Spanish Influenza

Tale of Two Pandemics: Beware of Slackers

Some slackers faced death sentences during the 1918 pandemic. I guess we are all familiar with the idea that history repeats itself, and, accordingly, if we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, we’ll keep on making the same blunders. The Philosopher George Santayana gets the credit for best expressing this theorem with this assessment: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He was looking at this from a historical perspective, a world view, [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-01-24T09:09:58+00:00July 22, 2020|1918, American History, Coronavirus, Coughing, COVID-19, death, History, Mortality, Pandemics, Public Health, Spanish Influenza, Ventilators|

Joining Forces against a Common Enemy

Since we crowd together to spread it, we need to join forces to vanquish it. Like it or not, this strain of the coronavirus is going to drastically change the way we live our lives. It’s started already. We can’t avoid it, and the transformation is going to be drastic, even historic. It has the dual potential of tearing us apart and bringing us together. I’m rooting for the latter. At last count, as I am writing [...]

By Wes Skillings|2022-01-24T09:10:01+00:00March 11, 2020|1918, Coronavirus, Fear, Politics, Public Health, Sacrifices, Self-Control, Spanish Influenza, World War I, Wyalusing Life|