by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Camp Funston is a small, 2000-acre military facility that was constructed in central Kansas in 1917 to aid in the training of soldiers who were headed to Europe to fight in World War I. The camp, an assemblage of old wooden barracks and military offices is still in use today as a training ground for military transition teams who are headed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The camp itself is located completely within the confines of Ft. Riley, Kansas.
I had my first exposure to Camp Funston back in 1969 when I was sent there for a summer of fun in the sun as a part of the camp's massive training camp for college ROTC cadets who had just completed their junior year in the program. There I found myself living in the original World War I barracks, eating in the old chow halls, and riding in two-and-a-half ton trucks out to the training areas before daylight each morning. It was a hard summer, but there were a few watering holes at the camp where young soldier-wannabes could spend their free time drinking beer and commiserating about their shaved heads, and they did let us off the afternoon that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
Camp Funston was a scant half-a-century old the summer that I was there, and even then it seemed to be a military anachronism when compared to the modern brick buildings that adorned much of Ft. Riley. What I didn't know about Camp Funston at the time, and indeed until very recently, was that aside from its service to the nation through two world wars and several lesser military operations, the camp was also at the epicenter of one of the most significant historical events of the twentieth century: the great influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed nearly seven hundred thousand Americans and was responsible for half of the U.S. military deaths during the First World War. Although accurate medical reporting did not exist throughout much of the world in the early twentieth century, estimates are that the 15-month outbreak eventually killed more that fifty million people worldwide.
And it all began in Kansas.
Medical historian John M. Barry had an article in the November 2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine in which he postulated that even though most of the first reported cases of the 1918 flu were reported at Camp Funston, it was far more likely that the pandemic began in rural Haskell County, Kansas, in the remote southwest corner of the state. Barry, in his article "Journal of the Plague Year" noted that the local newspapers in Haskell County carried a sudden surge of "prenumonia" related stories in early 1918. He also pointed out that the county was known for its hog production and the fact that it was on the migratory route for several species of birds. Barry stated that bird influenza viruses, like human viruses, can infect hogs and "when a bird virus and a human virus infect the same pig cell, their different genes can be shuffled and exchanged like playing cards, resulting in a new, perhaps especially lethal, virus."
John M. Barry proposed that the killer pandemic was rooted in the hog farms of Haskell County, Kansas, and then some young men from the area who were infected reported to Camp Funston for their military training. Most of the available doctors at that time were being snapped up by the military, and it was there, in a military setting with well-trained doctors, that people began realizing the true nature and scope of the problem.
(One photo in the Barry article showed a make-shift hospital bay at Camp Funstion that was about the size of a gymnasium. The bay was filled to capacity with very sick young men lying on army cots.)
The influenza outbreak hit in three distinct waves. The first was in March which had a somewhat limited impact on the order of previous outbreaks, but it was noteworthy in that many of the deaths of the first wave were those of young and relatively healthy men. (In fact, throughout its brief existence, the pandemic seemed to show a preference for youth.) The author compared the first wave with the smaller one that precedes a tsunami - and the second wave in August was that tsunami. In many parts of the world the deaths came at such a furious pace that mass burials of victims were the only options. Barry told of priests driving horse-drawn wagons through Philadelphia shouting for people to "Bring out your dead," a direct throwback to the Black Death (bubonic plague) that attacked Europe in the 14th century.
President Woodrow Wilson was a victim of the Great Flu of 1918, and although he recovered, many historians believe that the virus was so disorienting to Wilson that it impaired his ability to bargain decisively at the Paris Peace Conference and thereby helped to set the stage for World War II. Raymond Chandler, Walt Disney, Lillian Gish, David Lloyd George, Georgia O'Keefe, John J. Pershing, Mary Pickford, Franklin Roosevelt, and Haile Selassie also caught the killer flu but managed to survive. Others like the Dodge brothers, Phoebe Hearst, Gustav Klint, and Max Weber, were not so lucky.
And it all began in Kansas.
John M. Barry argued that one of the reasons the influenza pandemic got such a strong foothold worldwide is that World War I was occurring at the same time, and many of the participants in that war were censoring what their press could report - the United States included. The politicians and generals did not want news of the pandemic impacting their citizens' willingness to go abroad and fight. Spain, which was not a participant in the war, allowed its press to cover the outbreak in great detail, and that press coverage formed the basis of what most of the rest of the world came to know about the outbreak. Because much of the information on the epidemic was coming out of Spain, the public eventually began to mistakenly refer to it as the "Spanish Flu."
The third wave of the pandemic was less consequential in suffering and deaths than the second, and when it subsided, the situation was largely under control. The Great Flu of 1918 in fifteen months had killed more people than forty years of AIDS would do later in the century, and it brought about more death than a hundred years of the bubonic plague did in the Middle Ages.
Barry has this timely warning embedded in his article, and it is well worth highlighting and repeating:
The great influenza pandemic began one hundred years ago in rural Kansas and within fifteen months killed well over fifty million people worldwide. Today with a seeming disavowal of science and abandonment of basic health care options for the poor of some countries, including our own - coupled with the ease of high-speed travel - a similar or worse outbreak would have the very real potential of ending civilization.
Gated communities, golden towers, and all of the guns in the world can't defeat a determined virus. Protecting the public health requires the full participation of a population through a knowledgeable and committed government. Anything less is an invitation to disaster.
Citizen Journalist
Camp Funston is a small, 2000-acre military facility that was constructed in central Kansas in 1917 to aid in the training of soldiers who were headed to Europe to fight in World War I. The camp, an assemblage of old wooden barracks and military offices is still in use today as a training ground for military transition teams who are headed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The camp itself is located completely within the confines of Ft. Riley, Kansas.
I had my first exposure to Camp Funston back in 1969 when I was sent there for a summer of fun in the sun as a part of the camp's massive training camp for college ROTC cadets who had just completed their junior year in the program. There I found myself living in the original World War I barracks, eating in the old chow halls, and riding in two-and-a-half ton trucks out to the training areas before daylight each morning. It was a hard summer, but there were a few watering holes at the camp where young soldier-wannabes could spend their free time drinking beer and commiserating about their shaved heads, and they did let us off the afternoon that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
Camp Funston was a scant half-a-century old the summer that I was there, and even then it seemed to be a military anachronism when compared to the modern brick buildings that adorned much of Ft. Riley. What I didn't know about Camp Funston at the time, and indeed until very recently, was that aside from its service to the nation through two world wars and several lesser military operations, the camp was also at the epicenter of one of the most significant historical events of the twentieth century: the great influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed nearly seven hundred thousand Americans and was responsible for half of the U.S. military deaths during the First World War. Although accurate medical reporting did not exist throughout much of the world in the early twentieth century, estimates are that the 15-month outbreak eventually killed more that fifty million people worldwide.
And it all began in Kansas.
Medical historian John M. Barry had an article in the November 2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine in which he postulated that even though most of the first reported cases of the 1918 flu were reported at Camp Funston, it was far more likely that the pandemic began in rural Haskell County, Kansas, in the remote southwest corner of the state. Barry, in his article "Journal of the Plague Year" noted that the local newspapers in Haskell County carried a sudden surge of "prenumonia" related stories in early 1918. He also pointed out that the county was known for its hog production and the fact that it was on the migratory route for several species of birds. Barry stated that bird influenza viruses, like human viruses, can infect hogs and "when a bird virus and a human virus infect the same pig cell, their different genes can be shuffled and exchanged like playing cards, resulting in a new, perhaps especially lethal, virus."
John M. Barry proposed that the killer pandemic was rooted in the hog farms of Haskell County, Kansas, and then some young men from the area who were infected reported to Camp Funston for their military training. Most of the available doctors at that time were being snapped up by the military, and it was there, in a military setting with well-trained doctors, that people began realizing the true nature and scope of the problem.
(One photo in the Barry article showed a make-shift hospital bay at Camp Funstion that was about the size of a gymnasium. The bay was filled to capacity with very sick young men lying on army cots.)
The influenza outbreak hit in three distinct waves. The first was in March which had a somewhat limited impact on the order of previous outbreaks, but it was noteworthy in that many of the deaths of the first wave were those of young and relatively healthy men. (In fact, throughout its brief existence, the pandemic seemed to show a preference for youth.) The author compared the first wave with the smaller one that precedes a tsunami - and the second wave in August was that tsunami. In many parts of the world the deaths came at such a furious pace that mass burials of victims were the only options. Barry told of priests driving horse-drawn wagons through Philadelphia shouting for people to "Bring out your dead," a direct throwback to the Black Death (bubonic plague) that attacked Europe in the 14th century.
President Woodrow Wilson was a victim of the Great Flu of 1918, and although he recovered, many historians believe that the virus was so disorienting to Wilson that it impaired his ability to bargain decisively at the Paris Peace Conference and thereby helped to set the stage for World War II. Raymond Chandler, Walt Disney, Lillian Gish, David Lloyd George, Georgia O'Keefe, John J. Pershing, Mary Pickford, Franklin Roosevelt, and Haile Selassie also caught the killer flu but managed to survive. Others like the Dodge brothers, Phoebe Hearst, Gustav Klint, and Max Weber, were not so lucky.
And it all began in Kansas.
John M. Barry argued that one of the reasons the influenza pandemic got such a strong foothold worldwide is that World War I was occurring at the same time, and many of the participants in that war were censoring what their press could report - the United States included. The politicians and generals did not want news of the pandemic impacting their citizens' willingness to go abroad and fight. Spain, which was not a participant in the war, allowed its press to cover the outbreak in great detail, and that press coverage formed the basis of what most of the rest of the world came to know about the outbreak. Because much of the information on the epidemic was coming out of Spain, the public eventually began to mistakenly refer to it as the "Spanish Flu."
The third wave of the pandemic was less consequential in suffering and deaths than the second, and when it subsided, the situation was largely under control. The Great Flu of 1918 in fifteen months had killed more people than forty years of AIDS would do later in the century, and it brought about more death than a hundred years of the bubonic plague did in the Middle Ages.
Barry has this timely warning embedded in his article, and it is well worth highlighting and repeating:
"We are arguably as vulnerable - or more vulnerable - to another pandemic as we were in 1918. Today top public health experts routinely rank influenza as potentially the most dangerous "emerging" health threat we face. Earlier this year, upon leaving his post as head of the centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden was asked what scared him the most, what kept him up at night. His reply: 'The biggest concern is always for an influenza pandemic . . . (It) really is the worst-case scenario.'"
The great influenza pandemic began one hundred years ago in rural Kansas and within fifteen months killed well over fifty million people worldwide. Today with a seeming disavowal of science and abandonment of basic health care options for the poor of some countries, including our own - coupled with the ease of high-speed travel - a similar or worse outbreak would have the very real potential of ending civilization.
Gated communities, golden towers, and all of the guns in the world can't defeat a determined virus. Protecting the public health requires the full participation of a population through a knowledgeable and committed government. Anything less is an invitation to disaster.
1 comment:
prof prem raj pushpakaran writes -- 2018 marks the 100th year of 1918 flu pandemic !!!
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