IN FLEW ENZA...

Did you miss me? 

It turns out 2 weekends ago we were forewarned about a nasty storm coming our way that Monday. Winter storms are okay if you can stay put but my agenda was supposed to be departing on a 6 am Tuesday flight to head south to Atlanta to help take care of my grand daughter.  My daughter's husband had spent the last 2 weeks on the road for work and this was week 3. An extra two hands would be sorely missed if that storm impeded my visit. From experience we know there was no way that predicted ice was going to be passable from the End of the Rainbow Valley... Well as I double checked my ticket there in red was a weather alert with a note if one's city was included in the list, one could change departures without a fee. 


It was meant to be and I left 2 days earlier than anticipated and did avert the ice storm. It turned out to be a good week to be in Atlanta for more than one reason...

As is customary I call home daily to check on the home front but an unknown groveled voice answered the phone. It was Natureman and he sounded like death warmed over. He shared a story about a bird named Enza who had flown inside our screened in porch.  The storm wasn't the only thing I averted. 'In flew Enza' ( say it faster) Yes,  'influenza'  had also entered the End of the Rainbow Valley.

Natureman had not only read up on his symptoms but had also watched a documentary about the 1918 Influenza, the worst epidemic ever in this country which killed more people than all of the wars in this century. The country ran out of some thing one would never suspect, caskets.

The virus followed young Kansas infected soldiers abroad who in turn infected others as the microbe changed and came back to the U.S. as influenza, an airborne flu which sent the victims to bed. Worsening becoming pneumonia, taking lives in 12 hours. It killed the youngest with the strongest immune systems. The young immune systems were working overtime against each other.  "Their immune systems destroyed the mucus membranes in the attempt to destroy the invaders.  The leaking fluids filled the lungs of the victims and they died."

It spread from Boston to the eastern seaboard and beyond with some cities denying its existence.  Philadelphia had held a war parade with some 200,000 in attendance breathing on each other. Days later the city was plagued by the respiratory disease. 

Eventually a vaccine was developed but it was attacking a bacteria and this cure would not attack the real culprit, a virus which killed some 550,000 Americans. The epidemic left as it had come attacking the susceptible then  dissipated and was gone and somehow forgotten over time...

Although the documentary just dealt with the U. S. "an estimate by Dr. Alfred Crosby that the Spanish Flue globally killed around 30 million people from 1918 to 1920. Still, the most common estimate is more than 50 million, and even up to 100 million, with 17 million deaths in India alone, meaning that perhaps more than in WW1 and WW2 combined died from the H1N1 virus. 2/3 of these died the last three months of 1918, and as much as 500 million of the world's then 1,8 billion people got infected. This means the pandemic was more extensive and deadly than the less known Plague Of Justinian (541-42, 25 million dead) or perhaps even the Black Death (1346-53, 75 million dead or more). There were several hypothesis about the origin of the virus, such as Spain (!), Kansas and Brest, but most likely it came from China and mutated near Boston. There also is a thesis that it originated in Australia in 1917."

Natureman seems to be on the mend after a week his fever is gone along with his headaches and his cough has lessened. Upon my return I have sanitized everything I can and am even using a preventative measure using neosporin around my nostrils. Who knows if it will work? Fingers are crossed that I won't get it and the little bird Enza will have left the End of the Rainbow Valley.