Memory Monday: Flu Season Ain't Over Yet and First Week of April 1918
by meep
Whups, flu season ain’t over yet in the U.S.:
Second wave of flu season hits U.S.
April 6 (UPI) — The winter season ended last month but that doesn’t mean the danger of getting the flu is over, even though it is springtime.
Rather than getting a strain of Influenza A, you have a greater chance of getting Influenza B. They carry roughly the same level of severity, having a similar cough, runny or stuffy nose, itchy or watery eyes, sore throat, fatigue and low fever.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the 13th week of the flu season, through last Saturday, had reduced cases of influenza in the United States. The flu season peaked 10 weeks ago.
“Various influenza years or seasons can have different ‘lengths’ based on overall activity of influenza and, say, when the heightened activity starts,” Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an expert in infectious diseases at University of Kansas Health System, told UPI. “This year does seem to be a bit more intense and seemed to have increased influenza activity earlier than recent past years.”
Although influenza A(H3) viruses have predominated this season, the influenza B viruses have increased.
Let’s check the FluView from the CDC.
If we look at the lab results, you see there’s no spike in Flu type B test results — it’s that the Influenza A results have dropped off, and the B persists at its relatively low level.
If they’re arguing that Flu type B is spiking, I’m not seeing it. It’s just that if you get flu now, it seems that it’s more likely type B than type A.
“The different ‘wave’ that is discussed is influenza type B,” Hawkinson said. “More than 70 percent of this year’s influenza infections during this flu season has been type A. Now there is slight increase of type B infection.”
In the latest results, the CDC said the breakdown was 39.6 percent for Influenza A and 60.3 percent for Influenza B. Among 21,823 specimens tested, 15.4 percent were positive.
That doesn’t sound like a lot of specimens to me. The point is that flu incidence as a whole has dropped, both A & B, but A dropped very fast and B is slowly coming down. This ain’t a new wave, from the data I can see.
Maybe the CDC has data it hasn’t released to the Fluview page yet, but I’m not seeing it.
FIRST WEEK OF APRIL 1918
Finally, we’re in April 1918, so let’s see what the big news of the week is.
NO WHEAT FOR YOU
I’m not joking. The primary topic of the April 5, 1918 issue of the Brewster Standard was the need to cut domestic wheat consumption by 50%.
Don’t believe me?
Check this out:
Here’s more:
There were ads from grocers trying to be helpful:
And some grocers, who didn’t hold to regs, got slapped:
Note: this is only an 8-page newspaper, and when you see these many items on the same thing…
A NEWSPAPER MAKES AN APPROPRIATE CORRECTION
When one is reading through a newspaper from history, and it’s only 8 pages, you can read the whole thing — ads, small items, etc.
So I noticed this from the prior paper:
Oh Leo Dwyer, how could you?
But wait, what’s in this week’s paper:
Given the smartass last sentence, I have a feeling the Dwyer brothers may have had a reputation.
TRUE STORY OF THE WAR
Or, rather, some PR saying so:
If you’d like a little perspective on current propaganda, I highly recommend reading old newspapers. I don’t feel so bad about current newspapers & other news media given the quality I see from a hundred years ago.
Yes, it would be nice if things were better, but you know what?
People are people.
Reading papers from only a hundred years ago helps give one perspective on that matter.
