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Show Sunday. February 8, 1998 The Daily Herald. Provo. Ulah - TV 41 'American Experience' recalls a Forgotten Epidemic By Walter H. Combs, Tribune Mudia Services In 1918, with American involvement in World War I reaching its peak and hundreds of thousands of doughboys embaiking for the trenches, a now forgotten killer was ravaging troops and civilians alike. An epidemic ot influenza spread out from the American heartland that killed periiaps 600,000 Americans, and a total of 40 million people worldwide. On March 11, 1918, a soldier from Fort Riley, Kansas, showed up at the infirmary complaining of fever, sore throat, and headache. By midday, a hundred more soldiers came in, complaining of the same thing. That spring, 48 soldiers died at Fort Riley. But the illness was not restricted to Fort Riley. Troops embarking for Europe and the battlefield carried the illness with them. The disease did not restrict itself to Americans, and spread among soldiers of all nationalities. Thus, it wasn't only shells, bul-ie- is and bayonets that killed on the front that spring of 1918. But the illness didn't confine itself to battlefields and military bases. In September, the disease spread to the general population, moving from Boston to New York to Philadelphia, f where thousands died. People went about their daily lives wearing surgical masks over their faces in hopes of protecting themselves from the deadly bug. But nothing could stop it, and public health officials despaired of containing it. In October, more than 195,000 people died. Some thought it was the end of the world. The PBS historical-documentaseries, "The American Experience," focuses on "Influenza 1918," on Monday, February 9 at 9 p.m. Eastern time. As hast David McCullogh notes in his introduction, the most frightening thing about the 1918 epidemic is that it could happen again. Robert Kenner, producer of "influenza 1918," says not only can it happen again, it almost certainly wili. "I wanted my experts to be able to " say, 'This might happen again,' Kenner notes. "When I asked them, they said it's not that it might happen again, it will happen again. They kept saying more than I was ever expecting, to the point where I was starting to get scared when I was listening to them. And they were saying we're way overdue. Normally, a flu drifts, and you have a new flu each year, but we have some immunity to it. But at some point, it shifts and we have no immunity to it. Times when that ? ' jj 1 ,. f J fW Bwayne Adway (right) plays the basketball superstar (left) in the new ABC movie "Bad as I Wanr.a Be: The Dennis Rodman Story," Sunday, Feb, 8 1 p.m, ET). (9-1- happens, it's a killer like we had in 1918." Americans have been conscious of disease scares recently; the emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s g looms large in the public mind. n, books, both fiction and explore the potential for disease outbreaks. Ebola and AIDS have Central Africa. ravaged war-tor- n Flesh-eatin- g staph infections have surfaced. Unexplained outbreaks of flu devastated poultry in Hong Kong. "Influenza 1918," while not alarmist, certainly continues to focus the public's attention on these scourges. Viruses are the most dangerous of these plagues. AIDS and Eboia are both viruses, and antibiotics have no effect at all on viral infections. Medical science has alleviated the AIDS plague, but sufferers need to take the equivalent of a pharmacy's worth of drugs a day just to ameliorate the disease's impact, but not cure it. "If you think of survival strategies of creatures on the Earth, we think of humans as very clever, but the virus is the one thing that is more adaptable than we are, and it'll probably be the one thing that will rule the Earth after us," says Kenner. Remarkably, in all this increased awareness of disease and plagues, the general public is not aware of the influenza epidemic of 1918. "I was lucky to be able to begin on the subject. On one hand, it was an awesome event that struck this country - struck the world - killing perhaps 40 million people. It's perhaps the worst plague of all time, and yet it's something we don't know about. People know more about the Black Plague of the Middle Ages than they do about the influenza of 1918. It's amazing that it could kill so meny people, ye! disappear from our radar screens." The 1918 epidemic was also unusual because of the people who were most susceptible to it, and who most often died - people in the prime of life. "That was one of the weird ironies of 1918 - it killed the wrong people. It killed the farm boys from the Midwest. Those in the middle of life were the most vulnerable, totally unlike any other virus." ' |
