02-02 Public Health

It was a history project in high school about the Spanish Flu and WW1, that led to a long chat with my grandparents. Public health? What’s that? I’m talking 1919.
My grandfather and their two daughters were deadly sick for about three weeks. Grandmother kept working to support the family. She never could understand why she did not get sick.
It was one surprise after another. The conversation with my grandmother went something like this. “Did they close the movie theatres? Not where we lived. It was in a theatre where Belle and Ray caught the virus.” Belle was my mother.
“Did anyone warn you about what to do on the radio? I only listened to the radio to improve my English. We thought soldiers brought the flu.”
No one anywhere warned them about the flu reappearing in a second and third wave. Not sure anyone knew viruses mutated.
Grandmother remembered someone on the radio condemning “spitting”. Grandfather called it a nasty habit.
“And what about your doctor? We could not afford a doctor. But your grandfather had access to free medical attention at the Christie Street Veterans Hospital. He was just too sick to leave the house. When he did go to the hospital he found out it was the Spanish Flu.”
Some serious lessons here. Despite the current levels of public health in the developed nations, there is always so much they never know about new viruses. At least today, public health officials know something about vaccines.
Our public health authorities claim that the source of the current virus is what they call “wet markets”. The photo shows a modern Chinese wet market, where fresh meat is butchered and sold fresh each day. Pork, yes. But also, yummy bats, snakes, frogs and whatever.
I saw one in Hong Kong in 1977, and it was not pretty. A pig screaming bloody murder and having its throat slit right on the street. And blood everywhere and running down the sewer. I know why they call it a “wet” market. They were continuously hosing the areas where the animals were being butchered.
And a lady wanting some fresh sparrows for dinner. They just reached into a cage, grabbed four, broke their necks, and put them in a bag.
And it is not just a China thing. I have seen them in Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. And how about dogs hanging from hooks in Korean butcher shops. Lot of this still goes on today in areas where tourists never show.
Apparently, there are certain types of viruses that will transmit from animals to humans. And if the reports from our public health agencies are on the mark, both the SARS virus and its relative, the Coronavirus, were transmitted from animals in a Chinese wet market.
We learned a lot from the Spanish Flu, and created a Federal Department of Health in Canada, and similar institutions around the world.
The impact of this virus will be, in my opinion, a public demand for more national self-reliance. And not just around the supply of public health stuff. But a subtle, sophisticated, main steam restructuring of what we call globalism.
I saw it in WW2, when we cooperated with allies, but still had a significant national defense capability.
Who said you can’t mix public health and politics? Never let a good crisis go to waste.