The 1918 Spanish Flu in Pictures

[Burque]

So these pictures are over 100 years old and they are a great look into the past. It was a horrible situation that pretty much nobody is still alive to talk about. The oldest living people in the world were children when it happened. I do not want to belittle the people that are in these pictures in any way, but, there are certainly some things we can see through a different lens today, especially going through social distancing and self quarantining. One advantage I feel we have is the ease with which new information or recommendations can be dispersed via digital communication.

Here is a link to the original article, and I am going to link a few of the pictures that struck me, with some commentary.

Photos of the 1918 Flu Pandemic

Between 1918 and 1919, an outbreak of influenza spread rapidly across the world, and killed more than 50 million—and possibly as many as 100 million—people within 15 months.

www.theatlantic.com

All credit to @Scoot26 for posting the article originally in another thread. I thought it deserved its own thread. Take a peek at the article and all of scary yet eerily similar pictures that can be found today.

 

[Burque]

These people certainly were not using any social distancing and even though they are outdoors they are far too close for that to matter.

My brain filed these under the category: They got it.

 

[Burque]

This nurse looks exhausted, she has probably worked harder than ever before in her life for longer amounts of time than ever before, but her mask does her zero good where it is especially considering how close she is to an obviously positive patient.

Thank goodness for our healthcare workers. They are all frazzled and busting their asses right now.

 

[Burque]

This picture made me laugh, because obviously the guy on the left won the staring contest.

Still though, how many sick patients walked right past them to get tested on that day?

Socially distanced from each other, but not from the sick people walking in between them. I wonder if they were infected because of their guard duties?

 

[Ares]

I had to double take.... like "Fuq is that Hitler?"

 

[dennehy]

Good stuff.

 

[Burque]

This picture made me laugh a bit for a strange reason. Not the nurses very strange mask, or the odd man standing down the walkway kinda like a creeper, but the sick guy. Does anyone else have a millennial friend that has anxiety and is freaked out about all sorts of random things for no reason? If that guy was infected and afraid he was dying I think he would look very much like the guy in the bed in this picture.

 

[Burque]

This last picture is one of my favorites for a few reasons.

All the medical professionals are all masked up and it appears moving some patients, but there are the 4 men in the background three of which look to be rather wealthy and one looks like their bodyguard and they seem to not be the slightest bit concerned with getting infected by these patients. I wonder what their thinking is, or if they already had it and have recovered. In either case their disregard struck me as interesting. The cherry on top though is the homeless looking guy in the back on the far right. He has this look to him like 'really, what makes these people so special.' It just struck me as interesting that he was able to slip into the background of the picture all nonchalant like.

 

[Scoot26]

View attachment 5227

I had to double take.... like "Fuq is that Hitler?"

Wasn't an uncommon look at the time. Charlie Chaplin anyone? And at this point Hitler was a lowly private in the Bavarian Army.

 

[Scoot26]

As posted in the haircut thread, this is one of my favorite photos

As Burque pointed out, the kid has his nose out from the mask.. and then the people getting the haircuts can possibly be spewing virus out of their mouths.. but this could be a way to give haircuts in modern times with some changes.

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

I was told that this generation was soft. I see a lot of softies in that picture.

 

[MDB111™]

As posted in the haircut thread, this is one of my favorite photos

As Burque pointed out, the kid has his nose out from the mask.. and then the people getting the haircuts can possibly be spewing virus out of their mouths.. but this could be a way to give haircuts in modern times with some changes.

look closer!
You can see @Omeletpants father talking with no one listening! There is real photo proof! Not like fake audi photoshopped proof but actual proof

 

[Crystallas]

The men cutting hair were wearing hats. Looks like three fedoras and a homburg.

Our haircuts are so good, you don't want to show them off! But after you're clipped, we can sell you a nice bowler.


On a more serious note, the customer on the viewers left-rear sure looks like Johnathan Banks.

 

[ijustposthere]

Here's one that took some digging:

 

[Warrior Spirit]

I feel real education on the subject of the Spanish flu is required as the ignorant masses compare it so often to covid.

The flu was actually no more deadly than most seen from year to year. And, again, we can point the finger at weakened immune systems at the time, a new drug that added fuel to the fire and misinformation. The living conditions at that time were overcrowded and unsanitary with a lot of malnutrition. The overwhelming amount of deaths actually came from bacterial infections and not the flu. Another key factor was the pushing of Aspirin as treatment.

The use of aspirin was still in its infancy but use of it had increased heavily after some heavy world-wide marketing. With no known cure for virus, aspirin was that thing suggested more than anything and in high quantities, well above what we now know to be potentially toxic. Aspirin suppresses the immune system, allowing the bacterial infections to take hold. To this day, aspirin is linked to thousands of deaths in the US each year.

 

[Scoot26]

We can start baseball again!