We are always living history, but now more so

The audiobook I'm listening to, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry, just spent a chapter on how Woodrow Wilson's contraction of the 1918-1919 pandemic influenza in Paris had terrible effects on the post-World War I talks with Britain and France. Where he'd been set to remove himself from the negotiations, he instead came back from the illness, probably too soon, and gave in to all of France's demands, the very ones that set up the rise of Adolph Hitler and WWII. Since that time we have made connexions between influenza and neurological and disposition changes.

The next chapter is discussing the resurgence of flu the next fall, and how it finally faded over the next few years. But millions had died, many children were orphaned. For many, the effects were lingering, some for a year or more. But through so much of the pandemic, it was downplayed due to the war effort. 'It was only influenza', ignoring the virulence of this strain.

It's also talking about the lack of writing about the pandemic at the time, and how that was like the mediaeval accounts that lack much of any study of the Black Plague. It reminds me that we are living through history. We need to take pictures of grocery stores with their lines. We need to write our stories. I started this blog in 2001 shortly after the attacks on September 11th. It's waxed and waned over the year, but this reminds me that this is an opportunity to put down what we do and how we feel.