Mike sends this along with the caption ‘Flintlock’s favourite paper’
… and I like hockey! Playoffs announced and my beloved Blackhawks have a chance now!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/sports/hockey/spanish-flu-1919-stanley-cup-finals.html
https://puckstruck.com/2020/04/05/joe-hall-takes-a-turn-for-the-worst/
I still couldn’t see my “favorite paper,” the “subscribe” message came up and blocked the story. That’s OK, I’ll live!
Sad about Joe Hall, back in those pre-antibiotic days pneumonia was tantamount to a death sentence. Stonewall Jackson seemed to be on the road to recovery after losing his left arm from a “friendly fire” incident during the Civil War, then pneumonia set in and killed him.
Note that this was almost certainly ARDS, but intriguingly from a ‘reduced’ later strain/‘wave’ of the H1N1.
The common medical “wisdom” of the time was that influenza was the result of a bacillus (they actually found one and purportedly developed testing that showed it, reminiscent of N-rays somewhat later) and all the lung involvement was due to co-infection with pneumonia-causing organisms. Remember this was in an age where there was no effective treatment other than ‘fresh air and sunlight’ for TB, a much better understood disease.
The great thing that jumps out at you is that all the other sufferers recovered relatively quickly even though suffering severe “flu” symptoms – perhaps an indication that the part of the immune system triggering futile cytokine storm was less active in a large proportion of the population by 1919. Like the dog that didn’t bark, it’s the absence of death that is the important detail in this story…
Fascinating to see some of the parallels and how it was all handled.
The NHL has approved a playoff go ahead and format, but the where and when is not yet chosen but will be soon. ( Washington Capitals favoured to win handily, good grief, of all the cities!)
Big sports is really going into unknown territory. No fans in the stands? How on earth does that work? TV revenue I guess, PPV. Will sports bars be allowed to broadcast? Can the players maintain motivation and excellence without fans?
Since history repeats itself we will be in for the Roaring Twenties in a couple of years.
I think you largely address your own question, with one added ‘fillip’ that was discussed back in the era when laugh tracks were considered de rigueur for TV comedy. There were technological schemes put forward to give people like Nielsen families a back-channel with microphone so that their ‘responses’ could be broadcast as an indicator of ‘audience response’. This of course foundered on the rock of (sensible!) censor’s tape delay, but it is certainly practical for bars, or individuals, or even Zoom-style ‘meetings’ to pipe sound to the rinks, where the usual stadium amplifiers will recreate crowd and ambient noise for the players … and the viewers.
Nearly all my competitive endeavors have taken place in the absence of fans.
If the competition itself doesn’t get your competitive juices flowing and keep the fires lit during the competition - you don’t belong in the competition.
As I understand it, the death rate from the “Spanish Flu” was roughly 3%, not that different from the current Covid-19 rate worldwide. The incredibly high number of Spanish Flu deaths (around 50 million worldwide) was because it was so contagious that about 1/3 of the world’s population caught it.
Excerpt from https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/04/08/100-Years-Ago-Flu-Killed-Hockey-Bad-Boy/
A minister spoke briefly about Hall’s contribution to the sport of hockey. Among the mourners were the defenceman’s mother; his younger brother, Bert Hall; his widow, the former Mary Isabel Clare Alexander; and her parents, Mary McIntosh (née Fisher) and William Molson Alexander, a constable for the Canadian Pacific Railway in Vancouver.
Beautiful the way the leaves are brushed around Joe and Mary Hall’s stone.
Someone remembers.