BS: spanish flu 1918

Subject: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 May 20 - 02:34 PM

1918 Spanish Flu historical documentary | Swine Flu Pandemic | Deadly plague of 1918

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Donuel
Date: 21 May 20 - 04:01 PM

Is this a never Trumper Democrat fake news hoax?
In any case this breaks Trump's first Law "Never believe your eyes and ears, just believe me".

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Charmion
Date: 21 May 20 - 04:34 PM

Huh? Donuel, I don't understand your remark.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Raedwulf
Date: 21 May 20 - 04:52 PM

*winces* I nearly stopped it at 1:30, I gave up when YT interrupted with an ad just after the Pvt Josh Lee poem (5:30-ish). This isn't a documentary. It's a half-baked, US-centric, entirely amateur production. They've got enough facts, and state enough facts, to be plausible. But documentary? Nah.

If you don't know, flu epidemics have been endemic for centuries. Hardly a surprise, is it? There was more than one during the 19thC. The trouble is that once you go back beyond the 20thC, both the figures & the diagnoses become ever more unreliable.

But we do like scaring ourselves, don't we?

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: JHW
Date: 21 May 20 - 04:59 PM

So is covid19 going to get worse too?

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Donuel
Date: 21 May 20 - 05:29 PM

sarcasm doesn't work well in text Charmion.

All of nature moves in waves. Wind water and epidemics.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 May 20 - 05:37 PM

They cite the book The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry; it was published in 2004 but has become a best seller in this age of COVID-19. What I've listened to in the first few minutes of this program agrees with the material he uncovered in his research (I've heard him speak about this a couple of times—he has been interviewed frequently now that the novel coronavirus has appeared).

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 22 May 20 - 10:50 AM

For comparison, there is a BBC Radio documentary from last January: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswdhh.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 May 20 - 02:36 PM

But we do like scaring ourselves, don't we? NO stupid comment
I like to be informed, so i will listen to the bbc one too

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 May 20 - 02:58 PM

none of this was taught to me in o level history

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Donuel
Date: 22 May 20 - 04:02 PM

I have a photo from 1918 of well dressed fans and uniformed soldiers sitting in the stands of a Georgia Football game. They were close together and without exception- All were all wearing masks.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: The Sandman
Date: 22 May 20 - 04:42 PM

fair enough but it does not alter the fact that there were some occasions when troops were too close together in barracks etc

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 May 20 - 04:51 PM

Can somebody transcribe this German song into plain text so Google can translate it?

https://m.facebook.com/nebelspalter/posts/10158420945084916

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Mossback
Date: 22 May 20 - 06:18 PM

SPANISH flu? Ya mean kinda like the CHINK Coronavirus?

Guess we haven't progressed much in th2 last hundred & two years.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 May 20 - 12:38 AM

Jack, you'll have to type it into Google Translate.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: The Sandman
Date: 23 May 20 - 03:39 AM

it was called so because spain was a neutral country in ww1,and was the only country to dmention it in their media,it was believed to have strted in kansas

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 May 20 - 04:28 AM

My only web access is this iPhone 4S. I can't see the image and type at the same time.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 23 May 20 - 05:25 AM

It's a good song, Jack. I will have a go at translating it myself if you aren't in a mad rush?

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 23 May 20 - 09:07 AM

An attempt at the first page.

Flu and the People

Like a strangler going about the land,
Beating a drum, a scythe in his hand,
with a fearful booming of his dread tatoo,
deepest black is veiled the flu.

Into every house it goes
And cuts down sheaves in bloody rows –
Pretty girls who won’t grow old
And many a lad though e’er so bold.

The people cry out in their need
loud to all of those who lead:
Why delay? Protect us from death -
what shall we be who struggle for breath?

You have the duty, you have the power –
Be a man now cometh the hour.
We tell you this: no more shirking,
do your job, come on, get working!

It’s a scandal, what they do, the fools,
Where are the bans? Where are the rules?
People sing and dance, boozing steady -
Are there not enough dead already?

Our rulers took advice of all kinds
Over and over all in their minds -
What do we need to do right now?
And o they had such worried brows.

And see - the effort has been repaid,
From that thought a solution made:
soon it began, unusual and heavy,
raining bans constant and steady.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 May 20 - 09:26 AM

Good grief that was astonishing!

Did the original hint at a specific tune?

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 23 May 20 - 11:53 AM

Nothing on the two pages included, no. Did the original post definitely say it was a song rather than a poem?

I will do page 2 tomorrow. I had to change the rhyming scheme to AABB from ABAB but I think it's got all the sense and some of the poetry in there.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: The Sandman
Date: 24 May 20 - 06:44 AM

VERY GOOD

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 24 May 20 - 09:24 AM

Thank you. I am going to have a look at the second half now.

I have just been looking at the Facebook post, and it seems this was originally a poem in a Swiss magazine, apparently the equivalent of Punch, so no tune associated with it, of course.

For what it's worth Klaus the East Frieslander (a long way from Switzerland geographically and culturally) has set it to a tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opUpwHMGpsc

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 24 May 20 - 10:32 AM

I have had to diverge a bit more from the original here, because some references to the church and to Shrovetide would make no sense to us now, really. So I introduced some UK 21st century references instead.

Translation copyright Phillip Mannion 2020, I suppose!

Flu and the People

Like a strangler going about the land,
Beating a drum, a scythe in his hand,
with a fearful booming of his dread tatoo,
deepest black is veiled the flu.

Into every house it goes
And cuts down sheaves in bloody rows –
Pretty girls who won’t grow old
And many a lad though e’er so bold.

The people cry out in their need
loud to all of those who lead:
Why delay? Protect us from death –
what shall we be who struggle for breath?

You have the duty, you have the power –
Be a man now cometh the hour.
We tell you this: no more shirking,
do your job, come on, get working!

It’s a scandal, what they do, the fools,
Where are the bans? Where are the rules?
People sing and dance, boozing steady –
Are there not enough dead already?

Our rulers took advice of all kinds
Over and over all in their minds -
What do we need to do right now?
And o they had such worried brows.

And see – the effort has been repaid,
From all that thought a solution made:
soon it began, unusual and heavy,
raining bans constant and steady.

The flu was tired and almost done; next it
was thinking “Where is the exit?”–
and then the people made their choices
and cried with a hundred thousand voices:

“Hey government! Are you all mad?
This lockdown stuff is very bad
You heap on us, the dummies,
but not on Jenrick, not on Cummings.

Are we just here to pay our tax?
Show us the science, show us the facts.
And just before the start of summer!
Jesus, Johnson, what a bummer!”

“There are people who would like to impose,
Lockdown 2 – we are not those.
Schools and Parliament will be open,
For rules are just there to be broken!

That is what we want, what we are thinking –
set free the singing, set free the drinking!
(Or else, the plebs just might not buy it.
What is that song about a riot?)”

The flu, gasping on its last already,
smiled so soft and breathed in steady
And said: “Well, at last – hurray!”
And laughed in its malicious way.

“Yes, it still exists,” the flu began,
“the good old family of man!”
It stretched itself full pale and high
and sharpened once again its scythe.

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 May 20 - 10:44 AM

Move above the line?

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 May 20 - 12:47 PM

I saw an exposition on YT of a researcher who nailed why the young were most at risk. And he was sure the first signs of the epidemic where in the US the March of 1918.

What he found (of the H1N1) was that:
there were two pandemics previously one was something like a (say) H1N3 some time around 1900 (I think) and the previous one was (say) H8N1 maybe 15 years earlier. The HX bit does the inserting into cells, and the NY does some slicing, making insertion easier.

And The H1 & N1 from earlier outbreaks had conferred some immunity leaving the youngest people never having been exposed to either.

All deduction but pretty compelling. The Genesis of the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic - Mike Worobey

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Jack Campin
Date: 25 May 20 - 01:48 PM

French Canadian song, to the tune of Mrs McLeod, with sneezes:

Tout le monde a la grippe

Anybody up to transcribing and translating it?

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 25 May 20 - 02:02 PM

Here are the words:

On a une épidémie
Car tout le monde sont grippés
Y en a pas de mes amis
Qu'ont pas la grippe cette année
Tous les magasins de quinze cents
Ils font d' l'argent comme de l'eau
Les mouchoirs, c'est à douzaine
Pour ceux qui ont le rhume de cerveau

(Turlute et Atchoum)

Ça commence par un frisson
Pis ensuite vous éternuez
Là, vous l'avez pour de bon
C'est le temps de vous faire soigner
Un p'tit gin pis du citron
Avec ça, vous aller suer
Evitez les courants d'air
Pour pas mourir les pattes en l'air

(Turlute et Atchoum)

Si vous venez qu'à rempirer
Frottez-vous avec de l'huile camphrée
Si vous avez mal au cœur
Prenez une dose de painkiller
Si vous avez peur de la mort
Prenez une dose d'huile de castor
Avec tous ces conseils-là
Vous aurez pas l'influenza

(Turlute et Atchoum)

Moi pis mon mari
On est allé faire du ski
Et rendu au Mont Tremblant
Il faisait froid, c'est effrayant
J'avais la face comme une forçure
Pis le bout du nez gelé, dur
Je vous dis que ça, c'est pas rose
Quand on a un brandy nose

(Turlute et Atchoum)

Faut s'habiller bien chaudement
Si on veut pas attraper ça
L'hiver, c'est un mauvais temps
Pour les rhumes d'estomac
Dans le mois de février
La plupart, ils sont grippés
Mais rendu au mois de juin
D'autres attrapent la fièvre des foins

(Turlute et Atchoum)


It will take me a while longer with a song in French... But I might give it a go starting tomorrow!

Subject: RE: BS: spanish flu 1918
From: Phillip
Date: 25 May 20 - 02:04 PM

In the meantime here is Google Translate's attempt:

We have an epidemic
Because everyone is seized
None of my friends
What have the flu this year
All fifteen cents stores
They make money like water
Handkerchiefs, it's a dozen
For those with a common cold

(Turlute and Sneeze)

It starts with a chill
Then you sneeze
There you have it for good
It's time to get treatment
A little gin and a lemon
With that, you will sweat
Avoid drafts
In order not to die with my legs in the air

(Turlute and Sneeze)

If you just get worse
Rub with camphor oil
If you feel sick to your heart
Take a dose of painkiller
If you are afraid of death
Take a dose of beaver oil
With all these tips
You will not have influenza

(Turlute and Sneeze)

Me and my husband
We went skiing
And returned to Mont Tremblant
It was cold, it's scary
My face was like a forced
And the tip of the frozen, hard nose
I'm telling you, it's not rosy
When you have a brandy nose

(Turlute and Sneeze)

Must dress warmly
If we don't want to catch this
Winter is bad weather
For stomach colds
In the month of February
Most of them are seized
But returned in June
Others get hay fever


(Turlute and Sneeze)