Showing posts from: March 2020
The Fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic: Reflecting on the Numbers
The war against the coronavirus outbreak is indeed global, infecting to date 199 countries and territories and every continent with the possible exception of (largely and seasonally unpopulated) Antartica. Every day the apps on social media and the news broadcasts inform us of the rising tally of coronavirus cases and of the fatalities, but what we do know is that these totals do not convey a true picture of the populations affected by the virus. They are often an indicator only, a way of charting the trajectory of the elusive curve that every health service and provincial and national government strives to flatten.
Distribution of Covid-19 cases worldwide, 31-Mar-2020 (www.ecdc.europa.eu)
The complexity of the disease partly explains the inexactness. That being infected with coronavirus can be asymptomatic and remains recordable for those never tested, highlights this problem. On a country by country basis the uncertainty over numbers magnifies. Some countries (a lot in Africa for instance) have no or minimal records of testing, which is not the same as saying they have no coronavirus cases! The reason for this might lie in the fact these predominantly impoverished countries have not the wherewithal nor the infrastructure to test even significant numbers of the population, they simply can’t cope. Thus their true numbers are never ascertained. There are other countries in the world who are motivated by reasons other than capacity to report the incidence of infection and mortality, eg, a desire to mask the extent of the calamity for domestic or external purposes.
Geographical distribution of Covid-19 cases worldwide, 31-Mar-2020 (www.ecdc.europa.eu)
The media’s daily servings, the table of virus mortality and morbidity gives us the bare bones of the depth of the human catastrophe — Italy a disaster, Spain a disaster, China a disaster but seemingly over the hump, Iran shockingly bad, France shockingly bad, USA very bad but likely to become even more catastrophic, UK and Netherlands, both worsening, etc. But of equal curiosity is those countries positioned much lower on the ladder of gloom that stand out as demographic anomalies, their numbers almost too good to believe…indeed! Two such are Russia and India. Russia, a vast country with around 145 million people has fessed up to just 17 deaths⋇. On face value a result that would hearten the most pessimistic, but you have to wonder about the level of reportage? India, with 1.3 billion-plus people has so far recorded a mere 32 deaths⋇ (compared to Italy with 60 million people which has lost just shy of 11,600 lives⋇). With India, the lowness of the figure is overshadowed by the inevitability of magnification…the sheer mass of humanity confined within such an acute density of space means that for the substrata of Indians, the poorest classes, no matter how earnestly their prime minister entreats them, they simply cannot physically isolate themselves. The directive from on high to keep a “social distance” from others to ward off the virulent effect of the epidemic remains for the vast masses a pipe dream. That many, many of these unfortunate souls will not escape infection and worse—either recorded or unrecorded—remains inevitable.
At 26-Mar-2020 (Source: Newsweek Statista)
_______________________________________________________________________
⋇ as at 1515 hrs, Greenwich Mean-time, 31st March 2020, ‘Confirmed Cases and Deaths by Country, Territory, or Conveyance’, www.worldometers.info/
Hugo Boss, Gentlemen’s Outfitters to the German Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei
Hugo Boss … luxury watches, fragrances, men’s suits and fashion wear and accessories, Nazi uniforms. Wait! Run that last one past me again? Yes, it’s true. Hugo Boss AG＊, that doyen of international fashion houses with annual revenue exceeding €2.7 billion (2018) and over 1,100 stores worldwide, provided the German Nazi Party, with their uniforms during (and prior to) the Third Reich. Although you wouldn’t know so from a perusal of the Hugo Boss website which keeps a firm lid on the company’s unsavoury past❂.
The clothing company was started in Metzingen (southern Germany) in 1924 by the eponymous Hugo (Ferdinand) Boss…it commenced supplying the NSDAP (National-Socialist Workers Party) with their brown military uniforms, according to the company’s own claim, in 1924 (the year in which Hugo Boss was founded)∅. Initially Boss designed and provided the standard Nazi brown-shirted outfits including Stürmabteilung (SA) uniforms, Nazi workwear, and Hitler Youth uniforms. In the Depression Boss’s company was like many, many businesses severely hit and Boss was forced into bankruptcy in 1931. That year was momentous for another reason, HF Boss joined the Nazi Party, an event that was to turn his fortunes round dramatically. At the same time the failed businessman also joined the SS (Schutzstaffel) as a “sponsoring member”.
By appointment to the Führer Membership of the party meant more contracts for Hugo Boss as a favoured supplier of Hitler. Under the Nazi dictatorship Boss’ sales grew from 38,260 RM in 1932 to 3,300,000 RM in 1941 (Timm). Boss’ motives for joining have been attributed to “economic opportunism” and its clear that he saw the business advantages of tying his colours to the Nazi flagship, but there’s equal little doubt that his commitment to the Nazi cause was heartfelt (a photo of him with the Führer was said to to be one of the tailor’s most prized possessions)❊ [‘Hugo Boss’ Secret Nazi History’, (Fashion and War), M2M, (video, YouTube)].
🔻A Boss ad placed in the SS newspaper
Nazi fashionistas From 1937 on, the relationship acquired an exclusivity, Hugo Boss made clothing only for the Nazis, including the black uniforms worn by the elite Nazi force, the SS (Boss didn’t design the uniforms worn by Himmler’s SS Corps, two party members unconnected to the company designed them). Boss continued to heavily advertise his fashions in the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, and fashionably chic the uniforms were! One of the pillars of the Nazis’ ideology was the pseudo-scientific belief in Aryan superiority, this involved showing the world what the “new man” looks like. There was no finer exemplar of this than the Wehrmacht military man, and this is where Boss provided the finishing touches. The firm’s stylish, sharply cut uniforms conveyed the desired outer appearance, the SS corporate identity that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to project to the world (Fashion and War).
HB as slave-labour drivers From 1940 Boss used slave labour at it’s Metzingen textile factory, predominantly comprising women and later supplemented by the infusion of Polish and French POWs. The company (sans it’s founder), after decades of dodging accusations, finally came clean about it’s shameful Nazi collaboration, after being pressured into issuing a mea culpa in 1997 for the gross mistreatment of the workers. Later the corporation commissioned a book on it’s dark past association❏ [‘“Hitler’s Tailor” Hugo Boss apologises for using slave labour to make Nazi uniforms’, (Lauren Paxman), Daily Mail, 24-Sep-2011, www.dailymail.co.uk].
(Source: www.militaryuniforms.net/Pinterest)
A discounted form of justice After the war Boss was tried along with other German collaborators by a regional Denazification tribunal. The man known as “Hitler’s Tailor” claimed in his defence that he only joined the Nazi Party to save his firm. The court found Boss to have been a “beneficiary of the system” and fined him 100,000 RM, made him sever all connexions with his own firm and stripped him of the right to vote, join a political party or professional organisation. However, on appeal, the fine was reduced by 75%, the other restrictions were lightened and his culpability was downgraded to ‘follower’ of the regime. Before the findings could be ratified by the French Military Government and the punishments imposed, Boss died in 1948 (Timm).
(Photo: Hutton-Deutsh Collection/Corbis/Getty Images)
Endnote: Supping with the 卐 devil Hugo Boss AG was far from the only company to profitably cohabitate with Hitler and the NSDAP. The list of big corporations doing mutually advantageous business was extensive, both within Germany and outside – including Volkswagen, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Kodak, Ford, General Motors, IBM, Siemens, Chase National Bank and Associated Press [‘Companies with Ties to Nazi Germany’, (Debra Kelly), Grunge, (Upd.17-Dec-2019), www.grunge.com].
┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷
＊ Aktiengesellschaft (German limited company)
❂ either that or trying to conceal or gloss over the inconvenient truth of the corporation’s history, eg, “in the 1930s it produced uniforms for various(sic) parties around the time of the world war”, www.bangandstrike.com
∅ the firm’s advertising in the 1930s stated that it was a “supplier of National Socialist uniforms since 1924”, however research suggest that this overstates by four years the length of Boss’ association with Hitler and the Nazis [Elisabeth Timm, ‘Hugo Ferdinand Boss (1885-1948) und die Firma Hugo Boss: Eine Dokumentation’, (Metzingen Zwangsarbeit – Forced Labour), MA Thesis, 1999]
❊ it was a ‘reunion’ of the two humble German corporals from World War I
❏ author Roman Koester wrote: “it’s clear that (Boss) did not just join the party out of economic calculation…he was a convinced Nazi” (Hugo Boss, 1924-1945. A Clothing Factory During the Weimar Republic and Third Reich)
The COVID-19 Crisis: Are We Creating a Whole Generation of New Scofflaws?
Scofflaw: (n) as neologisms go, the word scofflaw has an interesting back story. It is a portmanteau word, derived by combining scoff + law. Scofflaw’s origin came about in 1923 when Massachusetts banker Delcevare King offered up a prize of $200 in gold to the American public for the best word which described “the lawless drinker”.. America being knee-deep in the era of Prohibition at the time and King being one of Prohibition’s greatest zealots. The winning entry (in fact ‘entries’, as two separate entrants submitted the same word), came from Henry Irving Dale and Kate L Butler (who herself was a Anti-Saloon Leaguer) who shared the prize. ‘Scofflaw’ beat a field of over 25,000 entries which included ‘boozocrat’ and ‘boozshevik’ (“DELCEVARE KING, BANKER, 89 DEAD; Prohibitionist’s Contest Led to Coining of ‘Scofflaw’ “, New York Times, 22-Mar-1964; “Ken Burns & Lynn Novick: Prohibition”, PBS, broadcast 2011, www.pbs.org). So, it’s original meaning was someone who drinks illegally (earning the opprobrium of prohibitionists like Mr King) or someone who mocks (scoffs) or ridicules anti-drinking laws. Over time scofflaw was extended to mean “a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively”…in the US since the 1950s the word has largely been applied to individuals who habitually violate laws of a less serious, non-criminal nature, especially traffic violations (‘Scofflaw’ Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/; www.thefreedictionary.com/).
Prohibition: confiscating barrels of illegal grog in America (Source: Pinterest)
As part of the government mantra directed towards us home-front civilians in the war on coronavirus, we are asked by our leaders, entreated even, to practice safe social distancing. In the early days of the war against the invisible biological enemy we were told to immediately implement social distancing from others at all times. Later this was quantified and codified – 1.5 metres distance outdoors from others, no congregations of people of more than 500, indoors a four to one ratio, no more than 25 people in a room 100 square metres. And yet at the same time—this is where the mixed messaging starts to gain traction—we were told we can keep using public transport to go to work or school or uni or TAFE. So we pile onto crowded buses, trains and LRVs like the George Street ‘Snail’, at peak time. We shop in scarcity-hit supermarkets teeming with increasingly chaotic shoppers, we sit in class rooms and cafés and pubs and restaurants, or line up in the ever-lengthening queues of the recently unemployed outside Centrelink offices – in all instances numerically and spatially infringing the prescribed limits✱. We should all, even the politicians, shout as one – “I’m a violator!” All of us at some point have been or will be violators – by design or default!
Bondi: defying the coronavirus warnings (Source: AAP)
Scofflaws and recusants of the world unite!And what of those other violators of social distancing in this time of pestilence, the beach-going masses whose capers—from Sydney all the way to Florida—the media have revelled in? The beach-goers at Bondi and other popular summer-time beaches who are either indifferent or wilfully tone-deaf to the authorities’ daily mantra of abstinence or are pleading ignorance of the messages on the grounds of being Generation X, Y, Z, Millennials, Xennials (or whatever term you prefer) and therefore invincible. We can add peripatetic domestic tourists currently roaming around the country to the list of sloth-minded transgressors. Whether the violators are blatantly snubbing their noses at society and authority or are forced by circumstance into breaking the government’s edicts, the trajectory of the crisis suggests that a new generation of scofflaws is in the making. These multitudes, theses new scofflaws or recusants, some with a very deliberate rationale of defiance, will undoubtably continue to breach government warnings and (now) rules on social distancing and contact as the crisis continues⊞, replacing the traditional notion we have of scofflaws – unrepentant recidivists who accumulate unpaid parking fines or debts, ignore summonses or graffiti public or private property.
Given the sheer impossibility of compelling all citizens to maintain social distances in public (considering the scale of the enterprise and the limitations of the enforcement agencies), it will probably come down to the will and commitment of governments and bureaucracies to enforce these rules. The stick is already out…the NSW police minister has announced that individuals breaching the social distancing guidelines will be instantly fined $1,000 or even jailed (this second option however is highly implausible in the present health climate which sees the country’s prisons under fire for crowding too many inmates in together!) (‘Breaking social distancing rules will lead to on-the-spot fines of $1,000’, ABC News, 25-Mar-2020, www.abcnews.com.au). Tough talk✬ but it remains to be seen how thoroughly this threat to act will be prosecuted or how practical it will be to implement. You can also expect the civil libertarians of the community to come out in earnest support of the Covid scofflaws, defending to the last adjective their right to freedom of movement. Watch this space.
Footnote: Of course the opposite could also happen – if recent reports of public reactions to self-isolation are an indication. We may witness a whole lot of people coming out of the woodwork, channeling their inner Oliver Cromwell and dobbing in their scofflaw neighbours to the local constabulary for breaching their two week home quarantine.
Postscript: Tips for occupying some of the 960 minutes a day of stay-at-home time you are awake
The more realistic and level-headed of us who are not still spending our days at the beach (yes there are scofflaws still trying to circumvent the barriers now in place at popular beaches) are hunkering down for the long haul during the pandemic. So if you are looking for some light reading material while in mandatory hibernation for the winter, there’s always that classic allegory of unrelentingly grim reality, Camus’ The Plague☌, or if you want something more apocalyptically contemporary, try The Road or Station Eleven.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
✱ even more unfathomably bizarre, after the latest round of war cabinet lockdowns, is the circumstance of hairdressers and barbers – they have been allowed to stay open and serve the public, whilst still observing the 1.5 m gap. How that will be expected happen remains a mystery to all except the inner workings of the war cabinet I surmise (robotic arms and 150cm-long scissors may be the answer!)
⊞ the best the government can hope for is to minimise the non-compliance of this cohort so that the numbers of them who are infected and the numbers that they infect are kept as low as possible
✬ certainly a considerably more substantial deterrent than the drop in the ocean £30 Boris has announced he’ll fine scofflaw Britons
☌ incidentally, sales of Camus’ book about a disease-infested 1940s Algerian town have soared during the pandemic (The Economist, April 2020)
The Struggle for California’s “White Gold”: The Making of LA’s Modern Metropolis
In 1900 the population of Los Angeles was 102,479, the 36th largest city in the USAⓐ. A couple of years into the new century the name Hollywood resonated only as a hotel, Hollywood’s legendary preeminence as the epicentre of the world’s film industry was still over a decade away. Nonetheless the city’s growing numbers were already putting pressure on the water supplies. LA’s location on a water-poor, semi-arid plane magnified those pressures. A lack of rainfall and groundwater and droughts was making the situation worse (‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Owens and Mono Lakes’ (MONO Case), Case No 379, (TED Case Studies), www.web.archive.org).
Mulholland in the valley (Photo: LA Times)
A couple of ambitious engineers in the city’s water company (later the LA Board of Water and Power)—Fred Eaton (also the LA mayor) and William Mulholland—cast their eyes round for a more reliable source of water to accommodate Los Angeles’ continued growth and development. The solution lay to the northeast, in the Owens River Valley which backs on to the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. If Los Angeles owned the land here the water could be diverted to the city. The obstacle was that this was farming land with hundreds and hundreds of farmers legally ensconced on small plot-holders. The farmers’ land-holdings also gave them water rights and they had their own agenda regarding the Owens valley, they were backing a national valley reclamation project to irrigate the valley farmlands.
Mulholland (pointing), with members of his syndicate (Photo credit: www.latimes.com)
It was former mayor Eaton who started the ball rolling, at the same time setting the ethical standard for Mulholland, by securing options on riparian lands under the pretense of establishing cattle ranches (Marian L Ryan, ‘Los Angeles Newspapers Fight the Water War, 1924-1927’, Southern California Quarterly, 50(2) (June 1968)). Soon Mulholland was driving the scheme and the Los Angeles water authority set about buying up as much of the land around the Owens River as they could. Mulholland, Eaton and other local business notables including Harrison Gray Otis and Henry Huntingdon formed a business cabal which became known as the San Fernando Syndicate. The syndicate allegedly used inside knowledge (the plan to build a aqueduct connecting the valley to the city) to buy up land that would become highly profitable (‘William Mulholland’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).
Cottonwood Creek diversion conduct and Owens Lake in background (wwww.owensvalleyhistory.com)
Mulholland’s vision for LA’s prosperity was dependent on the monopolisation of the valley’s water, but he was completely unscrupulous in the way he went about it, “employ(ing) chicanery, subterfuge, spies, bribery, a campaign of divide-and-conquer, and a strategy of lies” to secure the water LA needed (‘Reading Los Angeles.: Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert’, (Christopher Hawthorne), LA Times, 29-Jun-2011, www.latimesblogs.latimes.com). The cagey, Belfast-born Mulholland deceived Owens Valley farmers and also misled the Angelenos as well by grossly understating the quantity of water that would be taken for LA.
Route of the LA aqueduct (Image: www.owensvalleyhistory.com)
The syndicate, from 1905 on, bought up strategic parcels of land piecemeal in the valley (by 1928 90% of the water rights were in Mulholland’s hands). The City of Los Angeles meanwhile built a 375km-long aqueduct (completed in 1913) to siphon off the water from the Owens River. Some of the water was diverted to irrigate the San Fernando Valley but most went via the aquifer to service the needs of the LA metropolis. (‘The Water Fight That Inspired “Chinatown”’, Felicity Barringer, 25-Apr-2012, (Green), www.green.blogs.nytimes.com).
The problem with the proposed Owens Valley Reclamation Project, which had it gone ahead would have stymied Mulholland’s plans, was already taken care of. Mulholland through his political connexions in Washington lobbied the US president, Theodore Roosevelt, who squashed the project (‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct’). This was viewed by the farm settlers as a public act of betrayal (‘The Valley of Broken Hearts’, C.E. Kunze, The San Francisco Call (1924), in ‘Owens Valley’s – Los Angeles Aqueduct’, (Owens Valley), www.owensvalleyhistory.com). In time the Owens Valley farmers amd ranchers realised the enormity of the threat to them…by 1926 Owens Lake was completely dry. Frustrated, angered and rebellious, they attempted to retaliate through acts of sabotage, in 1924 blowing up the aqueduct. Mulholland responded by calling in armed guards, conflicts occurred and tensions ran high over water access. A second flashpoint occurred when Owens Valley activists aided by a local scofflaw element commandeered the Alabama Gates section of the aqueduct resulting in a four-day standoff. Afterwards Mulholland hired Pinkerton private detectives to track the ‘culprits’ and ‘ringleaders’. Other incidents escalated the conflict including more dynamiting of the infrastructure in 1927ⓑ (‘The Water War that Polarized 1920s California’, (Gary Krist), Literary Hub, 17-May-2018, www.lithub.com ; ‘New Perspectives on the West’, ‘William Mulholland (1855-1935)’, www.pbs.org).
Detectives investigating the scene (Photo: LA Times)
Mulholland eventually came out on top in the ‘war’ due to a combination of factors, “determination and deceit” on his part, but also because the Inyo County Bank folded , taking with it most of the ranchers and farmers’ savings. Personally for Mulholland though, he had just a modicum of time to savour his victory. In 1928 the collapse of St Francis Dam cost nearly 500 lives and caused widespread devastation of property and crops. As he had been project engineer, Mulholland was blamed for the disaster and forced to resign in disgrace (‘New Perspectives’, PBS). By 1930 the handful of remaining farm-owners, with unviable land having lost their irrigating water—the “white gold” as they called it—and confronted with droughts, their only one recourse was ultimately enforced migration (Kunze, ‘Owens Valley’).
Mono Basin, Cal.
The Los Angeles Water Department (even after Mulholland’s esclipse) continued the search for new sources of water, one scheme sought to extend the LA aqueduct to the Mono Basin. Local farmers after eventually realising that Mono Lake was staring down the same fate as Owens Lake, took action to save it from destruction (‘Mono Lake’)ⓒ.
The Los Angeles water authority’s and Mulholland’s diverting of the Owens River and the incorporation of the San Fernando Valley into LA’s municipal boundaries, paved the way for LA’s eventual growth into a mega-sized city by any standardsⓓ (Hawthorne). But this achievement was at devastating and irreparable cost to the Owens Valley environment which became no longer viable as a farming community… the Owens River was reduced to a trickle and the Owens Lake ecosystem destroyed (Barringer).
Endnote: Chinatown backdrop
The story of the LA water wars and the Californian “water czar” William Mulholland’s machinations inspired the 1974 cult neo-noir mystery film Chinatown. Polanski’s film uses the historic 1920s conflicts as backdrop for a fictional detective story in which the persona of the larger-than-life Mulholland is represented by two characters: the visionary and straight dealing Hollis Mulwray, and the Machiavellian über-schemer Noah Cross (Barringer).
ᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽⓐ ‘Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1900’. United States Census Bureau, June 15, 1998
ⓑ prompting LA newspaper of the day The Gridiron to report that “Civil War Threatened” as “L.A. Faces Water Famine”, (11-Jun-1927)
ⓒ Mulholland and Los Angeles also looked at tapping into the Colorado River to replenish the city’s water supplies but this proved logistically too difficult even for Mulholland
ⓓ 9,000,000 people by 1994
The Government’s War on Coronavirus: The Great COVID-19 War from Ground Level
(Source: www.thesummitexpress.com)
A few years ago one of the incumbents of the revolving door that is the Australian prime ministership intoned: “these are the most exciting times to be alive”… well, for “exciting” substitute “worrying and challenging” and you have the status quo, 2020. We are getting bombarded daily, even hourly it seems, with mixed messages from news sources – it was okay to go to the football last Sunday and mingle with crowds of much more than the 500 limit but somehow it’s not okay to do this on Monday, the day after (what changed?!?); the medical experts warn us to keep a distance of one-and-a-half metres from anyone else, yet it’s fully expected that people will still travel on trains and buses which will generally make that an impossibility; the government tells us not to fly overseas but it’s still okay to fly within Australia (a lifeline to the national carrier?).
(Image: www.nature.com)
Every day media outlets offer up a doomsday book of horror stories…”London faces stricter lockdown after coronavirus advice ‘ignored’” |”Italy coronavirus deaths rise by record 475 in a day” |”All of us have to assume we have the virus’: COVID-19 infections rise past 300 in NSW” |”Yes, young people are falling seriously ill from Covid-19” |”Trump spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus. He’s now pretending that never happened” | “Stay home’. Grey nomads unwelcome as Top End coronavirus tensions grows’ | “Coronavirus UK: Boris to impose FOUR-MONTH quarantine for elderly under ‘wartime’ measures” | “China blaming US for coronavirus? It refuses to come clean about origin” | “Privacy fears as India hand stamps suspected coronavirus cases” | “Coronavirus: One dead every 10 minutes in Iran as government faces backlash over late response” | “Spring Breakers Pack Some Florida Beaches, Ignoring Social Distancing Warning Amid Coronavirus“ | “Italy overtakes China in coronavirus toll”. Panicked consumerism born of exaggerated fears of limited resources➀, foolhardy apathy as the young party on regardless in fatalistic Titanic style (‘Millennialmania’), doom and gloom, finger-pointing recriminations, the media has been full of it for two months…sorry, we don’t do calm, rational, measured responses here.
A corona red world, March 2020 (Credit: www.abcnews.go.com)
It’s a climate ready-made for rumour-mongering and this is not confined to the West…China is rife with rumours ‘explaining’ the epidemic’s origin starting with the fiction of it’s supposed transmission from bats in January. The rumours soon became more fanciful and more conspiratorial, ranging from coronavirus being deliberately released to cull excess numbers of pensioners in society to it being a bio-weapon brought to Wuhan by the US Army to it being the consequence of the zodiac signs being out of harmony in the Year of the Rat!
The pandemic has caused divisiveness. Not just between rival countries trying to shift the blame and score political points, but at a grass roots level. We’ve seen the spectacle of shoppers in supermarkets fighting over the providence of a single pack of toilet roll➁.We’ve got incorrigible prepper-minded hoarders boasting online of their Fort Knox-sized storage bunkers of stockpiled household essentials, counter-balanced by the shopper-shaming of overzealous buyers queueing up with 150 rolls of toilet paper in their trolly (human behaviouralists tell us that buying ridiculous quantities of toilet rolls gives us reassurance, a warm and fuzzy feeling in a time of fear). The supermarkets, one of the very few sectors doing spectacularly well out of the crisis, have responded (too late) with partial war rationing to head off the panic buyers. War rationing seems apt as democratic governments across the world channel their inner Churchill and rush to set up “war cabinets” to deal with the extraordinary and unprecedented situation.
Deserted airport departure lounges 🔺
Whole industries grind to a halt, workers laid off with mortgages and bills that won’t disappear, while those of us investing in the stock market have taken an instant massive hit and the Aussie dollar plunges ever lower. Border closures, tourism industry bottoming out, small businesses going to the wall, nightlife, restaurants, bars, cafes, shows, movies, public events, etc…all nix! The hackneyed T-shirt slogan “Keep calm and carry on” is now “Keep calm, stay home and don’t go anywhere”. Lockdowns, compulsory home quarantine for targetted groups of the population, Pacific cruising virus-traps, a safe and effective vaccine for the virus still up to 18 months away. Talk in the UK of prioritising “herd immunity” uncomfortably evokes the spectre of eugenics. Some have called for the euthanasia of family pets, which is drawing a long bow even if you accept the possibility (far from definitively proven at this stage) that the virus was transmitted to humans by pangolins (scaly ant-eaters) in a Wuhan wet market. What next, euthanasia vans going round the suburbs to collect the weak and elderly? Reality at the moment looks increasingly like an unbelievable dystopian novel or movie! Welcome to the scary new world of indefinite uncertainty.
Thanks to COVID-19 we’re learning a slew of new buzzwords, for a start social distancing and elbow bump (sounds and looks dorky but it’ll catch on, trust me), and us non-statisticians in the community are already tired of hearing TV expert commentators rabbiting on about the merits of “flattening the curve”. I am waiting to hear (and am surprised not to have heard it yet) the adjective “Orwellian” uttered in the current crisis.
Bay County beach, Fla. (Ya Photo: WJHG/WECP)
I don’t know anyone who envies the governments or the frontline health care sector at the moment, but the government responses do have their critics? To take the scenario I am most familiar with, Australia…on the credit side the mortality rate is low (so far) though the morbidity rate is climbing fast and winter and the flu season are on the near horizon. However, under the government’s partisan “war cabinet” a coordinated approach to the crisis seems to be missing. We are looking for more systematic and less chaotic here! One example, the distribution of scarce essential goods depleted by panic buying is held up by a failure to get councils involved so they can free up the delivery schedule. Some medical and communications experts have asked where the government’s public awareness campaign is? Unlike some other countries, we are bereft of the myriad of community billboards and the television and social media advertisements which can raise awareness in the public of the disease. Overcoming ignorance is a first step to diminishing fear and apathy.
As with something this truly extraordinary, of such novel complexity and uncertainty, despite (or perhaps because of) the deluge of information, more questions than answers remain…should we lockdown cities or not? What are we not doing here to stem the crisis that appears to be working overseas? Face masks, yes/no?➂ Test for virus or not test? Can I be infected, recover and be infected a second time? What’s the shelf life of an infected surface? What do I do if I’m at high-risk and social distancing is not a viable option? Should we let the grandparents babysit our pre-schoolers any more? And then of course there’s the greatest imponderable of all, when is this whole nightmarish scenario going to end?
🔺 No issues with social distancing here (Photo: AP)
All the punter at ground zero can do is listen to the official medical advice➃, make sure we inform ourselves about Coronavirus 101 and get the basics down pat. This means identifying the likely symptoms—persistent cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, (and more seriously) fever, shortness of breath, difficulty in breathing—all the usual suspects. Understand that coronavirus can be either symptomatic or asymptomatic, that it can be mild as well as severe, and that lethality generally (but not universally) hinges on considerations of age and serious pre-existing health conditions. Learn how to avoid contagion, what to do with the lethal weapons which are our hands – washing and drying them the correct way, eschewing the convention of shaking hands with people and start guesstimating our own personal space in public➄, sneezing into your elbow, not your hands, cleaning and disinfecting surfaces and door handles, using hand sanitisers, etc. Thus armed against ignorance, and hopefully the pandemic too, we will bunker down for the long haul, tough it out and try (very hard) not to add to the growing count of national virus statistics.
⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕
➀ and thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy ➁ almost as unedifying was the sight of Aldi staff hurling blocks of toilet paper into the air so that demonic shoppers could jostle and wrestle each other for the prized commodity (classy look!) ➂ surgical masks have become a bit of an “us and them” issue, adding to the emerging divisive atmosphere…the war cabinet’s medical experts (in line with WHO’s recommendations) have pooh-poohed the wearing of masks for the general populace as not beneficial and unnecessary, saying they only need to be worn by people diagnosed with the disease. Given that the Chinese community in Australia tend to wear the masks sometimes for cultural reasons as much as protection, this leaves them open to wild and inaccurate assumptions about their health status as a group ➃ this will probably require a judgement call as some of the medical advice has been contradictory ➄ the latest edict in the social distancing caper from the war cabinet limits indoor gatherings of 25 in a space of 100sq m (one person to every 4sq m). I can’t wait to see police officers turning up in clubs and pubs armed with measuring tapes
⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎⍎
PS. All the big business houses and major financial institutions have started sending out “touchy-feely, look we really are human” messages, along the lines of we’re here to help “our people” get through COVID-19 … excuse me while I go and bolt down my raging cynicism to the floor.
Hitler in Norway: Raw Materials for Matériel, Geopolitics, Ideology and Propaganda
Norway, Sweden and Denmark (www.geology.com)
At the onset of world war in 1939 the principal adversaries of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler were clearly seen to be the United Kingdom and (initially at first) France. So, why did the Third Reich focus so much on Norway in the global conflict?
War strategy was part of the answer. German military planning ante bellum had pinpointed Norway’s geo-strategic importance. It was also aware of the danger of a blockade of Germany’s sea-lanes posed by the British Navy. By controlling Norway’s long (16,000 mi) coastline, Germany could control the North Sea, providing the optimal maritime attack route for an assault on Britain. It would also ease the passage of Germany’s warships and submarines into the Atlantic Ocean. As far back as 1929 German Vice-Admiral Wegener outlined in a book the advantages of seizing Norway in a future war to expedite German naval traffic [C N Trueman, “The Invasion Of Norway 1940”, www.historylearningsite.co.uk . The History Learning Site, 20 Apr 2015. 5 Feb 2020]. The Nazis believed that Norway’s strategic ports were the key to control of the Atlantic and to the overall success of Germany in the war (‘Nazi Megastructures’).
Norway’s proximity to Sweden was another factor in Germany’s focus on the Scandinavian country, arguably the main consideration in Hitler’s and the Nazis’ calculations. Buried in the north of Sweden—mainly at the Kiruna and Gällivare mines—were vast quantity of high-grade iron-ore. In 1939 Germany imported ten million tons of the mineral from Sweden, all but one million of it from these mines [‘The Nazi Invasion of Norway – Hitler Tests the West’, (Andrew Knighton), War History Online, 01-Oct-2018, www.warhistoryonline]. This raw material provided the steel for the German war machine – its armaments and equipment (weaponry, tanks) and aircraft.
Kiruna mine 🔼
As Sweden was (like Norway up to April 1940) a neutral country in war-time and was freely selling iron-ore to the Germans, why did Hitler need Norway? The problem was the port of Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden, from where the Nazis transported the precious loads of ore…in winter it would freeze over. To meet the exigencies of “total war” the Nazis needed to keep the production lines rolling, the war schedule couldn’t afford long delays in the delivery of the iron-ore. The solution lay in Norway – the northern port at Narvik by contrast didn’t freeze over and was accessible all year round. Logistically, the Germans could easily re-route the Swedish iron ore via the Norwegian coast (Trueman). What made this more pressing for the Germans was that Britain spurred on by Winston Churchill was planning to mount a expeditionary force to capture the Swedish iron-ore mines to deprive their enemies of it [Tony Griffiths, Scandinavia: At War with Trolls, (2004)].
In April 1940 Germany, concerned that Britain was trying to engineer Norway into the war, implemented Operation Weserübung, invading both Denmark and Norway at the same time. Neighbouring Denmark for Germany was a staging post and base for its Norway operations. Denmark capitulated virtually immediately but Norway, with some limited and not very effective help from the British, French and Polish, held out against the massively superior might of the Nazi Heer, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for over two months.
🔼 Quisling inspecting the Germanske SS Norge troops in Oslo
The Norwegian surrender came, inevitably, after the Allies withdrew their support. The German Wehrmacht stayed in occupation of the country for five years guarding the precious iron-ore route. Hitler, wanting to project a veneer of legitimacy, installed a pro-German Norwegian puppet regime under Vidkun Quisling, a fascist collaborator and leader of Norway’s Nasjonal Samling party✱. Quisling, evoking an ancient Viking concept, the hird✧, formed his own paramilitary organisation [Tony Griffiths, Scandinavia: At War with Trolls, (2004)], however real power lay with the Hitler-appointed Reichskommissar Josef Terboven.
Hitler had another, ideological motive for extending the scope of his Third Reich empire to Norway. The Nazi Führer was an ardent admirer of Viking and Norse culture. Nazi ideology rested on a belief in so-called “Aryan superiority” which elevated Nordic people such as the Norwegians. This ideology was reflected in SS recruitment posters circulated in Norway (and Denmark) during the German occupation…propaganda aimed at an historic appeal to Norwegian manhood, conflating of the Wehrmacht soldier spirit with the valour and exploits of Viking warrior culture [‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’, (Eleanor Barraclough, History Today, 68(4), April 2019, www.historytoday.com].
The Nazis’ program of Lebensborn –intended to create “racially pure” offspring was practiced in Norway, resulting in somewhere between ten and twelve thousand babies being born to Norwegian mothers and German fathers⊚ (‘Vikings: Warriors of No Nation’).
🔼 (L) Quisling, (2nd from L) Himmler, (3rd from L) Terboven
Hitler’s preoccupation with Norway, its natural resources and its supposed Aryan virtues, was to have critical and fateful repercussions for the “big picture” war strategy of the Third Reich. The Nazis fortified Norway more heavily than any other nation it occupied during the war, several hundred thousand German soldiers (regular army, Waffen and Schutzstaffel – SS) were stationed there – a ratio of one German soldier for every eight Norwegians! [‘German occupation of Norway’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. When the Allies launched their decisive D-Day operation in 1944, these unused, excess troops in non-combative Norway may very likely have been vital to the German efforts to stem the Allies’ major offensive at Normandy.
The Nazis used ancient Viking rune symbols on their uniforms and flags, like the SS’s sig rune insignia (above)
𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶
✱ adding a new word, ‘quisling’, to the lexicon. The charade was maintained with Hitler declaring that occupied Denmark and Norway were under the protection(sic) of the Nazi state, Hitler‘s Scandinavian Legacy, Ed. by John Gilmour & Jill Stephenson, (Introduction) (2013)
✧ in Old Norse, originally a retinue of informal armed companions, analogous with a housecarl, a household bodyguard
⊚ the most famous of which is Frida (Anni-Frid) of the Swedish pop group ABBA
Ewo and Taikoo: Two of the Legendary Free Market Hongs of British Hong Kong (The “Movers and Shakers”)
(Image: www.travelsfinder.com)
No organisation has left a larger footprint on Hong Kong‘s long colonial experience under the British (1841-1997) than the hongs (see Endnote). And one British hong that has been especially significant in shaping the course of British (and beyond) Hong Kong has been Jardine, Matheson. The company under the direction of Scots William Jardine and James Matheson arrived in Hong Kong on the ground floor, securing lot No. 1 on Hong Kong Island in the initial land sale by the British colonial administrators in 1841 [‘Jardine, Matheson – company history’, www.jardines.com].
Jardine’s original business premises on Causeway Bay ⍗
Jardine, Matheson Co Hong Kong replaced the firm’s previous base in Canton (Guangzhou). From Hong Kong (which soon become Jardine, Matheson’s headquarters) and from the startup of it’s Shànghâi operation a couple of years later, the company laid the foundations of it’s fortune initially from a highly profitable trade of smuggling opium (as well as tea, silk and cotton) into mainland China from South Asia. Jardine, Matheson quickly diversified into more ethical and legal enterprises, adding steamships to their portfolio from the 1850s (China Coast Steam Navigation Co, Indo-China Steam Navigation Co, Yangtśe Steam Navigation Co) which serviced the trade routes to Japan, Singapore, Calcutta, Manila and Vladivostok [‘Jardine, Matheson & Co. Steam Nav. Co / Indo-China Steam Nav. Co / Yangtse S.N. Co.’, www.theshipslist.com].
Taipan Wm Jardine ⍗
Jardine Matheson, a ubiquitous hong Over the years Jardine, Matheson (JM Co) continued to diversify—cotton mills, property, breweries, insurance, financiers (of the first railway in China), sugar plantations, etc. All the while extending it’s trade links – Europe, Africa, Australia, America. Later JM Co got into hotels, motor vehicles, food and hygiene product wholesaling and so on. They functioned as Far East agents – for gunmakers amongst other manufacturers. JM Co even acted in a para-government capacity for consuls for foreign powers doing business in the region, as did other hongs [Jan Morris, Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire, (2000)].
⍗ Hong Kong Island
Butterfield and Swire This particular British hong was something of a latecomer to Hong Kong compared to the pioneering Jardine, Matheson Co. The B&S trading house arrived on the Island in 1869. But Butterfield and Swire did not waste any time in developing into one of the most powerful players in the territory. The driving force behind the company was John Samuel Swire✱. Previously, Butterfield, Swire and his brother William, had started a shipping and trading business in Shanghai. The Swire hong’s road to riches was predicated, not on the illicit drug trade like JM Co, but on a combination of shipbuilding, sugar-refining, banking, insurance, mining, railroad building and other later entrepreneurial pursuits in the Far East, such as bottling Coca-Cola for Asia’s markets. Swire’s diverse subsidiaries have included the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, Taikoo Dockyard – which built mainly steamboats for the China Navigation Co, another Swire subsidiary. Since the 20th century another star in the business stable of the Swire Group☒ is the leading Asian airline Cathay Pacific. Early on Swire’s was also an agent for the Blue Funnel cruise ship line [Morris; ‘Butterfield and Swire’, (School of Oriental and African Studies, London University), The National Archives, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk].
Taipan JS Swire, “the Senior” ⍐ (Photo: www.industrialhistoryhk.org)
JS Swire’s leadership and business style was unequivocally ruthless and uncompromising, he was very much of the “take-no-prisoners”, old school of business. Under “The Senior” Swire, the company played a telling part in driving some of the other Hong Kong frontier merchants into eventual business oblivion – as happened with two pioneering hongs, Dent and Co and Russell and Co (Morris).
Jardine, Matheson v Swire/Ewo v Taikoo☒ Swire‘s great and enduring rival in Hong Kong (and in the East) has been JM Co. For both hongs in the formative years the main game was about buying and selling in China for the European market. As both firms added more business pursuits to their respective China Sea empires, they came more into competition with each other. Swire’s Quarry Bay Taikoo Dockyard and sugar refinery for instance was in stiff competition with Jardine’s Kowloon Whampoa dockyard and refinery [‘Taikoo Sugar Refinery’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⍗ SS Shuntien, built at Taikoo Docks
Dynastic hongs with staying power The Jardine presence in Honk Kong and at the helm of the company continues to this day through the Keswick family, ancestors of founder William Jardine’s sister. In a similar vein, the Swire name retains a connection with the present Swire Group (current conglomerate chairman Barnaby Swire is a descendent of John Samuel Swire and there are other ‘Swires’ in the management hierarchy).
(Photo: www.hkland.com/)
1984 and beyond After several years of tortuous negotiations between the UK Thatcher government and China agreement was finally reached to hand over Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997. This left Swires and Jardines, two of the British hongs with most at stake, with the thorny issue of whether to stay in the erstwhile British colony or not under the hard-to-predict communists. Swires, who had earlier pulled its businesses out of China four year after the communist takeover (to later return), chose to keep its operational base in Hong Kong. Swires sought to work with the Chinese regime, entering into airline deals to give the PRC an interest in Cathay Pacific and secure a domestic foothold for itself. The Jardines conglomerate opted for a different strategy, choosing in 1984 to cut and run, switching its legal domicile from Hong Kong to Bermuda and delisting on the HK Stock Exchange in favour of London and Singapore. This move earned Jardines the ire of Beijing⇟. Even after the ink was dry on the hand-over decision, JM Co continue to lobby the British government hard (with Simon Keswick particularly vocal) to keep the territory out of Beijing’s clutches [Felix Patrikeeff, Mouldering Pearl: Hong Kong at the Crossroads, (1989)].
By the turn of the 21st century JM Co had regained ground from a successful drive into Southeast Asia markets and had once again firmly secured a beachhead on mainland China [‘A tale of two hongs’, The Economist, 30-Jun-2007, www.theeconomist.com ; ‘Jardine Matheson Returns to China’, The Economist, 02-Jul-2015, www.theeconomist.com].
Postscript: Tension between government and the merchant class Officially, Hong Kong was run during the British era by a succession of governors, appointed from Whitehall. However a fundamental difference in raison d’être existed between the governors and the taipans. The governors were about the Imperial interest of Britain, in practical terms they sought to raise sufficient revenue to fund the colony’s administration. The sole concern of the plutocrats, the merchants, was self-enrichment and their natural inclination was to resist all efforts of the governor to raise taxes…this made for a generally very rocky relationship between the Crown Colony’s two power blocks with antithetical interests (Morris).
Endnote: Hongs and taipans
The term ‘hong’ (major foreign trading houses based in Hong Kong to trade with China) derives apparently from the Chinese word cohong, used to describe the guilds of Chinese merchants operating Canton’s trade with the West prior to 1842 (the “Thirteen Factories” or Canton System). In British Hong Kong each hong was headed up by a taipan (or series of taipans) who was the top boss man in the trading company. The hongs employed native (Chinese) personnel, called compradors, who acted as local “go-betweens” to facilitate business for the firms.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
✱ “the Butterfield” in the partnership didn’t last long in Hong Kong with the autocratic Swire edging him into retirement within a short time
☒ both trading houses adopted Chinese business names: Ewo (JM Co) means ” State of happy harmony”; Taikoo (Swire) means “Great and ancient”
⇟ China already held a long-lingering grudge against JM Co … company principal William Jardine was one of the main advocates for Britain to take action against the Chinese Empire in retaliation for it closing down the lucrative opium trafficking trade (leading to the First Opium War)
The 1918 Spanish Flu: History’s Most Deadly Pandemic
The ongoing fight to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, the Coranavirus—now entering a new stage of transforming itself into a global epidemic—gives rise to recollection of another virus that swept the world just over one hundred years ago, the so-called Spanish Flu✺. For most of the rest of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu (sometimes known as La Grippe) was largely neglected by researchers and mainstream historians, and study confined to actuaries, specialist epidemiologists and virologists and medical historians [Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, (2017)].
(Credit: CNN International)
Why did such a devastating pandemic fly under the radar for so long? The timing of the outbreak goes a good way to explain this. After having suffered four long years of a unique world war, people tended to treat the Spanish Flu as a footnote to the Great War conflagration. Moreover, the war, concentrated in Europe and the Middle East, had a limited geographical focus for people, contrasting with the pneumonic influenza outbreak which was truly global [The Spanish Flu Pandemic’, (L Spinney), History Today, 67(4), April 2017]. As catastrophic events go, the two stand in stark contrast. With today’s scientific and medical advances experts estimate that the Spanish Flu killed at least 50 million people worldwide, some estimates put it as high as 100 million [NP Johnson & J Mueller 2002;76: 105-115 (‘Updating the accounts: Global mortality of the 1918-1920 “Spanish” Flu pandemic’, Bull Hist Med)]. Estimates of World War I casualties—military and civilian–—sit somewhere in the range of 20 to 22 million deaths [‘WW1 Casualties’, (WW1 Facts), http://ww1facts.net]⌖. By the late 20th century and early 2000s outbreaks of new viruses like SARS, Asian Bird Flu, Swine Flu, etc, spurred mainstream historians◙ to look afresh at the great global influenza of 1918-20.
An abnormal spike in morbidity and mortality The Spanish Flu was truly global, like the Coronavirus its lethal reach touched every continent except Antartica, both are novel (new) respiratory illnesses. Similarities have been noted between the responses to the two outbreaks, eg, the issuing of instructions or recommendations by the authorities for the public to wear masks, avoid shaking hands (part of social distancing), good hygiene, quarantine, an alarmist overreaction by the media [‘Coronavirus response may draw from Spanish flu pandemic of 100 years ago’, ABC News, (Matt Bamford), 05-Mar-2020, www.amp.abc.net.au]. The great flu of 1918’s morbidity and mortality rates were frighteningly high and far-reaching…one in three people on earth were affected by it✪. Between 2.5 and 5% of the world’s population perished, including India a mind-boggling 17M-plus, Dutch East Indies 1.5M, US (up to) 675,000◍, Britain 250,000, France 400,000, Persia (Iran) (up to) 2.4M, Japan 390,000-plus, Ghana (at least) 100,000, Brazil 300,000, USSR (unknown, but conservatively, greater than 500,000)⊞.
While densely crowded communities were thought the biggest risk of mass infection, the Flu caused human devastation even in remote, isolated corners of the world, eg, in Oceania, Samoa bereft of immunity, lost 22% of its population in two months, the Fijian islands lost 14% in a 16-day period⌀. The kill rate was something around 2.5% cf. a ‘normal’ flu outbreak a rate of no more than 0.1% would be expected [‘The Spanish Flu Pandemic’, (Spinney, History Today ; ‘The Spanish Flu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].
(Source: National Library of Australia)
If the Spanish Flu didn’t originate in Spain, where did it originate? No one knows for sure is the short answer…but there has been much speculation on the topic. At the time of the epidemic a popular notion was that the Flu started in China, but China experienced low rates of infection compared to other regions of the world. The explanation for this perhaps lay in that China was subjected to an initial, mild flu season which gave its citizens an acquired immunity to the disease when the more severe strain of the virus hit them.
🔺 Red Cross volunteers: caring for the sick during the Spanish Flu fell overwhelmingly on women (volunteers and professional nurses) who bore the brunt of the work at quarantine stations and camps, as well as exposing themselves to great personal risk
🔻 Influenza-ravaged Ft Riley soldiers in hospital camp 
The military, mobility and zoonosis Another theory attributes the Spanish Flu’s beginnings to the movements of the combatants in WWI. Virologist John Oxford favours the village of Étaples in France as the centre of the 1918 influenza infection. From a hospital camp here, 10,000 troops passed through every day…with their immune systems weakened by malnourishment and the stresses of battle and chemical attacks they were susceptible to the disease which was probably transmitted via a piggery and poultry on the same site. Once contracted, it’s dissemination was likely facilitated by mass transportation of troops by train.
Another view that has gained wide currency locates the Flu’s genesis in America’s Midwest. In recent times, historians led by Alfred W Crosby have supported the view that the epidemic started not in Europe but in a US Army base in Kansas in 1917 (America’s Forgotten Pandemic). According to adherents of this theory soldiers training at Fort Riley for combat in Europe contracted the H1N1 influenza virus which had mutated from pigs. The infected troops, they contend, then spread the virus via the war on the Western Front. Whether or not the virus started with WWI fighting men in France or in the US, it is undeniable that the soldiers moving around in trains and sailors in ships were agents of the Flu’s rapid dissemination [‘Spanish Flu’, History Today, (Upd. 05-Feb-2020), www.historytoday.com]. A recent, alternative origin view by molecular pathologist Jeffrey Taubenberger rejects the porcine transference explanation. Based on tests he did on exhumed victim tissue, Taubenberger contends that the epidemic was the result of bird-to-human transmission [‘Spanish flu: the killer that still stalks us, 100 years on’, (Mark Honigsbaum), The Guardian, 09-Sep-2018, www.theguardian.com].
(Image credit: Guia turístico)
Demographics: differential age groups The pattern of Coronavirus mortality points to the disease being most virulent and most fatal to elderly people (the seventies to the nineties age group). This accords with most flu season deaths, although unlike seasonal flu outbreaks Coronavirus contagion has (thus far) had minimal impact on children, in particular the under-fives (Honigsbaum). But the pattern of Spanish Flu was markedly different, the records show a targeting of young adults, eg, in the US 99% of fatalities in 1918-19 were people under 65, with nearly 50% in the 20 to 40 age bracket (‘Spanish Flu’, Wiki). Statistics from other countries on the 1918 outbreak conform to a similar trend.
🔺 Conveying the health message to the public (Source: www.shelflife.cooklib.org)
The Flu in a series of varyingly virulent waves The first wave of the Flu in early 1918 was relatively mild. This was followed by a second, killer wave in August. This mutated strain was especially virulent in three disparate places on the globe, Brest in France, Freetown in Sierra Leone and Boston in the US. There were myriad victims, some died (quickly) because they had not been exposed to the first, milder wave which prevented them from building up immunity to this more powerful strain [‘Four lessons the Spanish flu can teach us about coronavirus’ (Hannah Devlin), The Guardian, 04-Mar-2020, www.msn.com]. The second wave was a global pathogen sui generis. The bulk of the deaths occurred in a 13-week period (September to December). The lethality of the disease, and especially the speed with which it progressed, was the scariest part✧.
2nd wave curve in the US, 1918: note the different mortality peaks during Oct-Dec 1918 for St Louis (imposed a stringent lockdown) vs Philadelphia (much less restrictive approach)
(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007)
The symptoms of this murderously effective strain were unusual and extreme, eg, haemorrhaging from mucous membranes, bleeding from the eyes, ears and orifices, etc. The extreme severity of the symptoms were thought to be caused by cytokine storms (overreaction of the body’s immune system) (‘Spanish Flu’, Wiki) [‘Spanish Flu’, History, 12-Oct-2010, www.history.com]. The third and last strain of the Flu, in 1919, was markedly milder by comparison to the second, but still more intense than the first.
Many parallels exist between the 1918 flu outbreak and the present pandemic – of a positive nature, the widespread advocacy of wearing masks to limit the spread of disease and mandatory lockdowns. Plenty of negative parallels too – the disregarding of science and medical expertise on how to tackle the outbreak; countries engaging in playing the “blame game” against each other rather then co-operating on a united approach to the pandemic. There was especially, but not only in the US, a repetition by some of the denial at the national leadership level to square up to the pandemic and give it the complete seriousness it demanded.
✥ ⌯ ✥ ⌯ ✥
In 1919 in the middle of the flu crisis, Irish poet WB Yeats wrote in a poem the line for which he is perhaps best remembered: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”
✥ ⌯ ✥ ⌯ ✥
Footnote: The health authorities’ inability to check the juggernaut of the 1918 virus was exacerbated by misdiagnosis – at it’s onset the Spanish Flu was widely believed to be a bacterium like the Black Death, not a virus. Misreading the symptoms, the influenza outbreak was variously and erroneously diagnosed as dengue, cholera or typhoid (Spinney, ‘History Today’; ‘Spanish Flu’, History).
(Photo: State Archives & Records, NSW)
PostScript: The lessons of a global catastrophe The Spanish Flu in its vast human decimation rammed home lessons for post-WWI governments and health practitioners in its wake. Being helpless to prevent or halt the virus once in full swing, the vital need to develop vaccines to counter pandemics was subsequently understood. Advanced countries started to restructure their public health systems to try to cope (such as the United States’ NIH – National Institutes of Health, which emerged about 10 years after the Spanish Flu) [‘The great influenza The epic story of the deadliest plague in history‘ (JM Barry), Reviewed by Peter Palese, (JCI), www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov]. And of course the 1918 flu virus had other, indirect, outcomes…it led to universal healthcare, alternative medicine, intensive care facilities and a modern preoccupation with the benefits of healthy exercise under clean, clear skies (‘Pale Rider’).
⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴
✺ the name is a misnomer. The Spanish association came about thus: with the Great War still raging other combatant European nations such as France and Germany had imposed censorship restrictions on the reportage of the flu outbreak, whereas Spain being neutral in the war did not. When the Spanish press freely reported a serious eruption of the Flu, people outside the country unquestioningly assumed that the influenza came from Spain
⌖ to further break that down, more American troops died from the Spanish Flu than in combat during WWI (‘Pale Rider‘)
⊞ the numbers cited tend to be approximations given the paucity of adequate record-keeping at the time
◙ part of a new multidisciplinary approach to the subject including economists, sociologists and psychologists
◍ consequently life expectancy for Americans dropped by 12 years in 1918, and for the first time since Britain commenced recording data, the death-rate in 1919 exceeded the birth-rate (Honigsbaum)
✪ Pandemic: pan ⤑ all ║ demos ⤑ the people (not literally but fairly close)
⌀ although isolation did prove beneficial in some instances, such as in Australia where the virus didn’t arrive until 1919 and entry was closely monitored with a maritime quarantine program. As a result Australia’s death-rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population was one of the lowest recorded [‘Influenza pandemic’, National Museum of Australia, www.nma.gov.au]
✧ Philadelphia alone experienced 4,597 influenza deaths in a single week
Green Gang: Boatmen, Salt Smugglers, Secret Society, Triad and Social Organisation
The Green Gang (Qing Bang) was a Chinese form of mafia organisation based in Shànghâi, best known for their activities in the 1920s and 1930s as a web of street gangs. The career of their paramount leader, Du Yuesheng, has been well documented in a previous blog, The Emperors of Vice and Crime of Shànghâi‘s Yesteryear (February 2020). But the origins of the gang (which might be more usefully thought of as a clique) were rooted in a specific type of brotherhood associated with boatmen in the early Qing Dynasty (17th-18th centuries).
The story starts with “three sworn brothers”, Weng Yan, Qian Jian and Pan Qing, who won a contract from Emperor Yongzheng (Yinzhen) to manage the transport of grain materials on the Yellow River (Grand Canal) route in Old China. The trio went on to form an association of boatmen which utilised Luojiao principles (Buddhist sect) to attract workers. The organisation that evolved on the Canal was a kind of professional trade federation dedicated to serving the interests of it’s waterborne employees (including the use of strong-arm tactics to protect them from corrupt officials and local thugs) [Brian G Martin, The Shànghâi Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937, (1996)].
🔺 The Grand Canal
Over time, the structure took on a quasi-government character with specific departments formed to handle different functions. It also evolved into a secret society with very strict membership criteria involving a seven-year process before members would be fully admitted. The society’s activities earned the ire of the authorities and was driven underground. After experiencing disruptions in the Grand Canal trade the business eventually dissolved [‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’, (Sun Jiahui), (The World of Chinese), 28-Aug-2015, www.theworldofchinese.com].
But the society and the boatmen adapted to the changes, segueing into the salt smuggling business in northern Jiangsu Province – in the process forming a new organisation, Anqing Daoyou (literally “Friends of the Way of Tranquility and Purity”), which was a direct forerunner to the modern Green Gang organisation (‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’).
Green versus Red
For a brief period in the early 20th century the Green Gang shared the underworld spotlight in Shànghâi with a rival body, the Red Gang (Hong Gang)❇. In the years of the early republic the ‘Reds’ managed to establish “a complete monopoly over the illicit trade of (Shànghâi) opium” in cooperation with the Green Gang and the Big Eight Mob (the ubiquitous Green Gang boss Huang Jirong had links to the Red Gang)[‘Shanghai’s Gangs in the Early 20th Century’, (Clay Capra), 10-Dec-2018, www.umdjanus.com]. By the 1920s the ‘Greens’ by themselves were a formidable mob organisation in Shànghâi, trafficking in opium, using stand-over tactics to intimidate workers and business owners [‘The Green Gang of Shanghai’, (Pat Welsh), (China Insight), 01-Nov-2013, www.chinainsight.info].
Du and the KMT Huang (and his wife Lin Guisheng) elevated Du Yuesheng to a leadership position in Green Gang based in the French Concession area, from which he never looked back. The Green Gang formed an interesting two-way relationship with the KMT (Kuomintang), it received protection from the KMT and was given a free hand to carry on it’s various illegal business activities in Shànghâi. In return the Green Gang smuggled weapons and money (eg, opium profits) to the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek✡ co-opted Du’s Green Gang in the suppression of the communist element in Shànghâi in 1927 (up to 5,000 communist opponents of Chiang liquidated). Chiang and the Nationalist government—with only a nominal hold over the country—needed the support of local warlords and drug lords like Du as much as they needed the KMT’s imprimatur [Derks, Hans. History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, Ca. 1600-1950. Vol. 105, Brill, 2012. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbhdf. Accessed 21 Feb. 2020].
🔺 Chiang Kai-shek
A secret society of gangsters and a …
The Green Gang was a criminal confederation of leviathan proportions, a Chinese Triad coordinating a wide network of individual gangs with connections to powerful and influential figures in Shànghâi. But another arm of the organisation had a social welfare role through membership of the secret societies. Peasants for example who were driven off their land and into the city could find aid in the banghui – a “mutual help group” [‘Green Gang’, www.streetsofshanghai.pbworks.com; ’History of the Opium Problem’].
Footnote: Drawing the curtain on the Green Gang With the defeat and flight of Chiang’s KMT in 1949, the Green Gang also fled Shànghâi for Hong Kong where it opened up heroin refineries, but couldn’t establish itself in the market against the stiff competition of the local drug syndicates in HK. By 1955 Qing Bang had disappeared from the scene [‘Green Gang’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].
↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬
❇ at one point the two gangs were allied
✡ Chiang himself may have been a member of the Green Gang during the years he lived in Shànghâi, however the evidence is hazy on this (‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’)