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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.
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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.
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This was a messy story, hard to summarize. Weird mix of Russian-American-native history, transition to modernity, decidedly mixed role of relief ships that appear to have done some looting of dead villages, but helped others... there’s an Oscar-worthy movie in this episode.
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Next chapter, “hunt for patient zero”. We stop here tonight. This is an oddly choppy book. Lots of jump cuts and impressionistic dabs. It’s not as enjoyable as Tuchman’s more classical renaissance-painting tale of 14th century but in some ways more effective and comprehensive.
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That appears to have been pneumonic plague and looked similar to the another in 1917 that Wu thought was also plague but is contested. Hard to do autopsies due to tradition. 300k men from this region served as a labor force in the European theater the following year.
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This region = northern provinces hit by the thing that might have been either plague or flu in 1917. This is the modern Chinese origin hypothesis, not the speculation during the Spanish flu itself, which was more yellow peril mindset than a hypothesis.
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So Hypothedys A is Chineze laborers. brought the flu to WWI. Hypothesis B is that it broke out on the western front of WWI (and infected the Chinese labor contingent after it arrived)
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Case for both is circumstantial, since there were not tests for the virus and records are poor. So it’s a case of a time-space jigsaw puzzle of outbreaks in 1917 that presented vaguely like the pandemic proper a year later. Hypothesis C is similar — it cane from Kansas.
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Replying to
Next chapter on death toll. Already in the 1920s the best estimate 21.6m, 20x the Russian 1890s epidemic of 1 million. Revised up to 30m by 1990d, but likely still an underestimate especially for Russia and China.
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We circle back to Odessa, this time with an epidemiological lens, to cross check the Russian estimate of 450k/0.2%. Odessa data as a better documented Russian refugee zone suggests 1.2% and 2.7m instead of 450k.
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China was similarly undercounted. Probably 4-9m, though an estimate via different method landed on just 1m. India was likely 18m. So modern estimates are between 50-100m. 2.5-5x initial estimates. This is all extraordinarily shaky. Literally data as plural of anecdotes.
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His conclusion was flawed because influenza cannot be transmitted via blood apparently. Right answer, wrong method. Other research pair, Nicole and Lebailley, got it right. FUD of pandemic+war.
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So methods were generally sloppy then, so people believed what they wanted to. Richard Pfeiffer, of the incorrect bacterial theory of influenza, stuck to his theory. Others tried and failed to replicate the filterable infectiousness result.
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Antibacterial methods seemed to work (likely because they addressed secondary infections). All in all, general confusion like today, leading to strong opinions.
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Took till 1930s to confirm viral theory and connect to swine flu. 1950s to figure out origins in species crossover, via a ferret sneezing on a British researcher named Wison Smith.
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So of the 3 kinds of influenza A, B, and C, only A causes pandemics apparently. There’s also a 4th kind added recently. It was hard to prove because viruses can’t be cultured like bacteria, in a Petri dish. Only inside living cells.
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In 1931 Alice Woodruff and Ernest Goodpasture (solid names) figured out how to grow viral cultures in fertilized chicken eggs. I guess that’s why flu shots are grown in eggs and also why we get flus via birds. Very enlightening factoid.
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Aside: as a baby I had a bad reaction to a Russian-made smallpox vaccine (I’m old enough to have received that) that parents say almost killed me. So I have an extra large badass vaccine scar. As a teenager I used to tell other kids I got it in a knife fight. Some bought it 😎
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The attentuated vaccine was risky since the virus could regain virulence. Russia continued to use the older tech viruses for 50 years. So 1986. Hmm......I wonder 🤔 Inactivated polyvalent vaccines were invented later and by 1944 American troops in WW2 were receiving it.
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Jonas Salk apparently worked on the early flu vaccine in 1940s. Alexander Fleming helped prove viral origin in 1918. This story has interesting cameos.
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Viruses weren’t actually seen till after 1943 when the electron microscopes were invented. Spinney compares them to Higgs boson before then. Quasi mythical and not entirely believed in.
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The H and N of HxNy naming scheme refer to Haemaggluttinin and Neuraminidase, which help virus break into and out of cell apparently. Now you know. This is what the villain of this story looks like btw. Bastard.
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Because flu viruses are single strands of RNA, they are not as stable as DNA and make lots of replication errors. This is why they drift 2% a year and vaccines have to be updated every covfefe. Shit, viruses are liek twetes. Taht’s why their hard to fihgt
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So pandemics apparently happen when 2 different virus strains meet cute in a human cell and have virus sex. Results in novel immune resistant strain. Especially bad if human and animal flus meet. You get human-adapted alien virus.
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This is awful. I’m never taking off my mask or going near animals again. How did we ever think we could win this arms race long term? It’s like our microbial interface is full of fast adapting little trumps crossing the wall from bird snot.
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Anybody think about how Trump’s wall idea is just a country scale mask against people he thinks of as diseases? Some 4d irony there that I don’t have the energy to unpack. Wear masks, don’t build walls.
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So flu equilibriums last about a human lifespan. Once populations get “immunologically naive” another pandemic can happen. 1968 Hong Kong flu was possibly 1890 Russian flu, and 2009 H1N1 was apparently 1918 Spanish Flu.
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There’s an eerie echo here in outbreaks of totalitarianism. Despite “never forget” culture re Holocaust, 2010s had become immunologically naive to perils of totalitarianism. Even though Trumpism mind flu is an attentuated strain, it’s descended from Hitlerism mind flu of 1933.
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There are apparently 18 kinds of H and 11 kinds of N. So you could potentially have a flu called H18N11 🤔. And that’s not even counting strains. We should just give up and stop living in dense cities. This doesn’t seem very winnable long term. Yeah I’m a bit defeatist.
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Ok that’s 13 chapters done. Next one ominously titled “beware the barnyard.” Bedtime horror story resumes tomorrow. Try not to pet bats and ferrets and chickens ok.
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Footnote to tonight’s notes... defeatism here is not just me. I’ve heard a popular theory that the century of gains against infectious disease was entirely based on temporary victories. Individual battles are won but the war overall gets harder and we are steadily losing ground.
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Well, let’s get back to this grim fairy tale. The story of crossover. Apparently duck guts are the natural reservoir of flu viruses and that’s been known since the 1970s. I’ll never look at ducks the same. Wonder what species stores coronaviruses 🤔
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They used to think flus needed to go from birds to humans by way of pigs (which would make the French origin hypothesis the likeliest for various reasons) but H5N1 in 1997 in Hong Kong showed it could jump direct. Could that have happened in 1918? 🧐
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After partial sequencing from rare preserved samples in the late 90s, researchers managed to get better permafrost-preserved samples from Alaskan mass graves. In 2005 Ann Reid and Jeffrey Taubenberger finally sequenced the full genome after 9 years of detective work. 👏👏👏
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Damn 87 years later. Gotta love the deep historical detective work. They resurrected the virus in the lab and showed it was very bird-like. No pigs needed in transmission chain.
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