tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post1474497357951550062..comments2024-03-08T14:23:31.503-05:00Comments on A Puff of Absurdity: Pandemic AmnesiaMarie Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-59274242753471016372022-05-19T12:17:51.771-04:002022-05-19T12:17:51.771-04:00It's definitely an American take on it, and Ca...It's definitely an American take on it, and Caplan's a theatre prof not world history, but I'm interested in the situation within that context. What made a group of people NOT speak of something that must have been a huge part of their lives? And, similarly, how are so many going about their business so breezily in the midst of death and suffering? Even if people don't know someone personally who has died or been significantly ill, surely, with the numbers in the hospital and fatalities we're seeing here, and with the horror show that happened in LTC, they know someone who knows someone who was directly affected. How are we so complacent in the middle of it all? Maybe it's more due to it being a long, slow event instead of due to media manipulation by elites in power. But the messaging coming from the top has definitely had an effect on how we're thinking about this situation: minimize the results and then go out to spend your money! <br /><br />I wonder if monkeypox will provoke people to wear masks again. I quit smoking in my early 20s, NOT because of any health concerns since, at that point in my life, I was immortal in my own mind. The last straw for me was a poster of a woman with pucker wrinkles around her mouth - yuck! For some people, health is too abstract, but disfigurement is real. I heard today that NS is removing mask mandates starting the 24th - with just one month left of school - and with 17 known cases of monkeypox in Canada so far. Nothing makes sense. Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-30811293409525178612022-05-19T11:28:18.666-04:002022-05-19T11:28:18.666-04:00Don't think the USA suffered as much as many o...Don't think the USA suffered as much as many other countries around the world did from the 1918 to 1920 Great Flu Epidemic. So what happened in their Congress regarding funding to study the germ is of little value to everyone else. <br /><br />The US wasn't the hegemon it is or claims to be now, so who cares what they thought and did or didn't do back then? Mencken satirized their rubbish politics very well. They also claimed to have won WW1 after turning up literally at the last moment and taking all the credit. That was followed by Wilson the racist US Jim Crow prez waltzing around flaunting his 14 points which the other winning combatants let him do, as it suited their political purposes. I was born in England just after WW2 and it was a common thing to denigrate Americans as blowhards when I was a child. My maternal grandfather who served in WW1 in the Army and somehow survived was decidedly not a fan of America. <br /><br />Of course, when our family moved to Canada in the late '50s, we then got subjected like all Canadians to constant US media bombardment by magazines and TV. And you'd think nowhere else existed the way they carry on. To me, your piece reflects that Americanization we get ingrained into our souls here in Canada, written by Yankees as if nowhere else matters. The Americans are navel-gazers nonpareil and used to demand complete loyalty from immigrants so they'd not dwell on their roots too much.<br /><br />So I guess the question is, is the literature of other countries as absent on the flu pandemic as America's is? I don't know. Do you?<br /><br />If one reads Orwell's outstanding novels and non-fiction, and I'm about two-thirds of my way through, the novel Coming Up For Air is rather wonderful, and encompasses the idyllic days pre WW1 when things never seemed to change, through the war and up to 1938. Much more cleverly written than that cartoon pre and post 1917. The flu gets scant mention from Orwell, so one presumes it didn't affect British society as much as the war itself did. Best book I've read in ages, loved every page, far better than the flawed 1984 which never rang true to my technically-oriented self -- too many loose ends. <br /><br />Just now, reading the ever-popular and oh-so-reliable Wikipedia entry on the Spanish flu, it seems that India got hit the hardest, the US among the least hard. Maybe India's literature reflects this, but I doubt it. As my paternal grandfather was a Colonial Office university educator in India all during WW1 and up till partition in 1947 when he was in charge of the entire Punjab's education, it's likely from what I heard that NO native literature that could in any way be interpreted as anti-British was allowed or published.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm unsure whether your premise about the lack of literature on that Spanish flu epidemic is endemic only to the Anglo Saxon world or not.<br /><br />Bill Malcolmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15815258799473130453noreply@blogger.com