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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gina Kolata
Read between
July 6 - July 13, 2020
But in the rest of the world, the illness came to be called the Spanish flu, to Spain’s consternation. After all, the other countries of Europe, as well as the United States and countries in Asia, were hit too in that spring of 1918. Maybe the name stuck because Spain, still unaligned, did not censor its news reports, unlike other European countries. And so Spain’s flu was no secret, unlike the flu elsewhere.
The outbreak, in fact, was preceded by soothing words from medical authorities with a sort of band-played-on bravado. The Journal of the American Medical Association opined that medical authorities should not be alarmed by the flu’s nickname, “the Spanish flu.� That name, the journal wrote, “should not cause any greater importance to be attached to it, nor arouse any greater fear than would influenza without the new name.� Moreover, the journal said, the flu “has already practically disappeared from the Allied troops.�
