Look at the dates: 1890-1918; 1878-1918; 1896-1918; 1917-1918 … Every person buried on this snowy slope in Barre, Vt, died within days, weeks of each other. “It’s pretty humbling,” said Brian Zecchinelli.
Nearly 200 died that Fall during that other pandemic, the 1918 so-called Spanish Flu.
Zecchinelli and his wife, Karen, own the nearby Wayside Restaurant now. It’s become a Vermont institution. “Effie Ballou opened the Wayside in July of 1918, and two months later the pandemic hits Barre,” he said.
Zecchinelli has never stopped thinking about how little he knew about the 1918 flu – and the fact that the grandfather he never met was one of its victims. He died at 35, on October 10 of that terrible year. Germinio Zecchinelli, like so many other Italian stone cutters, had moved to Barre to quarry granite, to carve the nation’s gravestones (and often each others’, as it turned out).
“The Spanish Flu is often referred to as the ‘forgotten flu,'” Zecchinelli told correspondent Martha Teichner. “And if we had anything to do with it, it wasn’t gonna be forgotten, Germinio and all the others. We wanted to do something to memorialize him and the 50 million others worldwide that died.”
Because, to his astonishment, there was no substantial monument – anywhere – in spite of the staggering number of dead. The forgotten pandemic, indeed.
So, in 2018, a century after the fact, Zecchinelli commissioned this one. “It is unbelievable that nothing else had been done,” he said.”
Brian Zecchinelli, with correspondent Martha Teichner, at the memorial for those who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic, at Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vt.
CBS News
Six-hundred-seventy-five thousand Americans died in that pandemic. We’re at nearly a million and counting dead from COVID.
Has history taught us anything?
Tulane University scholar John Barry, who wrote the definitive history of the 1918 flu, “The Great Influenza,” said, “This time around it confirmed the lesson from 1918: you tell the truth.
“You heard things like – this is all about the 1918 virus – ‘This is ordinary influenza by another name,’ which of course, it wasn’t. It’s crystal clear that Trump himself knowingly said things that weren’t true” (such as his February 27, 2020 statement: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”).
Penguin
And what did confusion over the constantly-evolving science do to trust and compliance? (Dr. Anthony Fauci’s March 8, 2020 statement, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” vs. Fauci’s Oct. 29, 2020 support for community COVID protocols, “the flagship of which is wearing a mask.”)
“You know, trust, truth, they’re all interconnected,” Barry said.
Teichner asked, “Was the result the same then and now?”
“Well, clearly people who might otherwise have been alive, died in 1918,” he replied. “And clearly this time around, people didn’t believe the truth when they were told the truth. The misinformation, the active attacks on vaccines, there’s no question it’s killed people.”
Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University, sees 1918 amnesia happening again. “We’re already forgetting, even before the pandemic is over. We’re already forgetting the pandemic. I foresee, at best, a long struggle about whether we will remember, really, at all, and if we remember, what that memory will be.”
For example, our entertainment, Lincoln said, is like some parallel universe where COVID is invisible, or long gone.
Not everyone is choosing to forget. In Barre, Vt, the self-proclaimed granite center of the world, the monument business is booming. “We’re up 25-30% depending on product lines; I think all domestic manufacturers are up,” said Rob Boulanger, who manages the huge Rock of Ages plant. “People are pre-buying, so people are looking at their mortality, right? And wanting to take care of those final arrangements before something happens.”
Teichner asked, “Has COVID influenced that?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
The longing to remember – and be remembered – a catalyst.
“I think that if we don’t manage to properly memorialize those that have been lost in this pandemic, it says that people like my dad, his life, didn’t matter,” said Kristin Urquiza. She never got to say goodbye to her father, Mark Urquiza, who died on June 30, 2020, isolated, on a ventilator, in an Arizona hospital. It was pre-vaccine. Cases were rising, but Arizona had opened back up.
“Sure, maybe he should have said no to coming together with his friends to celebrate the ‘end’ of the pandemic,” Urquiza said. “He was given false information upon which he made choices, and that cost him his life.”
Urquiza founded a non-profit, Marked by COVID, advocating for permanent memorials and a CVOD Memorial Day. In Congress there’s been limited support. She said, “Our elected officials would much rather move on, and I’m here to say we’re not going to let you.”
Barry said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t really many memorials.”
“But a million dead? Are they invisible?” Teichner asked.
“Well, which party is gonna take credit for that, you know?” he laughed. “There’s been an effort to create a COVID commission, like the 9/11 commission, which, unfortunately, nobody seems eager to accept.”
For Barry, the 1918 flu should be justification enough – proof of the cost in human lives of forgetting.
“There will be another pandemic,” he said. “If we allow the lessons that could be learned from this not to be learned, then we are really fools.”
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
