It is puzzling the lack of literature and fact based movies about the 1918 pandemic.

[shockey80]

The 1918 pandemic was one of the largest catastrophes in human history. There have been books written about it, but not on the scale one would think.

Hollywood is still making fact based movies about the civil war, WWI, great depression, etc. They have all but ignored the 1918 pandemic.

There must be countless, incredible stories yet to be told about the pandemic. Stories about loss, love, sacrifice, courage. The silence over the 1918 pandemic is very strange.

[fescuerescue]

1. I suspect that will change over the next few years

The current crisis will be too soon to make a movie about.

So Hollywood, attempting to capitalize on the new public consciousness of pandemics, will look to this. IMO.

[Freddie]

2. I believe at the time

Many people did not know how devastating it was, as we didn’t have TV etc. yet, plus the severity of the epidemic varied widely between regions.
In John Barry’s (awesome) book, he reported there was a big effort by the press to keep people from panicking. And Wilson wanted it downplayed for fear it would hamper the war effort. The deaths of thousands of young soldiers in training camps was largely hushed up.

[Hugin]

3. I have an excellent non-fiction book on the topic I picked up at a thrift store...

Years ago.

It has tons of photographs and goes into great detail about the events surrounding the 1918 flu pandemic.

[3_Limes]

7. Probably "The Great Influenza"

A really good read. Covers the history well and offers a very helpful tour of basic virology and epidemiology as well.

Recommended.

[Hugin]

11. Yeah, that's the book!

Ironically, it's trapped at a site quite a distance away from where I'm isolated along with my stash of Lysol. :frustrated:

[SoonerPride]

4. Downtown Abbey

They had an episode with the 1918 flu.

It is one of the few pop culture references I know of.

[Itchinjim]

5. Pale Horse Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Horse,_Pale_Rider
A novelized account of Potter's own experience of the flu. A fascinating story that also tells of her classic NDE

[littlemissmartypants]

6. Watch this...

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/influenza/#film_description

AIRED: January 2, 2018

American Experience: Influenza 1918

Film Description
In September of 1918, soldiers at an army base near Boston suddenly began to die. The cause of death was identified as influenza, but it was unlike any strain ever seen.?As the killer virus spread across the country, hospitals overfilled, death carts roamed the streets and helpless city officials dug mass graves. It was the worst epidemic in American history, killing over 600,000 — until it disappeared as mysteriously as it had begun.

There are several links on the page that have revelatory and interesting information.

❤ lmsp

[Baclava]

12. This! I've been preaching for people to watch this since it came out, eerie simularities, watch it!

I had a little bird, it's name was Enza
I opened up the window and in flew Enza

-Children's playground song 1918

[Renew Deal]

8. Maybe you should write a book

[rgbecker]

9. My dad would have been 6 years old then....he never mentioned it, nor did my Grandparents. n/t

[KY_EnviroGuy]

10. Shockey80, check out this post from April 15...

Good video series on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

Link: https://www.democraticunderground.com/114223135

I found those videos to be very informative and I believe authoritative as well.......

[Recursion]

13. Wartime propaganda

There was a very interesting piece on this a few years ago. It's pretty much all based on information controls set up during World War 1.

[MoonRiver]

14. Check out this awesome book...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29036.The_Great_Influenza

Anecdotally, a paternal uncle of mine, born 20 years before my father, contracted and died from that flu in boot camp, preparing for deployment to Europe.

[Hugin]

15. My SO thought I was crazy when I bought that book.

My interest was sparked when my parents and I were going through old rural cemeteries in the mid-west while they were working on genealogy. I noticed a large number of the interred were very young and all had died around 1918. It wasn't until some years later I put it together with the 1918 flu.

Another often overlooked scourge was Tuberculosis. Which, I originally attributed the deaths to until I learned of the pandemic. I still question if the ongoing Tuberculosis epidemic didn't make the toll from the flu worse. But, that's probably something I'll never know.

[MoonRiver]

16. Lots of stories on my dad's side!

My paternal aunt, an English professor, put it all together in a document for family. I have the original letter from the camp nurse who cared for my uncle until he passed at age 17. She wrote my grandmother because Little Hal, her name for him, wanted her to tell his parents how much he loved them.

But, a few years before that, grandmother and grandfather barely survived the Great Galveston Hurricane, which is also memorialized in a fantastic book called A Weekend in September. My maternal great aunt drowned in that event, but grandparents somehow made it through.

[Hugin]

18. A very touching story about "Little Hal"...

So young. A tragedy.

As, I was going through those cemeteries there were literally dozens if not hundreds of graves of very young people at all around the same date. These were relatively small cemeteries, too. It was striking to me.

I don't have any direct stories of anyone in my family who succumbed to the flu. Understandable, since they were extremely rural, cloistered, and self-reliant people at that time. (See: Hillbillies) The only family story I've heard which may be related is one of my grandmother's siblings died at about then. When she was only 6 months old. The family attributed her demise to an insect bite. However, I believe it could have been the flu given the time frame.

[MoonRiver]

21. My dad's family were rural too, farmers.

There is a theory that rural kids are more susceptible to diseases after they go to bigger cities, due to a lack of immunity to common germs. But that wasn’t the case with the 1918 flu. It killed disproportionately more young people because their strong immune systems actually wrecked more havoc on their lungs than the flu.

[Codeine]

17. Because contemporary discussion

was shut down by wartime censorship, and because everyone was just entirely exhausted in the aftermath of the Great War and the pandemic that they largely just didn’t talk about it much.

This has skewed our historical understanding and dramatically understates the significance of the event for following generations.

[shockey80]

19. Good post.

Your last sentence is very good. It is strange how such a big event has been largely ignored by history. I bet many Americans never heard of the1918 pandemic until now.

[Tracer]

20. I'm sure that younger people hadn't heard of the 1918 pandemic, but

not being young, I certainly heard about it from relatives:

My mother's sister died of it in London and my ex-husband's grandfather, who was a doctor serving in France during WWI, died of it also.