Memory Monday: Second Week of May 1918 - Whooping Cough and GIVE US MONEY
by meep
Again, I’m not expecting the big U.S. Spanish flu breakout until the fall of 1918.
But there are diseases other than the flu pandemic.
A note: the Whooping Cough vaccine wasn’t developed until decades later, and the recent trend hasn’t been good:
Before vaccines, an average of 178,171 cases was reported in the U.S., with peaks reported every two to five years; more than 93% of reported cases occurred in children under 10 years of age. The actual incidence was likely much higher. After vaccinations were introduced in the 1940s, pertussis incidence fell dramatically to approximately 1,000 by 1976. Incidence rates have increased since 1980. In 2015, rates in the United States were 20,762 people.59
Pertussis is the only vaccine-preventable disease that is associated with increasing deaths in the U.S. The number of deaths increased from four in 1996 to 17 in 2001, almost all of which were infants under one year.60 In Canada, the number of pertussis infections has varied between 2,000 and 10,000 reported cases each year over the last ten years, and it is the most common vaccine-preventable illness in Toronto.61
The mortality rate is very low, to be sure.
But this is not a good trend.
BUY MORE BONDS
The Liberty Bond (and War Saving Stamps) propaganda is getting a bit wearisome to me. The dang paper is only 8 pages long… and there are at least two full pages dedicated to Uncle Sam wanting to suck up your money.
BUILD THAT WALL!
Hmmm, that just… doesn’t… okay, moving on.
Oh, Lord, really?
Okay, given how much I’m addicted to animated GIFs and memes, maybe I can’t complain too much about this. But I really do wonder what the people of the time thought about it.
AN OLD TRADITION WE NEED TO BRING BACK
I haven’t been clipping many of these examples, but all sorts of financials of civic groups were published in the paper, in addition to governmental groups.
That’s only the first half, fwiw. But I found it very pleasing to see all these sorts of local public financials being published in the local paper every week. We need more of that.
WHAT ABOUT THE LADIES
There were a few items that really caught my eye.
First, as women were just getting the vote, there was special dates set up to register women to vote.
And then, because of all the young men being drafted, women were being allowed to replace them in various jobs:
Of course, both after WWI and WWII, women were shunted back into the home, but the situation was pretty breached. Obviously, women have worked for money as long as money has existed, but in general, only very limited fields were open to them.
To be fair, most men were also restricted as to the fields they could do, as individuals — if your dad wasn’t in the field, it could be tough breaking in.
VARIOUS WAR ITEMS
There were multiple Red Cross promos:
Then there’s the boys who worked the phones:
DON’T FORGET MOM
Look, they had Mother’s Day back then, too.
A CUP OF JOE FOR THE JOES
Yep, we were a Coffee Country back then as well:
REMEMBER THE ONES WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE
Finally, the rookies of 1916… now in the army.
They’re all dead now…. and don’t forget them.
