It was held in October than 100 years ago by early Monday afternoon in a special meeting of the Baltimore School Board to decide whether the school should close. Approximately 30,000 children-more than 60% of urban students were absent reported that day, along with 219 teachers. It is not known how many students remained at home because they were already sick or because they were afraid of being sick. In both cases, the influence of 1918 as the “Spanish flu” was the known fault. Baltimore, like other cities and towns across the country struggling with hospitals overwhelmed and the industry was crippled. The city had something else in common with much of the rest of the United States at the time: it was racial segregation. The school board finally decided to close schools, but the decision was not unanimous. Some members agreed with John D. Blake, the city health commissioner, the schools would remain open. to keep Blake by some at the time of belittling the pandemic for public spaces open operation and business has noticed who was charged in a school for blacks students, there was a participation rate of 94%. He used to say these statistics and other similar data that “people of color are not usually subject to the influence,” published Americans, according to a report in the Baltimore meeting. This statement was a careless over generalization, but reflects a common perception of time. Health experts know the era, blacks and blacks doctors and journalists who have served their community, it is generally believed that whites were more susceptible to the virus. They work with actual observations, but their assumptions about the reasons for these figures were often wrong and in some cases on racist pseudo basis. (It was a common belief among the scientific experts at the time, and expert in special white that stopped the health differences between races as biological differences, although these ideas are scientifically unfounded.) As the world continues with the crown pandemic , which had a particularly devastating impact on communities of color in the United States and abroad, is that the story is particularly striking. But those who have studied the influence in 1918, saying it still offers a lesson for today. “It ‘s counterintuitive,” says Vanessa Northington Gamble, professor of history at George Washington University, with the idea that a pandemic would not affect American blacks. Gamble has been boiled to understand historical documents to be the reason why blacks seemed less affected by the 1918 eruption. “I can not believe he could, but it was believed at that particular time,” he says. In fact, explains the observation of the lowest death rates among people of color are supported by the data available, a 1919 analysis of mortality statistics by race and sex by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found that the black influence the mortality rates they know how to influence the mortality rates in the past years before the pandemic, but the opposite was true during the peak of the pandemic month Other historical statistics a similar picture. In November 1918, he reported an officer in the US Public Health Service that cases of influenza were lower among the black population in seven levels predominantly black. Meanwhile, military records show since World War stationed among the US troops, he had white soldiers highest incidence of influenza and other respiratory diseases such as pneumonia in the autumn of 1918 compared to blacks soldiers. Gamble warns that the historical data have flaws. The health insurance companies and authorities operating under racist systems; Statistics, such as mortality rates are based on population estimates unreliable; and the pandemic has hit so strong that health authorities, hospitals and doctors can hardly keep with the flow of patients, let the weather are just compiling detailed records. stroke data may be particularly incomplete. Medical facilities were separated, and only a few black hospitals that existed at the time busy. Patients were able to provide more space in the hospital and later died at home may not have been recorded, dead-a possibly to signal phenomenon that unfortunately have to repeat myself with COVID-19 however think that Gamble historical figures have certain value. “We have to use them,” says, “but in absolute terms. We need them in the context of the set time.” One way to look at the historical context of how people of different races, we were not made in 1918 in relation to a period of non-pandemic. A 2007 study of 14 cities by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, for example, shows that for the entire 1918 years, the black population death rates were higher than the influence of the white population in all but a city. However, the increase in deaths this year was not as dramatic as it was with their white neighbors because the black community had been a mortality of as high as before the pandemic. In other words, there were more excess deaths among the whites and the blacks. Take Louisville, Ky., Where the influence of the total black mortality rate in 1918 was slightly higher than the white rate. But it was increased during the black death rate 175% above pre-pandemic levels, the rate of white rose 810%: Statistics and anecdotal reports indicate that suggests that the black communities were not as punches from the 1918 outbreak as white areas Historian and health experts leave us with a paradox: how is it possible that people who have been forced by discriminatory housing practices to live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, health and medical facilities were excluded from work with white hospitals, which were as a result of this racist policy would be inclined underlying health conditions best rate, relatively speaking, in a pandemic? The most puzzling question is the COVID-19 disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities, who are still twice as fast as die with injustices in today’s today’s healthcare pandemic system to do more than a century later, the black people in the whiter the light of the US population in theories to explain this phenomenon they have evolved over time. While the research Gamble pandemic, some experts blame the whites differences scientifically unfounded “biological” between the races. For example, claims that some of the blacks to respiratory viruses have been less vulnerable because of the lining of the nose were more resistant microorganisms. This type of poor reasoning was not unusual for the time; Myths about physical differences were often justified as discrimination done dealing. “Some data suggest black community in lower mortality rates,” says Nancy Bristow, author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of 1918 flu epidemic. “But it was like they lived in society not because of biological differences, but why. Race does not exist organically. It is a socially constructed concept.” Modern theories are fixed based on science and take into account socio-economic factors of time . One hypothesis is that an initial mild strain of influenza virus that hit the United States in the spring of 1918, to build the affected communities of color harder than white communities so that blacks immunity against the virulent strain that has swept the country in autumn. But some researchers say there is little evidence that the influence of the spring hit the southern states, where the majority of black people lived at that time. Another theory is that the apartheid black people have limited exposure to the virus since 1918. The military, which has played a key role in the transmission of the disease around the world, was completely separated at the time. private services held a solid color line, as have public transport. In rare cases, when people know blacks were only allowed hospitals were treated in separate stations, often in unwanted areas of the building, such as attics and basements. But this statement was made by the researchers in question that such discrimination does not consider black communities shielding of other infectious respiratory diseases such as lobar pneumonia and tuberculosis, which were more common in black communities than in white communities. Despite holes in all these theories at least a fact that relates to the 1918 pandemic it is certain: black communities were left to themselves to come through the crisis. Unfortunately, this situation is still too common today, and the results are painfully obvious in COVID-19 was. Today, as the country to hold another pandemic, the human toll is higher among blacks and browns. Inequalities in health status between now and racial than a century ago, unquestionably systemic discrimination and oppression are bound by these communities. “The germs know no color line,” says Gamble. “The 1918 flu breeds injustice-that reveals people lived where they receive their health care, what jobs they had. And ‘what we see now in parallel.” copyright of photography Image Quest Getty Images
COVID-19 does not affect the first pandemic too different minorities. Here’s what we can learn from the flu of 1918
