Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Our Ancestors in the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic
Nadene Goldfoot
War and Flu Pandemic
"On 22 May 1918, the epidemic was a headline in Madrid's ABC newspaper. The infectious disease most likely reached Spain from France, perhaps as the result of the heavy railroad traffic of Spanish and Portuguese migrant workers to and from France. ..Although a great deal of evidence indicates that the 1918 A(H1N1) influenza virus unlikely originated in and spread from Spain, the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic will always be known as the Spanish flu...It is likely that >260,000 Spaniards died of influenza; 75% of these persons died during the second period of the epidemic, and 45% died during October 1918 alone. "
"The 1918 influenza pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus, with the second being the swine flu in 2009. The Spanish flu infected 500 million people around the world, or about 27% of the world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion." That's 3 different flu attacks.
It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. (update)
What was bad was that World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. By 1918, the world was in a flu pandemic.
My father was 6 years old and my mother was 1 year old in 1914; both living in Portland, Oregon. My father, Meshke (Morris) had an immigrant mother that didn't speak, read or write English and his father-Nathan Goldfoot, had died in an accident in 1912. My mother had an immigrant mother and Yankee American father-Frank Hugh Robinson, who did.
"From January 1918 to December 1920, 50,000,000 people died." " By October 1918, the United States had been an active participant in World War I for more than a year. And while the declared enemy was overseas, there was a killer working stateside as well. Cities were gripped with fear: school was canceled; theaters, places of worship, and other places of “public amusement” had been shuttered. That month alone 195,000 Americans died, making it the deadliest month in American history; the killer was none other than influenza."Though the pandemic lasted just 15 months, 500 million people worldwide fell sick and it killed between 3-5% of the world’s population.
The major UK troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples in France has been theorized by researchers as being at the center of the Spanish flu. The research was published in 1999 by a British team, led by virologist John Oxford. In late 1917, military pathologists reported the onset of a new disease with high mortality that they later recognized as the flu. The overcrowded camp and hospital was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus. The hospital treated thousands of victims of chemical attacks, and other casualties of war, and 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp every day. It also was home to a piggery, and poultry was regularly brought in for food supplies from surrounding villages. Oxford and his team postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.
This Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults. A 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.
The pandemic mostly killed young adults. In 1918–1919, 99% of pandemic influenza deaths in the U.S. occurred in people under 65, and nearly half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. In 1920, the mortality rate among people under 65 had decreased sixfold to half the mortality rate of people over 65, but still, 92% of deaths occurred in people under 65. This is unusual, since influenza is typically most deadly to weak individuals, such as infants under age two, adults over age 70, and the immunocompromised. In 1918, older adults may have had partial protection caused by exposure to the 1889–1890 flu pandemic, known as the "Russian flu".
In 2018, it was estimated the total to be about 17 million people worldwide, though this has been contested. With a world population of 1.8 to 1.9 billion, these estimates correspond to between 1 and 6 percent of the population.
This war led to the mobilization of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatant and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.
Zlata came from Poland/Lithuania, and Nathan came from Lithuania. What was going on in Lithuania in 1889-1890?
In Lazdey Suwalki's summer of 1879, 200 houses burned down causing the owners to become homeless. In 1886 another fire caused 250 Jewish houses burned down again, and again in 1888 70 houses burned down. This time the old synagogue and the Beth-Midrash with all its books were destroyed, and a Jewish woman had died in the fire. Another large fire happened in 1910. All this destroyed the economic chances for the Jews who numbered 1500 in 1887. They had been using straw for roofs in the middle of the town which finally were prohibited.
Lazdey was sitting in the middle of a Jewish farm community until WWI. Many Jewish families had vegetable gardens behind their homes.
In 1915 the Germans occupied Zlata's town of Lazdijai, Suwalki that sat on the border between Poland and Lithuania. She had left sometime in 1900 as she married Nathan in Boise, Idaho in 1905 as she had been living near Council, Idaho in a little mining town. After the war by 1919, the Polish army had taken over in Lazdey but was expelled after several days. It remained inside the border of Lithuania while their district administrative center, Sejny, was included in Poland. Lithuania was independent from 1918 to 1940 with Germany's invasion in June 1941 causing the demolition of almost all the town.
The “Spanish” influenza pandemic of 1918–1920 took place in Poland in 3 epidemic waves. The peaks of morbidity and mortality occurred in the capital, Warsaw, in December 1918 and in December 1919 to January 1920. It is estimated that throughout the pandemic period of 1918–1920 in Poland, 200 000 to 300,000 people died.
Telz remembered their years of famine from 1869 to 1872. In 1870 their population was 6,481 people including 4,399 Jews making up 68% of the town's population. By 1897 it had dropped down to 51% in a town of 6,000 with only 3,088 Jews. The 1880's had been years of persecutions and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and other places. All were taken into the army for a 6 year period. It became the years of immigration to Palestine and the USA. The Telz Jewish hospital was established.
In the middle of the Pandemic on February 16, 1918, Lithuania had become an independent state. The German army withdrew from the area and life in Telsiai (Telz) gradually returned to normal. The Jews numbered only half of their previous number before the war, started to reconstruct their businesses and their spiritual life. The first government census was in 1923 and there were then 4,691 people in Telz, including 1,545 Jews who made up 33% of their population.
https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Great-flu-pandemic-leaves-its-mark-on-family-4227641.php
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320355717_The_Lethal_Spanish_Influenza_Pandemic_in_Poland
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/47/5/668/296225
War and Flu Pandemic
 |
| Camp Funston's hospital unit with soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, one of the places in Kansas thought to have brought the virus here. |
"On 22 May 1918, the epidemic was a headline in Madrid's ABC newspaper. The infectious disease most likely reached Spain from France, perhaps as the result of the heavy railroad traffic of Spanish and Portuguese migrant workers to and from France. ..Although a great deal of evidence indicates that the 1918 A(H1N1) influenza virus unlikely originated in and spread from Spain, the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic will always be known as the Spanish flu...It is likely that >260,000 Spaniards died of influenza; 75% of these persons died during the second period of the epidemic, and 45% died during October 1918 alone. "
"The 1918 influenza pandemic was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus, with the second being the swine flu in 2009. The Spanish flu infected 500 million people around the world, or about 27% of the world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion." That's 3 different flu attacks.
It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. (update)
 |
| American army uniforms in WWI |
What was bad was that World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. By 1918, the world was in a flu pandemic.
 |
| Charles 6 and Morris 4 Goldfoot in 1912 just before WWI They only spoke Yiddish like their mother, Zlata Goldfoot nee Jermulowske. |
My father was 6 years old and my mother was 1 year old in 1914; both living in Portland, Oregon. My father, Meshke (Morris) had an immigrant mother that didn't speak, read or write English and his father-Nathan Goldfoot, had died in an accident in 1912. My mother had an immigrant mother and Yankee American father-Frank Hugh Robinson, who did.
"From January 1918 to December 1920, 50,000,000 people died." " By October 1918, the United States had been an active participant in World War I for more than a year. And while the declared enemy was overseas, there was a killer working stateside as well. Cities were gripped with fear: school was canceled; theaters, places of worship, and other places of “public amusement” had been shuttered. That month alone 195,000 Americans died, making it the deadliest month in American history; the killer was none other than influenza."Though the pandemic lasted just 15 months, 500 million people worldwide fell sick and it killed between 3-5% of the world’s population.
The major UK troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples in France has been theorized by researchers as being at the center of the Spanish flu. The research was published in 1999 by a British team, led by virologist John Oxford. In late 1917, military pathologists reported the onset of a new disease with high mortality that they later recognized as the flu. The overcrowded camp and hospital was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus. The hospital treated thousands of victims of chemical attacks, and other casualties of war, and 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp every day. It also was home to a piggery, and poultry was regularly brought in for food supplies from surrounding villages. Oxford and his team postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.
This Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults. A 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.
The pandemic mostly killed young adults. In 1918–1919, 99% of pandemic influenza deaths in the U.S. occurred in people under 65, and nearly half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. In 1920, the mortality rate among people under 65 had decreased sixfold to half the mortality rate of people over 65, but still, 92% of deaths occurred in people under 65. This is unusual, since influenza is typically most deadly to weak individuals, such as infants under age two, adults over age 70, and the immunocompromised. In 1918, older adults may have had partial protection caused by exposure to the 1889–1890 flu pandemic, known as the "Russian flu".
In 2018, it was estimated the total to be about 17 million people worldwide, though this has been contested. With a world population of 1.8 to 1.9 billion, these estimates correspond to between 1 and 6 percent of the population.
This war led to the mobilization of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatant and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.
Zlata came from Poland/Lithuania, and Nathan came from Lithuania. What was going on in Lithuania in 1889-1890?
In Lazdey Suwalki's summer of 1879, 200 houses burned down causing the owners to become homeless. In 1886 another fire caused 250 Jewish houses burned down again, and again in 1888 70 houses burned down. This time the old synagogue and the Beth-Midrash with all its books were destroyed, and a Jewish woman had died in the fire. Another large fire happened in 1910. All this destroyed the economic chances for the Jews who numbered 1500 in 1887. They had been using straw for roofs in the middle of the town which finally were prohibited.
Lazdey was sitting in the middle of a Jewish farm community until WWI. Many Jewish families had vegetable gardens behind their homes.
 |
| WWI German Uniforms |
In 1915 the Germans occupied Zlata's town of Lazdijai, Suwalki that sat on the border between Poland and Lithuania. She had left sometime in 1900 as she married Nathan in Boise, Idaho in 1905 as she had been living near Council, Idaho in a little mining town. After the war by 1919, the Polish army had taken over in Lazdey but was expelled after several days. It remained inside the border of Lithuania while their district administrative center, Sejny, was included in Poland. Lithuania was independent from 1918 to 1940 with Germany's invasion in June 1941 causing the demolition of almost all the town.
The “Spanish” influenza pandemic of 1918–1920 took place in Poland in 3 epidemic waves. The peaks of morbidity and mortality occurred in the capital, Warsaw, in December 1918 and in December 1919 to January 1920. It is estimated that throughout the pandemic period of 1918–1920 in Poland, 200 000 to 300,000 people died.
Telz remembered their years of famine from 1869 to 1872. In 1870 their population was 6,481 people including 4,399 Jews making up 68% of the town's population. By 1897 it had dropped down to 51% in a town of 6,000 with only 3,088 Jews. The 1880's had been years of persecutions and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and other places. All were taken into the army for a 6 year period. It became the years of immigration to Palestine and the USA. The Telz Jewish hospital was established.
In the middle of the Pandemic on February 16, 1918, Lithuania had become an independent state. The German army withdrew from the area and life in Telsiai (Telz) gradually returned to normal. The Jews numbered only half of their previous number before the war, started to reconstruct their businesses and their spiritual life. The first government census was in 1923 and there were then 4,691 people in Telz, including 1,545 Jews who made up 33% of their population.
Pneumonia, an ailment caused by bacteria, and influenza, a viral illness, went hand-in-hand in 1918.Researchers with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found the majority of deaths during the Great Pandemic were not caused by the influenza virus alone. Instead, they found most victims died from pneumonia after getting the flu. The influenza virus of those years destroyed the cells lining the bronchial tubes and in the lungs. The pneumonia bacteria flourished in that damaged tissue.
Resource:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html (update)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Ihttps://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html (update)
https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Great-flu-pandemic-leaves-its-mark-on-family-4227641.php
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320355717_The_Lethal_Spanish_Influenza_Pandemic_in_Poland
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/47/5/668/296225
Labels: 1918 Pandemic, deaths, France, Lazdijai, Lithuanian independence, Pneumonia, Spain, Spanish Flu, Telz, WWI
