eta… A response to posts pages ago. Wrote way too slow.
Also have lots of outhouse stories
One grandfather survived the 1918 flu. I was told he was extremely lucky to survive. When this pandemic began, It surprised me my siblings didn’t know this. From earliest childhood I stayed quiet enough to be overlooked when the adults got talking, and figured out saving my questions for one of my grandmothers later on, might get some answers.
It seems to me adults frequently try to spare children the scary stories. Like Sue, my family cemetery has lots of infants and children. My grandmothers told me their stories. I’m grateful they did, but as a result was always overly concerned about dying as a small child. Lots of scary dreams.
Oral history is interesting. Maybe sometimes most interesting in its absence.
In my family no one told war stories or pandemic stories, though there were multi generational repercussions to those untold stories. I only know that because my grandfather gave me more than one hundred years of letters when I was fourteen, because, “probably they’re best off with you”
But from what I see, it doesn’t jive with the real numbers.
Example - Massachusetts deaths - says actual numbers for May 1st is 192. Looking at the Mass official site, it says 99. That’s way off. Worldometer says 86 for May 4th, this site projects 192 (range of 149-282). Way off.
Regardless, even this overinflated vs actual site says 3 deaths per day by July 1st - decreasing consistently from today forward.
Your post was very intriguing (seriously - no sarcasm involved) so I googled the pandemic and came up with this awesome Stanford site discussing it. The parallels to what we are seeing now are eerie to say the least with the exception that the Spanish Flu hit young adults far more. I really wonder if the medical care were the same between the centuries how they would compare.
This was written in 1997 - I’ve cut parts, but the whole read is interesting IMO. There are more interesting things noted in the whole read - including a potential link to China.
"It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy (Deseret News).
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The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%.
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One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly “develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen” and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, “it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate,” (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients “died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth,” (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza.
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The origins of the deadly flu disease were unknown but widely speculated upon. Some of the allies thought of the epidemic as a biological warfare tool of the Germans.
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A study attempted to reason why the disease had been so devastating in certain localized regions, looking at the climate, the weather and the racial composition of cities. They found humidity to be linked with more severe epidemics as it “fosters the dissemination of the bacteria,” (Committee on Atmosphere and Man, 1923). Meanwhile the new sciences of the infectious agents and immunology were racing to come up with a vaccine or therapy to stop the epidemics.
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Those who were lucky enough to avoid infection had to deal with the public health ordinances to restrain the spread of the disease. The public health departments distributed gauze masks to be worn in public. Stores could not hold sales, funerals were limited to 15 minutes. Some towns required a signed certificate to enter and railroads would not accept passengers without them. Those who ignored the flu ordinances had to pay steep fines enforced by extra officers (Deseret News). Bodies pilled up as the massive deaths of the epidemic ensued. Besides the lack of health care workers and medical supplies, there was a shortage of coffins, morticians and gravediggers (Knox).
There were a number of changes made to the death model, including smoothing…
“Smoother daily death trends as model inputs. As mentioned before, daily reports of COVID-19 deaths are highly variable, mainly due to delays or errors in reporting rather than true day-over-day fluctuations. Using these data as reported (often referred to as “raw” data) without smoothing them first can lead to highly variable predictions. We previously implemented a three-day average of the natural log of cumulative COVID-19 deaths to smooth the input data. While this update helped, it did not fully mitigate the effects of volatile input data. As of today’s release, we now apply this algorithm 10 times in a row, which smooths daily death trends for a longer period of time. This approach allows the death model to be better informed by the overall time trend and less sensitive to daily fluctuations.”
"The report is the result of a collaboration from two national non-profit groups, DigDeep and the US Water Alliance. It found that 58 out of every 1,000 Native American households lack plumbing, compared with three out of every 1,000 white people.
The report noted that an estimated 30 percent of people on the Navajo Nation lack access to running water and must haul water, but local officials report that the actual number may be even higher."
Just got back from my weekly trip to a local little store. The usual (conscientious) manager was not there. A young guy was manning the register. No mask, cavalier attitude about COVID.
On a personal note, I am finding I like being forced to stay very local. In my usual life, I drive my kids here there and yonder to multiple cities in multiple states every single week (homeschoolers with ECs in different places). I am enjoying the lack of that. I do love to travel, but not really as a chauffeur. Now I stay very close to home. My area now has the sound of kids (siblings) outside playing, and I see tons of locals walking the roads (far apart) and everyone greets each other with a smile and a wave. I am fortunate to live in a rural area, and I have never before truly appreciated how much I love where I live until now.
I had three zoom meetings/classes today. The last one just finished and was a class. Only some of the students came and we worked on a very hard assignment for over an hour. They did great! Then I asked them a ‘would you rather’ question and they were so happy and smiling. It was so nice to see them get to talk to one another. I think that’s one of the biggest things missing so far. Many are not getting any social interaction with other kids from school. Their smiles really made my day. Worth working through lunch to do.
@JanieWalker, I was just thinking that I wouldn’t have minded this break about ten years ago, when I drove, drove, drove, and then drove some more. It got so tiring.
Our college senior S is using some of his quarantine time to build up his driving skills. Pre-Covid, he chose not to drive, as Uber was much easier and cost effective for he’s needs. Ow he’s hinting that he might want to “borrow” a car when he returns to campus for masters.
I think he meant “we don’t know for sure if it means…” The best guess based on evidence of other viruses plus data of no true reinfections ( anecdotes about reinfections have turned out to not be cases of new infection) is that yes you will have some immunity for some time. They don’t know how long. Maybe about a year. Maybe less.
Just back from a longish walk with pups. Here is what I observed. I few women in their front yards doing gardening. A mom pushing a stroller with her toddler daughter on a wee bike. They were about 2 blocks in front of me. Then 3 women (obviously neighbors/friends) sitting on a driveway - definitely more than 6 ft apart (at least 10ft is my estimation) and all 3 had masks on. I still crossed the street so I could distance myself from them.
Then as I turned onto my street, a woman I know came out of her house to walk. She waited until I was further ahead, but still crossed the street, and was about 15 ft behind me. We were able to have a convo (I asked her how teaching (high school Spanish) was going and just a bit more chit chat until I got to my house.
Beautiful sunny day but only in the upper 50’s, so I had to dress like it was March.
Our cabin in Vermont has a composting toilet. It’s not much better than an outhouse, but at least you don’t have to go outside outside. It’s off a vestibule in what is the winter woodshed. New versions of these composting toilets are quite nice, but this one was installed in 1976 and really doesn’t work as well as it used to.
Well, for one thing, I like interacting with “average” people. I come from an extremely modest background myself, although I was very fortunate in that I was able to retire many years before I became accustomed to the upper middle class lifestyle. Seeing both the “bottom” and the “top” has given me a different perspective on life from so many on here, and probably influences my choices of where and how to spend my time.
Frankly, based on your posts (Nassau County, right?), I suspect that your top ten desired locations are places I would studiously avoid. It takes all kinds in this world…
Do the metal detecting sensors in the street detect your bicycle? https://www.bikewalknc.org/bicycle-detection-at-traffic-signals/ describes how to stop your bicycle on the metal detecting sensors and mentions how they are required to detect bicycles and motorcycles in California (if they do not, complain to the road repair part of the appropriate government to have them fixed). Note that even long before the 2007 California law, most of them actually did detect bicycles (although sometimes one had to do the trick of laying the bicycle down over the sensor if the detection was marginal).
Schools gradually open up for more classes in my European country.
H went back in last week, April 27, to teach seniors face to face (literally - masks are required in hallways but not in the classrooms, only 15 to a room with desks spaced 6 ft apart), but classes were allowed only in subjects in which students have signed up for final exams (five subjects are mandatory). Most of the content would have been covered by March when schools went into lockdown, so this is about revision and giving kids confidence.
The exams will start towards the end of May, a few weeks later than normal. They have always used gyms with desks spaced far apart to prevent cheating, so hopefully the kids will be able to focus. It’s been hinted broadly that grading will be lenient.
Juniors will come back from May 11, I believe to be taught on alternate days with seniors.
And in another two weeks, first and fifth graders, I have one of each…one with major special needs, and we may need to keep them home.
The 8th grader will have to wait until June. Sigh, that’s the one who needs interaction the most urgent. Though their year’s teachers have managed to offer a zoom meeting in one subject almost every day, which has greatly helped their mood.
It’s going to be interesting whether I can still carve out two days to go to work myself.
If I weren’t so worried about elderly parents, in-laws and basically the rest of the world, and my kids weren’t missing their friends so much, I could enjoy this odd hiatus from things…
50% of the residents of the Navajo Nation lack both indoor plumbing and access to potable water. That number includes those who live in federal government provided housing development on the Reservation. (The contractor the federal government hired simply never bothered to hook the housing units up to the local water and sewer systems. Plus the construction was done so shoddily that most of the connected system broke.)
No wonder McKinley County, NM has an infection rate of 1 in 26 residents and San Juan County is 1 in 93.
The inaccessibility is due to finances.
Even in the driest parts of the Rez, if you drill deep enough, there’s water. (Except where the water table is so polluted by uranium contamination from the 500 mining contracts let by the federal government–without permission of the Navajo people–to companies who have since declared bankruptcy and moved on, leaving massive piles of highly contaminated tailings.)
Water costs $0.30/gallon and you have to haul it yourself over often impassable roads (clay roadbeds that turn into a sea of mud during spring snow melt and summer monsoon rains)–so add the cost of gasoline/diesel to the cost of water.
There are so many wrongs in our country I wish I could fix (historical and now).
To date I’ll admit in our country I only knew about those who wanted to live off the grid and eschewed typical water systems.
I would have guessed some didn’t have the finances for it, but for so much of a specific population to not have it and to have to deal with the aftermath of big business - something is definitely wrong.
Worth working through lunch to do.