PBS Documentary on 1918 Influenza **must watch** ...history is repeating itself

[iluvtennis]

The show is a little over 50 minutes. It's free. Not sure if you need a PBS account to watch, but if you do, you can create one for free. It's well worth a watch.

https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-influenza-1918/

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. Thanks!

Logging off and watching it now.

[iluvtennis]

2. 👍. Let us know what you think. I found it eye oening and scary at same time. nt

[Walleye]

3. I watched it. Excellent! So many parallels to today.

Including the false hope of a vaccine that didn’t work. My maternal grandmother almost died of the flu when my mom was an infant. She said that she was told that her mother was so sick that she gave her baby away to a close relative. My grandmother did recover, and unfortunately died of cancer before I was born. But it is a family story that gives me a special interest in what happened with that epidemic.

[iluvtennis]

4. Agree...so many parallels to today's CV-19 outbreak - it's uncanny. nt

[nocoincidences]

5. This is one of the best,

if not THE Best, documentary about the 1918 flu.

It feels very personal.

[Throck]

6. Recommended

I saw it when originally aired.

[FirstLight]

7. thanks very interesting....watching now!

wow...just, ya.


ETA: Ok that end definitely got me teary eyed too... dammitt....

[iluvtennis]

11. I know...the kid goes back to school, doesn't see his four playmates, so he goes to their homes.

Ask the moms where they are, they tell him to ask his mom. And the soldier who nursed the love of his life who had the flu and she finds out later she survived and he didn't.

So, heart-wrenching.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. Wow! Just wow. From a little girl in Kansas to the White House...

"A little bird named Enza..."

[IcyPeas]

16. I had a little bird, and its name was Enza...

I had a little bird,
And its name was Enza.
I opened the window
And in-flew-enza.

[cwydro]

9. Thanks!

Will check this out!

[mcar]

10. We watched it a few months ago

Well worth the time.

[GulfCoast66]

12. Thank you. Wish every American would watch it.

[kcr]

13. The last scenes had me in tears

You could see the profound sadness in the eyes of the man and his two sons in that picture. When the survivor from that picture was talking about how no one is safe, it especially hit me so hard. Really poignant considering what we're going through now. And the woman talking about her baby brother. That was a heartbreaking, fascinating watch. It gave a sense of how truly horrific the epidemic was. I couldn't help but compare it to what we're going through today; not to downplay the current situation because it's horrific in its own right, but I deeply hope things don't get as bad as they did then.

[Worried2020]

14. Minimized this page a couple of days ago - just finished watching it now.

It appears to me that we didn't learn much from 1918's pandemic - this scares me.

We should have been better prepared for this, instead, we let avarice and greed let us plunder the smaller and weaker nations.

Oh yeah - North America is pretty much invincible from other nations,

but this tiny bug could wipe us out, it's already crippling us . . .

Our priorities are sorta fucked up methinks

W

[iluvtennis]

15. + agree. we're not learning from history. It is very scary. nt

[DeminPennswoods]

17. The American Experience show on Polio

is closer to today, imho. Polio was something that cropped up every year, affecting millions. Americans were terrified of it. It took decades of research to find a vaccine and when Salk finally did, it was tested without the informed consent of today on kids with disabilities. Once it was proved effective in them, it went right into production and given to kids with no interim steps because Americans demanded it.