Rockefeller was tarnished by involvement in Nazi eugenics. The era’s public health ideas had openly eugenicist flavor, but that had become not-PC by the time League of Nations collapsed so WHO was founded on non-eugenics principles. Of course socialists continued with it into 60s
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Interesting insight into Hindi literature of the period (Premchand, Nirala) of the progressive movement of the time as a break from Tagore romanticism. Not something I expected to see in a book by a British writer. She reads it right but again I doubt flu was a decisive driver.
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In general this chapter and the previous one could both be full books. They read like speculative teasers of richer possible treatments that leave you looking for closure/resolution of the hypotheses being casually floated.
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Finally close to the end of this book. A retrospective from modern view. 2016 report by Commission on Globsl Health Risk Framework (GHRF) estimated 20% chance of >4 pandemics in the next century, 1 being flu. Well 1 down, 3 to go. Hopefully this is last big one in my lifetime
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The big flu candidates are H5N1 and H7N9. They’re under surveillance. I guess viruses are like terrorist orgs. Gotta monitor them. One 2013 model estimated if something like Spanish Flu emerged today, there’d be 21-30m dead. Relatively lower, but absolutely higher.
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If the exact same strain of H1N1 emerged today, she says it would likely be mild. I wonder how you get to that conclusion. Most people exposed to it are now dead. How are the rest of us immune primed? I still don’t get some basics here.
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This conclusion and afterword is mostly forgettable speculation in light of Covid. Comments on WHO and CDC that seem charmingly simplistic in 2020. Still some interesting thoughts on using social networks for surveillance etc. Just... obsolete.
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Afterword has interesting insight that pandemic memories take longer to develop and stabilize than other historical memories. 80,000 books on WW1 but only 400 on Spanish Flu. But latter are recent/exponential increase.
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Spanish Flu is finally entering popular memory. 3 characters in Diwnton Abbey got it and 1 died. Black Death wasn’t even called that till the 16th century. It was called the blue death before. First works on it from 19th century.
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That delay effect is over I think. Covid has been live-blogged and tweeted vastly more broadly and deeply than anything in history. I bet there will be a crop of solid books within a decade.
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Alright done. I skimmed the last 5 chapters rather fast because the book was beginning to drag tbh. But it’s overall a very well done heavy lifting that does its global multi-level spiral South African grandmother storytelling shtick well. The diverse anecdotes help a lot.
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