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Show oo MIMA OVER ENTIRE HH1H Washington, Jan. 3. Influenza is spreading over the United States trom coast to coast in the most serious seri-ous epidemic over known, taking a large toll in lives and causing economic eco-nomic loss by incapacitating workers in all walks of life. Reports from public health service officers made public tonight by Surgeon General Blue show that already the disease has created a grave problem for many of the larger cities, and is spreading to the rural communities. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Seatle, Cleveland Cleve-land and Detroit reported the disease widely prevalent. Cleveland and Detroit De-troit each have probably 100,000 cases Off the larger cities Buffalo. Pittsburg, Pitts-burg, Baltimore, San Diego, Dallas and Mobile reported no signs of an epidemic. There- is practically nothing the federal government can do toward aiding in suppression of an epidemic. It must be dealt with by local au-thorities, au-thorities, and they, in turn, it is ex plained, are almost helpless without co-operation from the public. Surgeon Blue said tonight ho had called for reports from all parts of the country with the hope that publicity would tend to stimulate this co-operation. Statistics on Disease Difficult Obtain. Statistics on Influenza are difficult to obtain because the disease is not classed as reportable" in many cities. Consequently most of the public health officers were obliged to send in information based, to some extent on their personal observations. Some of the dispatches were summarized sum-marized by Surgeon General Blue as follow: New York Disease widely spread. Marked Increase in pneumonia mortality. mor-tality. Also in mortality of persons over 65. Health department sending out warnings, Chicago Last week there were 57 deaths from Influenza; 30 deaths the week before. There were 1440 cases of pneumonia in December, with 666 deaths of which 201 occurred In the last four days. San Francisco Epidemic of influenza influ-enza widespread and severe. Reported Report-ed as the most severe experienced since 1891. Los Angeles Extended epidemic of influenza of moderate severity began about two months ago and not diminished. di-minished. San Diego Few cases of influenza reported recently. Dallas Influenza not epidemic. Moderate number of cases. Portland, Ore. No epidemic. A few severe enses. Seattle There have been between 30,000 and 50,000 cases of influenza in Seattle within the last thirty days, according to an estimate made tonight to-night by Dr. B. J. Lloyd of the Unit-od Unit-od States public health service. The death rate in December showed an increase fo 15 Der cent over December, Decem-ber, 1914. Of 387 deaths reported in December, 32 were caused by pneumonia pneu-monia which Dr. Lloyd classed as a complication of influenza. I |