You have died of Influenza A.

December 20, 2018 6:24 AM

This year, the CDC is commemorating the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed 675,000 people in the US and at least 50 million people worldwide. One of their commemorations is the Oregon Trail-style 1918 PANDEMIC TRAIL!
posted by ChuraChura (30 comments total)

Good social distancing ftw! Nice find, ChuraChura!
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:33 AM on December 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

I made it through the day as a farmer practicing good social distancing. Yay me.
My paternal great-grandmother died in this epidemic, the first of my great-grandfathers 5 wives.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:43 AM on December 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

Tragedy + Time, y'all.
posted by gwint at 6:55 AM on December 20, 2018 [9 favorites]

My wife's grandfather, newly arrived in the US from the UK, caught the bug. He was nursed through it by sympathetic southern friends who prescribed bed rest and serious amounts of bourbon.
posted by BWA at 7:02 AM on December 20, 2018 [6 favorites]

I also made it through the day as a farmer practicing good social distancing! In real life, I woulda been dead in like 5 minutes. I'm the canary in the coal mine, basically. If something's going around, I'm one of the first to get it and it usually is worse for me.

Vaccines and modern medicine are what keep me alive today, and I'm eternally grateful.
posted by cooker girl at 7:05 AM on December 20, 2018 [4 favorites]

Social anxiety ftw
posted by Skwirl at 7:05 AM on December 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

Autoplay music, argh!

I died a soldier.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:20 AM on December 20, 2018

Apparently, I could only hope to avoid getting the flu by avoiding any proximity with other human beings. By amputating from myself most of what makes life worth living. My choices would be 1) living death; or 2) death death.

I can see why most folks of the time didn't prefer the "social distancing" route.
posted by Weftage at 7:22 AM on December 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Eating well, keeping my feet dry, and avoiding crowds is my Saturday night, thankyouverymuch!
posted by Cheezitsofcool at 7:40 AM on December 20, 2018 [4 favorites]

My great grandmother died in the flu epidemic. I recently found her cemetery interment record on Ancestry. It's a long list of about 40 people per page and nearly every single one of them is listed as dying of either influenza or pneumonia.
posted by interplanetjanet at 7:55 AM on December 20, 2018 [6 favorites]

Remember the movie "Awakenings"? That's the story of my grandmother, only she was "frozen" for only short periods of time, and had access to newer medication. But it affected my mother's life severely, and consequently my life too. Bleah.
posted by Melismata at 7:56 AM on December 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

Man I passed up seeing my friend, marching in a parade, and going to a jazz show and STILL died! No fair. :(
posted by emjaybee at 8:01 AM on December 20, 2018 [6 favorites]

Social distancing is key.

I played this with a family member who has social anxiety disorders, and survived. They were pleased with my decisions to avoid all human contact.
posted by doctornemo at 8:41 AM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

The Toronto Public Library offers access to online scans of two Toronto daily newspapers (the Star and the Globe), going back into the 19th century. (You need a library card to access them.) A while back, I looked at the Daily Star from October 17 1918, right at the peak of the flu epidemic, since I was morbidly curious.

The news articles from the paper are grim: 15 people had died of influenza or pneumonia in Toronto that very morning and over 300 had passed away that month, with 95 new cases admitted to hospital in the previous 24 hours. Over 120 nurses were sick. And over 5000 people had passed away in New York City that month.

Among the advertisements in that paper:

- An insurance company (the Dominion of Canada Guarantee & Accident Insurance Co.) offered a Special Sickness Policy that covered Spanish influenza. I wonder how often they had to pay out?

- An ad for a comedy at the Alexandra Theatre (not yet the Royal Alexandra) claimed that "its joy kills flu".

- CCM Bicycles suggested that you could avoid congestion and therefore the flu by buying and riding a bicycle.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 8:44 AM on December 20, 2018 [5 favorites]

At your next house, the door opens before you can deliver mail, and Mrs. Jones greets you with a smile and has a package that she wants to send out.

DO NOT TAKE MRS. JONES' BOX O' DEATH DIRECTLY FROM HER.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:12 AM on December 20, 2018 [7 favorites]

My great-grandfather's older brother and his parents died in this epidemic -- he took his older brother's identity and joined the army at 16 (or 15?).
posted by typecloud at 9:20 AM on December 20, 2018 [5 favorites]

Did my best as a postal delivery worker - died as one might expect.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:26 AM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Spit Spreads Death
posted by mmmbacon at 9:30 AM on December 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

"Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

NONE OF THOSE STAY ME, EITHER.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:35 AM on December 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

Something like 3 - 6% of the world's population died in that flu epidemic. The mortality rate was 10 - 20%. It caused the immune system to overreact wildly and many healthy people died. The flu is usually especially dangerous to people with less healthy immune systems - babies and old people. I get the flu vax - it may help maintain some immunity to various versions of flu even in years when it isn't super-effective against current strains. The possibility of a flu epidemic could convince me to start prepping.

Good post, thanks for feeding my paranoia. I'll just be in the bunker.
posted by theora55 at 10:11 AM on December 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

This is relevant to my interests. I'm home with what I thought surely must be the flu. I'm spending half the night shivering under a mountain of comforters, the other half being absolutely incinerated and drenched in sweat, I've got muscle aches, headache, and endless diarrhea. Even the nurse thought it was flu. But nope. I went and got swabbed (preparatory to getting Tamiflu, if that's what it turned out to be) and came up negative. If the flu is worse than this, I don't want to know about it. Anyway, social distancing farmers ftw.
posted by HotToddy at 10:27 AM on December 20, 2018 [4 favorites]

Diarrhea isn't normally a symptom of the flu in adults (although that's not to say it can't happen.) Sounds more like a nasty stomach virus.
posted by Automocar at 10:54 AM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've just been re-listening to season 1 of This Podcast will Kill You, and the first episode is about influenza. It focuses on the 1918 flu, and is an informative and entertaining piece. I never knew how much I was interested in learning about infectious diseases until I started listening.
posted by thejanna at 11:15 AM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

i am so excited by this game. i am going to beat it!
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:28 AM on December 20, 2018

i survived as a soldier by social distancing.

i'd like to note that shit works. when i lived in philly and had to take the bus to work i was sick all the time. when i got a job that required me to take regional rail on a "reverse commute" so the trains were mostly empty, i got sick much less frequently. when i started freelancing and working from home, i got sick only when i was stupid and ventured out where there were lots of people.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:34 AM on December 20, 2018 [4 favorites]

So it turns out that I've been training my entire life to survive a pandemic.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:47 AM on December 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

L.M. Montgomery provides a first person account of what it was like to live through the 1919 flu pandemic in her journals. She caught the flu herself, but recovered. Her best friend and first cousin Frederica Campbell caught the flu and died of it at the age of 36. Frederica's brother George also died, as well as one of George's children.
posted by orange swan at 12:06 PM on December 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

i find it hilarious and delightful that i survived by doing exactly what i would have done irl anyway, which is avoid all human contact and play in the dirt.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:36 PM on December 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

Aww man. I almost made it as a letter carrier -- but I picked the package up directly from the little old lady instead of telling her to put it on the ground. This feels like a good simulation, because I would probably die a hundred times before being difficult with someone who reminded me of my grandmother.
posted by grandiloquiet at 3:03 PM on December 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Not currently playable on mobile devices? What is this? 1918?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:18 AM on December 21, 2018