While the state of Mississippi currently has no known or reported cases, the growing global concern over probable U.S. impacts from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic certainly should not be wasted on Mississippians.
To be sure, unwarranted panic or fear of COVID-19 should be discouraged. The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) is currently reporting: “The risk of infection to the Mississippi public continues to be low. To date, there are no cases in Mississippi and no suspects under investigation for potential infection.”
Additionally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as of Feb. 29 reports there were a total of 62 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., including those repatriated to the U.S. from cruise ships abroad or from Wuhan, China. Various university medical schools around the country have gauged the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at 74 and 76.
Again, none of those cases are in Mississippi and none have been reported in the Southeast. That’s the good news. But pandemics, particularly influenza, are a significant part of the history of the U.S. and that history touches Mississippi.
Just over a century ago, Mississippi took a significant hit in the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918-19. Writing for the Mississippi Encyclopedia, University of Southern Mississippi anthropologist and librarian Diane DeCesare Ross observed:
“Mississippi was not immune to worldwide influenza pandemic that struck in 1918–19, killing as many as forty million people around the globe. The Spanish flu reached the state in September 1918 and was acute for only a little over a month, but by the end of the year, 6,219 Mississippians had died, most of them infants and adults aged twenty-five to thirty-five.
“Adams and Sunflower Counties had the highest death rates, while George and Stone Counties had the lowest rates. The epidemic peaked in Mississippi on 22 October, when 9,842 new cases were reported. The incidence of disease subsequently declined gradually, with a brief recurrence in January 1919.”
Noted historian John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza and Rising Tide: The Great Flood of 1927, wrote in 2017 of his concerns for exactly the type of global pandemic threat that COVID-19 is said to represent:
“We are arguably as vulnerable—or more vulnerable—to another pandemic as we were in 1918. Today top public health experts routinely rank influenza as potentially the most dangerous ‘emerging’ health threat we face. Earlier this year, upon leaving his post as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden was asked what scared him the most, what kept him up at night. ‘The biggest concern is always for an influenza pandemic... [It] really is the worst-case scenario.’ So, the tragic events of 100 years ago have a surprising urgency—especially since the most crucial lessons to be learned from the disaster have yet to be absorbed.”
Poignantly, the 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak remains a part of the lore of Mississippi State University. George Hall, now an academic building, was built as the university’s original infirmary. A sufficient number of MSU cadets were afflicted with the deadly flu that the basement of the infirmary was converted temporarily as a makeshift morgue.
Able then-Mississippi A&M students built coffins for their classmates and wagons transported the coffins of the approximately 20 students who died to the campus railroad depot.
By either party, politicization of the COVID-19 outbreak is misguided and dangerous in the extreme. So, too, is overstating the threat or understating the potential dangers. In 1918, Mississippians argued over the closing of county fairs and pool halls as a means to stop the spread of the disease.
Some of our Mississippi ancestors failed to take the threat of global pandemic flu seriously a century ago when mass communications were primitive and public health controls were lax and unwieldy. Surely, we won’t make that mistake again in the 21st century.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
Kingfish note: Pandemic?
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Sid Salter: Coronavirus Isn't First Pandemic to Threaten Mississippians.
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13 comments:
I understand that yellow fever also killed many in Mississippi, wiping out entire communities around the turn of the 20th century.
You are correct about Yellow Fever in the South, not just Mississippi, Anon 8:45. There are several really good books on the topic. Very interesting history. The American Plague, Yellow Fever and South are both good reads that come to mind and there are probably others.
Interesting how Hair Stylist are handling the problem. Copy & paste the url below to your address bar.
https://youtu.be/Sc6J_XImmbE
"Again, none of those cases are in Mississippi and none have been reported in the Southeast."
Um, Mr. Salter? As of at least today, there were confirmed cases reported in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Maybe you did your research last week?
DIY Recipe for Hand Cleaner
There are multiple ways to make your own sanitizer and one recipe posted on ThoughtCo.com by chemistry expert Anne Marie Helmenstine, requires two ingredients: isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) and aloe vera gel.
The ThoughtCo recipe calls for two-thirds of a cup of the rubbing alcohol or ethanol and a third-cup of aloe vera gel. According to the reference site, essential oils can also be added to it.
In a similar recipe, Good Housekeeping magazine uses vodka as the alcohol.
Since Mississippi is always last in everything, I bet we won't have any infections.
I've been to numerous developing nations in Asia and South America. I've seen filth that makes the poorest parts of Jackson appear civilized. I'm talking roadside butcher shops with flies all over the meat next to open public defecation.
The places in America struggling with Covid-19 have open defecation in the streets. The point is if you are that unhygienic then you are just asking for disease and death. I ain't skeered.
America can handle this. As bad as things are in Mississippi we have indoor plumbing and we aren't going to be harvesting our pets for food anytime soon.
Don't be too sure about that, Anon 9:32. Last week we had 50+ USM students and faculty return from a choral competition in south Korea, and that's just a group we know about.
@9:16 - Thanks for info about some books. I'd like to read some. I grew up in southwest Hinds County, kind of between the towns of Raymond, Terry and Lerned. There are numerous yellow fever cemeteries in that area, now mostly abandoned in the woods, overgrown and unattended, that attest to the death toll and the clustering of death dates for young and old alike. It must have been a horrific time. The entire community of Dry Grove was wiped out. No one knew that the fever was mosquito-borne and wasn't until the epidemic death toll of construction workers building the Panama Canal led to the discovery of mosquito causation.
Sid, there is absolutely no evidence to compare the coronavirus to the 1918 flu pandemic. You call for no panic, but then write and article that implies the two events are similar. I’m confident the students at Miss A&M will not have to build coffins for their fellow students this time around.
There are no reported coronavirus cases in Mississippi because there are no tests for the virus in Mississippi. UMC has no tests to be able to test its patients for the virus if they show up with symptoms. Further, their doctors and nurses have been given no information on how to treat a potential coronavirus patient.
Interesting to see Yellow Fever mentioned. I've stumbled across Yellow Fever cemeteries while hunting. I had no idea what they were until just now. Going to end up spending the rest of the day reading.
Ole' Sid hops onto this craze too.
Why am I not surprised ?
Lawd have mercy Mister Salter . . . please opine about something relevant to Mississippi.
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