, and now Trump. Hmm.
Show this thread -
We return to 1918, and the next chapter, titled The Placebo Effect. Conventional medicine had just recently been privileged by law over alts like naturopathy and faith healing. There were no antibiotics or antivirals. Drugs were artisan. No double-blind or animal trials, no QA.
Show this thread -
Aspirin was the big deal and heavily overprescribed in unsafe doses, which may have caused some deaths. Quinine too which may have caused some of the reported loss of color vision as a side effect. Digitalis, strychnine... sounds like an Agatha Christie medicine cabinet.
Show this thread -
Arsenic, Epsom salts, castor oil... Some doctors fell back on older techniques. Bloodletting etc. Galenic “humors” medicine was still strong. Medicine was closer to astrology than astronomy in 1918.
Show this thread -
Temperance movement was big so alcohol was controversial as a treatment. Some thought cigarette smoke killed the virus.
Show this thread -
Le Corbusier “retreated to his rooms in Paris” drinking and smoking and reflecting on how to impose Modernist Authoritah on the world. Gee thanks Spanish Flu. Wonder what bad ideologies are taking shape in Covid domestic cozy retreat right now
I’d better get Raoism codified.Show this thread -
Lots of dubious patent medicines flourished since there was no regulation. Dr. Kilmer’s swamp root was one. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_714581 …pic.twitter.com/nNDWwOPDmh
Show this thread -
Traditional home remedies also thrived. Mustard poultices and stuff. This stuff is living memory even for me. When I was sick with coughs and colds and bronchitis as a kid in the early 80s (often), I was often administered Ayurvedic remedies like Starbucks turmeric lattes.
Show this thread -
So basically all treatments being tried were placebos at best (hence the chapter title). Many were nocebos it actually harmful. The only worthwhile advice was to stay hydrated.
Show this thread -
Section on fate of Odessa, which had been curiously unaffected by Bolshevik revolution and the only city to even detect the flu. Couldn’t do much with knowing because it kept changing hands through the war and revolution.
Show this thread -
The city was half Jewish and a prominent Jewish doctor/bacteriologist Yakov Bardakh led what efforts could be undertaken. The city was reeling under a flood of refugees from the revolution. It was apparently a famous cosmopolitan city of its time, known as Marseilles of Russia
Show this thread -
The Russian silent movie star Vera Kholodnaya retreated to Odessa and died of the flu there at age 25. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Kholodnaya …
Show this thread -
A Jewish “black wedding” was held in a cemetery to ward off the flu. Between beggars. Apparently many such were held around the worldhttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.myjewishlearning.com/article/black-wedding-marrying-the-spanish-flu-away/amp/ …
Show this thread -
Next chapter, titled “Good Samaritans” begins with observation that your best strategy was to to be selfish and isolate yourself and hoard food. This would starve the flu and it would die out. Then as now, people mostly didn’t do that.
Show this thread -
Generally adaptive strategy of “social resilience” (coming closer together in a disaster) is maladaptive in a pandemic. Apparently there’s lots of theories why. Force of habit, fear of ostracization later for bring antisocial, all-in-this-togetherism, expanded sense of self...
Show this thread -
With few exceptions people generally pitch in to help each other. Notable exceptions were in colonial conditions (Africa, India) where the colonized had learned to distrust white behaviors in crisis and deserted.
Show this thread -
“At some point... group identity splinters and people revert to identifying as individuals. It may be at this point — once the worst is over, and life is returning to normal — that truly ‘bad’ behavior is most likely to emerge” Ah shit. The assholery hasn’t even really started.
Show this thread -
Rio carnival in 1919 was more out of control than before and there was a spike in rapes it seems. And reports of a related ‘sons of flu’ baby boom (“hard to confirm”). Spinney cites Decameron for similar effects after Black Death.
Show this thread -
Long bleak account of ravages of flu among Yupik of Alaska. Already dwindling from other European diseases, the Spanish flu hit them hard, wiping out entire villages. Relief ships found dogs eating bodies in some. Weird subplot of Russian orthodox vs American Protestant missions.
Show this thread -
300 orphans were brought to town of Dillingham of population 200. Today most inhabitants claim descent from flu orphans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillingham,_Alaska …
Show this thread - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.