The very first modern influenza pandemic was known as the Russian flu or “La Grippe.”
1889-1992 and still going strong
The disease likely emerged somewhere in the Russian Empire in 1889 and quickly spread around the world in successive waves. It took only four months to hit every part of the globe, with the United States seeing its peak in January 1890. More than a million people (of the 1.5 billion on earth) were killed worldwide in that first wave.
Apparently it lasted into 1892 and spawned some great conspiracy theories regarding its origin including electric lights.
On January 31, 1890, the European edition of the New York Herald ran an item suggesting that the electric light was somehow responsible for a global influenza outbreak. After all, “the disease has raged chiefly in towns where the electric light is in common use,” the article noted, and went on to note that the disease “has everywhere attacked telegraph employees.”
The medical world hadn’t yet discovered viruses so light bulbs seemed as likely as anything.
I think they’d given up on the Edison theory of pandemic by the time the 1918 Spanish Flu rolled around, but had spawned the face mask theory of containment for recently discovered viruses so small nobody could see them.
Which, over a hundred years later, remains the predominant theory of virus control.
But here’s an interesting note from the field of microbial biotechnology, which is well documented at Legal Insurrection: Clinical evidence that the pandemic from 1889 to 1892, commonly called the Russian flu, might have been an earlier coronavirus pandemic – which has now evolved from a serious pathogen into just another common cold virus. The article observes that the Russian Flu had several cycles of infection worldwide beginning in late 1889 with recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, winter of 1893–1894, and early 1895, and concludes with the question as to whether we really wish to continue this drama for the next 6 years.
I know some do, but for the sane among us it’s time we rethink the COVID-response strategy along the lines of Governor DeSantis: ‘I Don’t Wanna Hear a Blip About COVID From You’ Until You Secure the Border.
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