the spoils of war

A group photograph of employees from the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Calgary during the Spanish flu epidemic. Wearing masks in public was made compulsory by the Alberta government on October 25, 1918. Coughing, sneezing, and spitting in public became finable [sic] offences in Regina.
GLENBOW ARCHIVES/NA-964-22


The Spoils of War ...

I.E., Profits extracted as the result of winning a war or other military activity.

The Spanish Flu (no hablo Español bien) arrived with soldiers returning from WWI and it spoiled everything!  

From "Killer Flu":

• Weapons were no defence.
• Connaught Laboratories of Toronto, established in 1914, worked day and night to produce a vaccine, largely from human blood cultures obtained from the New York City Health Department.
• Connaught supplied it free to provincial health departments, hospitals, the military, and health officials. The company made no claim that its vaccine would help; it did not, but it did no harm, either.
• “The experience helped establish Connaught as a national public health centre.”

Hmmmmm....

TorStar: “[Connaught Labs] did things commercial companies wouldn’t do because they weren’t willing to take the financial risks.”

Was that because Connaught was actually subsidized by the government? So it wasn't taking any financial risk at all? Is there a science lab that doesn't court fame and increases in funding for itself in some manner or other?

Why do the media always want to make heroes out of people who were just doing what they were trained for in a field that they chose, and hope to make names for themselves?

For all the good it did, which was nil, Connaught produced what amounted to a placebo, but it birthed the extremely lucrative, though many would say damaging, vaccine industry.

From Killer Flu:

• Reaction to SARS [2003] was swift. The World Health Organization issued a travel advisory against Toronto, a hot spot.

(Does anybody even remember that? I don't. Many of us in Ottawa were out campaigning against deadly wars.)

• In 1918, as in 2003, it was learned that quarantine is not always feasible or effective because of the resulting stigmatization and the economic damage that results (in the case of SARS, Toronto’s tourism business was badly hurt).  Planning needs to be tailored to the local response.

How much you want to bet the Ontario Premier in Toronto doesn't even know about that?

Learned and then unlearned, I guess. Places like greater Kingston (Pop. 590,940) and greater Brantford (Pop. 90,192), for instance, are still on lockdown, despite low infection/death rates.

I don't call that tailored to the local response; I call that cow-towing to the Provincial Government in all its crude and cowardly glory in the person of Doug Ford while he kisses up to the Trudeau government due to his own abysmal lack of knowledge on the subject, and quite possibly many other subjects as well.

• Levy warns, "Despite scientific and medical advances, flu remains a bad disease. It takes time to develop vaccines for each strain, and not all antiviral medications are effective for every flu. Flu remains a scourge of modern civilization.”

In other words, life itself is iffy; we need to accept that or get off the planet. There are all sorts of other things that people die from in much greater numbers every day, yet people still smoke, take drugs, drive drunk, overeat to the point of gross obesity ... I could go on.

Not to mention that we all close our eyes to the never-ending slaughters of war, but that's because the war is "over there" and not over here, and all our dead boys in uniform really want is a posthumous medal that says they gave their life for their war-mongering country.

If any of our laws and rules made any sense, we wouldn't allow children to ride in road vehicles!  But then how could millions be made by the companies manufacturing car-seats and seat belts. So, we just hope and pray we don't get into one of the many smash-ups that happen every day, everywhere.

And if we get soused too often, or smoke too heavily, or eat too much, or get hooked on opioids, or, or -- you get the picture -- we just hope and pray we won't die from that as well.

Meanwhile hoping and praying we don't catch the flu, while doing all of the above, is the very definition of insanity, because the chances are always fewer that we will die from flu than of our own stupidity and self-indulgence!

Face it, few people lose sleep over the deaths of OTHER people's family members due to disease and/or war; they're only concerned for themselves and their own families and maybe one or two of their friends, and are now obviously scared witless to the point of being ready to call the cops on their neighbours for the mere sin of going outside and/or failing to "distance".

This is going to sound terrible, but sometimes I think that maybe some if not all humans really should be wiped off the face of this planet, because they're not doing Mother Nature nor themselves much good. Not in so-called efforts to take care of the planet, and certainly not in their complete disregard for life itself through demolishing other countries' innocent children and eco-systems under the facade of bringing democracy to the downtrodden!

Michael Moore's new movie, Planet of the Humans, is now on YouTube, and it's worth a watch to see how the human race can't even properly manage earth's vital ecology let alone a virus "pandemic".

Earth and all its denizens are at the mercy of a beast called "profit", and it comes in human form, if you can call it that, since it blatantly dreams of "excess people" dying everywhere -- "decreasing the surface population" as Scrooge said -- and it has the wherewithal to achieve its dream as long as the rest of us are busy thinking only of ourselves and our personal comforts and that of those closest to us -- and to hell with what goes on out of eye/ear/nose-shot.

When they read (more likely see on TV) how many people died of flu, they don't feel sad for the mourning families; they use those figures to calculate their own personal chances of survival.

Governments know this, and take full advantage. They provide occasional sops and plot against the very population they claim to represent. All it takes is a good flu scare and they have people eating out of their hands; and the ones who rebel can be made short shrift of when the brave and wonderful soldiers leave those nursing homes and take their guns into the streets.

• Dr. Levy says. “There is always fear of things we can’t see or control. Anxiety is natural, but irrational or unreasonable fear can be very debilitating.”

And render us mentally malleable, a consequence of which the money-grubbers take full advantage:

• In newspaper ads, enterprising businesses promoted their products as essential to warding off the flu:
• Eaton’s department store: “Keeping Warm Spells Safety First in These Days of Epidemic and Chilly Houses. Slippers That the Convalescent Will Specially Appreciate.”
• Bovril (a beef extract beverage): “Guard Against Epidemics by building up the defensive forces of the body with Bovril.”
• Milton’s Jaeger Pure Wool of Montreal: “Don’t Get The Flu. Let Jaeger Pure Wool Protect You From Chill. Consult us as you would your Doctor.”
• Dominion of Canada Guarantee and Accident Insurance Company: “Our special sickness policy covers Spanish Influenza.

Those are just a few examples of the cynical exploitation of fear by profiteers.

Now get this -- still from Killer Flu
 

• Doctors found that surgical masks (also worn during the SARS scare) were ineffective. Dr. T.H. Whitelaw, Edmonton’s medical officer of health, wrote in the December 1919 Canadian Medical Association Journal:
• “The number of cases continued to increase after the Province of Alberta ordered everyone to wear a mask outside the home and public confidence in it as a prevention soon gave place to ridicule.”
• The maintaining of bodily health by normal living and the avoidance of panic, worry or fatigue, seemed to be the only practical method of combating the infection.

But, of course, money is made from the production of masks!  So Ontario's provincial premier obligingly suggests people should wear them if it makes them feel safer.  And all the Toronto company had to do was change the model number and tout them as much safer.

Here's an example of how disconnected from reality people can become under pressure:

Still from "Killer Flu", during the Spanish Flu epidemic, when people were forbidden to be in crowds, such as at church:

• [Roman Catholic] Priests ... brought the sacred host to parishioners’ homes themselves.

Nice thought, but according to current theory, what actually would they be bringing to those homes?  How can you give someone the Holy Sacrament if you have to distance yourself? See this YYC item to find out.)

If you take a good look at the regulations, you should deduce that there's been no actual progress in dealing with a pandemic. The old, useless restrictions are still being foisted on populations.

It was only a matter of time before a World Health Organization (WHO? Nobody YOU Know) would help to orchestrate a massive restructuring of the world economy and solve the perceived problem of over-population by cynical exploitation of a flu epidemic and yet another search for a vaccine -- the latter to be delayed just long enough to expedite the former.

And if the government doesn't like what I'm saying, it's their fault because they locked me indoors and I've had little else to do but think. Big mistake, Trudeau/Ford. There are others just like me, shut up indoors, researching, learning about things we never knew before, typing our hypertensive hearts out, and there will be more of us as the lock-down continues.

We have seen the enemy and he sure ain't us!

Image: Drink/drive: a real pandemic.
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