INFLUENZA 1918 - WATCH THE PBS VIDEO and DECIDE ABOUT WEARING A MASK

INFLUENZA 1918 - LINK TO WATCH VIDEO

Catching up on documentary films these days (as well as working on my own personal genealogy research).  Been wearing a mask.  Some are bandanas wrapped around and knotted, some are hand sewn, and a friend made me one too.


GOT TO ADMIT I HOPE THE DAY WILL COME WHEN I CAN HAVE A MASK BURNING PARTY!

CORONA VIRUS PANDEMICS - DEATH RECORDS - GENEALOGY

Do you think you could stay at home for two weeks - possibly be alone the entire time - and keep busy?

I think I could.

I need time to organize my household, go through my closets, ready things for donation.

I can imagine catching up on my reading, watching movies I haven't yet, trying recipes I've been meaning to make. Writing letters or calling old friends I haven't had contact with in a while.  And of course there's always genealogy research and family history writing to continue.

Maybe you're sequestering yourself at the moment, or just staying home and out of crowds more than usual, and maybe you're reading this blog - ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY Blogspot to occupy your time.

I've been thinking about the term PANDEMIC and how diseases effected whole populations.  Like maybe all of you, my ancestors/ family have died of:

Tuberculosis

Cholera

Typhus 

The flu - as recently as 1955 and 1963 (Seeing the death records reminds me that taking the flu shot is a good idea.)

And perhaps most frightening - Small Pox.  As I understand it, you could catch it and go through horrible symptoms such as so much vomiting that you became completely dehydrated, resulting in organ failure.  There were also hideous weeping sores that left survivors with scars. A husband could give it to his wife who was nursing a newborn and all three would be dead in days.  A  feminine survivor in, say, colonial Philadelphia, might use pink colored wax - that contained led - to fill in the scars and give herself a smooth complexion.

I've seen the epidemics or pandemics in church records especially, when whole rows of people, young and old,  related or not, have the same reason for death listed. One after another.

An epidemic becomes a PANDEMIC when it effects a whole country or the world.

Pandemics have weened some DNA from populations.  There's some evidence that those who were more resistant may have even had changes in their DNA that they could pass on.  For instance the Black Death required thousands of burials and in those days before modern sanitation every opportunity to catch it and yet some survived.

The Black Death did something else to Europe.  People discarded class considerations in order to re-partner as a matter of survival.

And as there was more superstition than science at that point, people did not understand the role of filth.

I'm sure you are all listening to the news, watching YouTube videos, reading newspapers and on-line articles with the latest on this Wuhan Coronavirus.  Mixed in there is some speculation, some fake news (in both suggesting there is no problem and suggesting it's totally out of control.)

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THE PLAGUE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

THE PLAGUE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

ONE THIRD of Europe's population was wiped out when the Plague (otherwise known as the Black Plague) was through killing people off, and the Jews were made scapegoats in some locations.

This DVD by History Channel is excellent. It has a bit of focus on the personal physician of the Pope of those times, a physician who did catch a dose but lived, after refusing to stop doctoring even as so many other doctors ran for their own lives.

Watching it I'm reminded that religious hysteria and scapegoating can go together.

I'm reminded that many of us of European ancestry are descended from those who escaped or survived the Plague, though I don't know if that means we have immunity. (Maybe there will always be a new disease to conquer?)

I'm also reminded of the fear we have in 2012 of biological warfare and the emphasis on end times.

I can say this: I have no fear that the world will end in December of this year. The Mayan calendar is round - a wheel - and I believe it's a wheel that can be given another twirl. However, I meet so many people who are invested in End Times and it's always possible that some humans will cause there to be exceptional times out of fervor and expectation. I hope not.  I hope this too shall pass.

I plan to live through the year because with the 1940 census out, even with all the help of databases, it will take a while for me to document hundreds of people I expect to find on it. (As a matter of fact I have to live many more years because I want to be here for the 1950!)

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