98. Ecos de la Gripe de 1918: Trauma Familiar y Lecciones Olvidadas en Pandemias

1. Impacto Devastador y Legado de Orfandad.

La pandemia de gripe de 1918 dejó una profunda cicatriz en innumerables familias, resultando en la pérdida de padres, hijos y hermanos, y creando una generación de huérfanos que enfrentaron vidas de adversidad y trauma.

My great uncle died in the 1918 flu pandemic. He was 9 months old. I dont think my mother, who was 5 years old at the time, ever got over it.
My maternal grandmother also died from the flu pandemic in 1918 - only 3 weeks after giving birth to my mother. Leaving her new baby, a toddler and a husband who then had a nervous breakdown .
My paternal grandmother died in 1919 from the flu pandemic leaving my grandmother with 4 children under 5 years old.
My granny lost her father,mother,2 brothers in 1918 flu pandemic,only her and her twin sister was left alive.she was raised by a neighbor who took both of them in.
My paternal great grandmother died in the 1918 flu pandemic along with an infant. The remaining children including my grandpa were raised on a sort of orphan ranch in montana.
My great great grandparents died in the 1918 flu pandemic, orphaning my great grandfather his siblings. One sibling died from coughing bronchitis? not long after. My great grandfather his surviving siblings were 1918 pandemic orphans you bet that left a scorch mark on our family history.
My grandfather lost his 1st wife in 1918 flu pandemic. He married his 2nd wife my grandmother because his 7 kids needed a stepmother.
My paternal grandfather died in the 1918 flu pandemic. Even worse, my paternal grandmother died of tb 6 months later, leaving my father, his brother sister orphans. My father was only 6 at the time and he learned to speak english by attending lutheran mass, first in norwegian, then english.
My grandmother lost both parents in that flu pandemic and she and her siblings were sent to an orphanage in new york where they were all split up.
My grandparents had a 2 month old son die in the 1918 pandemic and a 2 year old daughter that died of influenza.
They lost four children in the space of a week. Alice piper describes the experience of her grandparents, gordon cox and evelyn cox flood, during the 1918 flu pandemic.
My maternal great-grandfather died in the flu pandemic along with his fourteen year old daughter. My great-grandmother was left a widow with my grandmother and her sister to look after.
Marilynn recalls stories of how marcella lost two brothers, robert an infant and vernon a toddler, to the 1918 flu pandemic when it swept through rural north dakota that winter.
My maternal grandmother was put up for adoption because of the 1918 pandemic that killed her father.
My great grandmother was one of 9 children - 6 of which died in the 1918 flu pandemic.

2. Trauma Silencioso y Memoria Colectiva.

Los sobrevivientes de la pandemia de 1918 a menudo cargaron con un trauma profundo y duradero, que se manifestaba en hábitos inusuales o un silencio persistente sobre las pérdidas, afectando la memoria colectiva de las generaciones futuras.

My grandmother lived through the spanish flu pandemic in 1918. She would have been 20 at the time. It killer her father in 1919 and she ended up taking over the family business. She was fierce, but had deep-seated trauma the rest of her long life.
Ive been hearing about the 1918 pandemic from people directly impacted my entire life my great-grandfather, a healthy young man, died before my grandmother was born. It really caught me off guard in 2020 when half my family just ignored our history and refused to take covid seriously.
My paternal grandmother lost two older sisters to the 1918 pandemic, and i only found out from my father tangentially. Nobody ever talked about it. I dont even know their names.
Weird realization to have sink in on a random workday my great-grandmother would have worked the 1918 pandemic. No wonder mom described her as relentlessly messed up.
Early on in the pandemic, i was speaking to an older relative who was born a few years after the end of the spanish flu. And she said her parents and grandparents never talked about it, but that some of their weird habits make more sense in retrospect.
My grandfather was one of three brothers before the 1918 pandemic influenza and one of two brothers after. Neither he nor my great-uncle ever talked much about that. I used to wonder why. I no longer do.
Only as an adult, reading about the pandemic of 1918, and of medical records that showed that about 5 of survivors showed signs of permanent mental impairment afterward, i fully realized what my grandmother had meant.
My grandparents didnt talk about it, about their lives at all. And they survived wwi, the 1918 pandemic, the depression. The great-grandmother i never knew lost two aged 1 and 2, a girl and a boy. And an unmarried son 33. One son, 2 daughters lived. My grandmother never spoke of the lost ones.

3. La Importancia de las Vacunas y la Salud Pública.

Las experiencias de la pandemia de 1918 reforzaron la convicción en la importancia de las vacunas y las medidas de salud pública, una lección que muchos lamentan que se haya olvidado o ignorado en tiempos más recientes.

So many time ive posted how my grandfather died when my father was a little kid from pneumonia due to lung damage from the 1918 flu. We have a flu vaccine today as direct result of that pandemic because that level of death and harm wasnt something society wanted to see again. That is a good thing.
My fathers infant sister died in the 1918 flu pandemic. My grandfather had tears in his eyes as he told me, years later, that he held her little body in his arms as she succumbed to it. A vaccine may have saved her.
My grandmother begged me to get a flu shot every year because she lived through that pandemic, and so many didnt.
My parents always made sure i got every vaccine. Im still here.
My granddad dads dad lost a 22 year old sister to polio in 1940. Having older siblings who had survived the flu pandemic, he was always very pro vaccine.
My great grandmother survived the pandemic in 1918. Told me stories, i will be getting vaccinated again! and wearing my mask again, partly to protect.partly to piss off trumpholes.
My grandma watcher her uncle die of tetanus and lived through the spanish flu pandemic and cholera epidemics. We got every vaccine offered. Same for my daughter as i remember the stories.
We take our vaccines for granted.
My great grandmother was a pregnant nurse during the 1918 flu pandemic. Got one of the first shots.
My mum is in her 90s she remembers the horrors of these harmless childhood diseases she remembers polio. My gran would tell us stories of the 1918 flu pandemic and how her sister died and so many others.
I regularly visit the grave of a young woman who died in the 1918 pandemic. Im sure she would have gotten a vaccination and lived if it was available.
My great grandmother was one of 9 children - 6 of which died in the 1918 flu pandemic. I know if they had a vaccine - they most certainly would have vaccinated all of their children!
Vaccines save lives.
My mum dad had survived the 1918 pandemic id read about it.
My parents would have begged to differ. They lived through the great depression, lost friends and relatives to now preventable diseases like tb, polio, diptheria, and the 1918 flu pandemic.

4. Paralelismos con la Pandemia de COVID-19.

La experiencia de la pandemia de COVID-19 revivió recuerdos y generó comparaciones con la gripe de 1918, destacando patrones de negación, la importancia de la ciencia y la resiliencia humana frente a crisis sanitarias globales.

My dad lived through the 1918 flu pandemic. I thought a lot about that when we were in the throes of covid.
It really caught me off guard in 2020 when half my family just ignored our history and refused to take covid seriously.
And people like that cost many new zealanders their lives in the post-ww1 flu pandemic. My oldest living relative was born 1936 remembers the grief of parents and grandparents whod lost siblings, cousins, children, friends. Then it happened again with covid. And now measles. Again.
I went into a deep dive of the influenza pandemic years before covid cause my gram always talked about it her dad twin died which was apparently unusual cause noone else ever discussed it. It was nuts seeing covid happen and watching the response to it during after line up so well.
My grandfather hated trump - we absolutely connected on that. Grandpa herb was a main father figure in my life, he supported me as his grandson when i came out as trans. A convo we had before he passed was the comparison of society post-1918 flu and society during the ongoing covid-19 pandemic.
I lost about 6 members of my extended family during the 2020 pandemic including an uncle and aunt,.
I read the great influenza right at the beginning of the pandemic and i learned a ton about the invention of vaccines and treatments for viruses. Nothing was worse for my mental health than to see peoples anti-vax reactions.
I sometimes try to locate myself in a point of time and ask what a young person would face in the future. In 1900, that person would live through, if lucky, two world wars, a flu pandemic, the great depression, korea, vietnam, multiple genocides financial crises. This exercise does not comfort me.
I dont know if it was like that where you live, but during the pandemic we used to give the birthday person a separate cupcake with the candles. Can we please bring this back? ive always hated seeing people blow candles thinking they might be spitting on the cake.
I have a significant case of the flu. It is worse than the case of covid-19 i had when the pandemic was starting.
I never thought i would be reliving my grandparents lives pandemic, great depression, and possibly another world war. Good times!

5. Cementerios como Testigos Silenciosos.

Los cementerios antiguos sirven como conmovedores recordatorios físicos de la devastación de la pandemia de 1918, con hileras de tumbas, especialmente de niños, que atestiguan la magnitud de la pérdida y el sufrimiento.

In the cemetery where my grandparents are buried is a large section of graves of children who died from the flu pandemic in 1918. It always stops me when i pass it.
Walked a historical cemetery with . At a history conference once and stumbled across rows rows of graves- most of them babies and children- who died in fall 1918 from the flu pandemic.
Friends looked up a family that had lived on their property in the early 1900s. Every child in the family died in the 1918 pandemic. The whole family wiped out. Every family in the area lost children. Those little cemetery markers are heartbreakers. Vaccines save lives.
The deaths were from the world wide flu pandemic. I have been to the cemetery and seen the graves of my mothers companions who perished.
The old cemetery in my hometown had a section called babyland. Many dates went back to the 1918-19 flu pandemic.
Or walk in your local cemetery, the parts before 1920. Or do your family genealogy and pay attention to how old people were when they died, and when multiple family members died within a few months of each other.
During the pandemic, my cousin and i used to hike around cemeteries. There were literal fields of graves of dead babies and children.