Genealife in Lockdown. 3. NFHM Blogging Challenge

A new strain of the Covid virus arrived here in July 2021, 

the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, which is commonly called ‘the Delta virus’.
It is more virulent than the first, Covid-19 and many carriers were asymptomatic for days, thus spreading the germs, unbeknownst. Stronger control was necessary for those infected, and urgency for the new vaccines to be available and issued. Now that the ‘Delta’ variant of the virus is circulating, no-one knows how long it will stay. Sadly there is a lot of misinformation being shared, inhibiting people from having the vaccination, not wearing masks in public and freely attending group gatherings.

Having a pandemic like this has reminded us of the last one years ago – the worldwide influenza epidemic, Spanish Flu’ in 1918, also known as 'La Grippe'. Well before my time, but I remembered reading about it when I was researching my first cousin X 2 removed, Andy Crawford who served in the First World War with the 8thLight Horse Brigade. How easy it was for sickness to spread in the trenches, cold, dark, stagnant, all so close with the sick and the dead laying there. The soldiers were ‘sitting ducks’ where it passed along the line rapidly, killing many. 

Image: Australian troops in the trenches, WWI 

(Photograph, Queensland State Library)

From my research and Wikimedia Commons. Accessed: 13 March 2018
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ottoman_prisoners_at_Es_Salt.jpg
I had written:
    “The Desert Mounted Corps had travelled around the malarial shores of the Sea of Galilee and fought on the malarial banks of the Jordan. Within a few days of operations in the Damascus area, malaria and pneumonic influenza (Spanish Flu’) spread quickly infecting the regiments. It assumed startling proportions in Damascus, with almost all sick being serious cases. Medical supplies quickly became short, while suitable food for a light diet was inadequate and blankets and mattresses ran short. There being no facilities to disinfect them they had to be destroyed in many instances.

"05 October 1918 more than 1,246 troopers of the Desert Mounted Corps had reported sick to hospital and another 3,109 cases reported the following week. Many who had previously suffered malaria in the Jordan Valley, were now in a different climate, tired and worn out from two weeks of almost constant operations, and they relapsed and/or contracted Spanish Flu’. There were many deaths, and one hundred Australian Light Horsemen were reassigned to medical orderly duties. Medical service personnel became ill at a higher rate than cases from the combat units and no reinforcements were arriving. Australian Mounted Division commanders did what they could from their beds.

An Emergency Hospital for Influenza Patients in wartime

Influenza Pandemic of 1918.

"By 16 October the evacuation chain was working satisfactorily. The Desert Mounted Corps handed over administration of the sick in Damascus to the lines of Communication Headquarters early in November, after the fighting with the Ottoman Empire had finished."

Of the total of 330,000 members of the AIF who left Australia during the four years of war, 58,961 died, 166,811 had been wounded and 87,865 were sick.
I further researched information in: ‘History’ – Spanish Flu at https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic updated May 19, 2020. 

https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/  
by Molly Billings, June, 1997

    Wrongly given the name Spanish Flu', it seems to have started not in Spain but in either France, China, Britain, or the United States. Due to Spain being a neutral country with free media it reported cases in May 1918, as its people were hard hit, and therefore Spain unluckily inherited the title. The warring countries, though, avoided reporting the spreading influenza to keep morale high.

    From the initial suffering nations and especially the war zones it quickly disseminated around the rest of the world within a few months. A deadly plague, the worst in history. 

Five hundred million people worldwide were believed to have been infected which equalled almost one-third of the world’s population. Up to fifty million people probably died. Unfortunately, there were no vaccines or effective drugs in those days to use against the influenza strain. Like our situation, masks were made mandatory, and their businesses, and schools, etc were shuttered. The public was asked not to shake hands and to stay indoors.

It is said that in 1918, children skipped rope to the rhyme:

 

    "I had a little bird, its name was Enza

    I opened the window and in-flu-enza."

This rhyme reminded me of another we used to play at primary school, that supposedly came about when another plague occurred.

Ring-a-ring-a-roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down. 

 

London Illustration to ring-a-ring-a-roses
in Kate Greenaway’s Mother Goose,
taken from the Project Gutenberg version.

When I was a little older I was surprised and saddened to hear the meaning of the words in relation to the Bubonic Plague or Black Death in London in 1665-1666.

    

The rose-coloured circular markings that appeared on the skin, the herbs and flowers carried to ward off the disease, then once you’d caught it, the sneezing, and finally when death struck and all fell down.

I wonder if there will be a rhyme come about from the current Covid pandemic?

 

    The scenes we have been seeing on television of the horrific number of deceased peoples’ bodies in some of the countries not coping, are similar to what happened early in the twentieth century. With insufficient burial grounds, piles of bodies were kept in makeshift morgues for a long period before the global virus was over. Many families dug graves for their own relatives.

    Since then there have been Influenza pandemics in 1957 and 1968, followed by Swine Flu' in 2009, though not affecting such high numbers.

    The 'Covid' numbers around the world, as of 11 August 2021 are reported on the World Health Organisation(WHO) site as total cases: 205,338,159 with 4,333,094 of those dead.

Globally it is estimated 4,428,168,759 vaccine doses have been administered.

Highest number of cases in countries is in the USA, followed by India and Brazil.

Ref: https://covid19.who.int

    And here in Australia, the summary of cases: 38,657 total 953; deaths 25, and 15,012.023 vaccines administered. Currently, there are 6577 active cases with 427 hospitalised.
Ref: https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-case-numbers-and-statistics

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Ref: Link to Andy’s war story https://gallimaufryonblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/anzac-day-2019-remembering-andy-crawford/