WW1 climate anomaly may have worsened 1918 pandemic
For much of World War I, the weather across Europe was unrelentingly foul. Torrential, incessant rain turned battlefields into muck and flooded trenches and tunnels, while bitterly cold nights brought frostbite.
The reason for these conditions may be a rare climate anomaly that persisted for six years, new research indicates.
After examining an ice core as well as historic weather and mortality records, scientists determined that inundations of cold air from the Atlantic Ocean may have increased the casualties of World War I and worsened the 1918 influenza pandemic, which infected 500 million people and killed at least 50 million.
“We’ve always known that the weather during World War I, in particular during certain battles…was atrocious,” says Alexander More, a climate and health scientist and historian at Harvard University and the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, who reported the findings on September 24 in the journal GeoHealth. “But we never knew really what was going on—what caused this cold weather and how long did this happen?”
To find out, More and his colleagues examined an ice core from the Swiss-Italian Alps. They found that an unusually high amount of sodium and chlorine was preserved in the ice that formed from 1914 to 1919, which indicates that salty marine air was hovering over Europe. This area typically receives cold winds from around Iceland, and warm, dry winds that pick up distinctive red Saharan dust on their journey northward from the Azores. “In general, what you have is this back-and-forth,” More says. “During this climate anomaly, the Icelandic low-pressure system really became prominent and stayed over Europe for longer.”
The ice core also indicated that this kind of climate event has occurred several times before and since World War I. However, the anomaly that marked the war and the pandemic was the strongest in a century.
The researchers next compared the timeline during which salty air was blowing in off the North Atlantic with records of temperature, precipitation, and deaths from 13 European countries over the same period. “We found that there was a spike in deaths every time there was a spike in cold marine air and precipitation coming over Europe,” More says.
These peaks in cold marine air may have influenced major battles such as the Somme, Verdun, and the Third Battle of Ypres in 1916 and 1917. As trenches flooded, bomb craters on the battlefield filled with muddy water and swallowed artillery, horses, and people. The writer Mary Borden, who served as a nurse, described the Somme as a “liquid grave” in her 1917 poem “The Song of the Mud.”
These cold, wet conditions caused many soldiers to develop trench foot and to die from drowning, exposure, pneumonia, and other infections. They may also have abetted the spread of influenza, which caused its first major wave of illness in Europe in the spring of 1918. The deadliest wave of the pandemic began in September, during a period of unusually chilly, wet weather.
More and his colleagues suspect that the climate anomaly disrupted wind patterns enough to interfere with migrating birds. Mallard ducks, which normally travel back and forth between western Europe and Russia, are important reservoirs of avian flu viruses. These viruses are primarily passed from animals to people through water sources contaminated with infected birds’ droppings.
Other studies have shown that the ducks can alter their typical migratory journeys in responses to changes in the environment. The inclement weather may have kept the birds on the western front through the autumn in 1917 and 1918, close to both military and civilian populations, providing an excellent opportunity for the virus to cross between species and mutate.
Understanding how and why a particular disease spreads is a complicated matter, notes Zhaohua Wu, a professor of meteorology at Florida State University who has studied the links between weather and influenza and was not involved in the new research. Influenza tends to thrive in cold and dry conditions, although it can transmit in all kinds of weather. The growth of a pandemic is shaped by a myriad of variables relating to the characteristics of the disease and its susceptible population as well as the prevailing environmental conditions.
Although the connection between the influxes of marine air and historical events is still speculative at this point, it’s vital that we learn more about the relationship between climate and infectious diseases. “The paper proposes a very interesting question,” Wu says. “We need more bridges to connect the climate or weather to the pandemic part.”
The kind of anomaly that More and his colleagues identified seems to have grown weaker in recent decades, likely because of climate change. However, our weather is being disrupted in many other ways that scientists predict will fuel future outbreaks and pandemics.
“Examples of this are everywhere; zika, dengue, and malaria are becoming much more prevalent…because the vectors—the mosquitoes—can reach much wider areas now because of global warming,” More says. As we face a new pandemic and possible further waves of COVID-19, the findings are a reminder that changes in climate alter the movements of animals that carry diseases.
“Science is giving us an insight and a warning,” More says. “You [can] look at previous examples of when this happened, like the Spanish flu, to have a better understanding of what solutions we can find.”
Read more at www.popsci.com
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Joseph Olson
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“The Great Influenza” by John M Barry, 2004 > 450 pages
“Pandemics Are PERSONAL” at principia-scientific(.)org > additional cofactors
“1918 Spanish Flu, History Documentary” at Chromosome8 website > vaccine cofactor
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P
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I can’t believe that nobody is raising the issue of the utilization of chemical weapons during WW1 as a factor of the so called Spanish flu pandemic. According to sciencehistory channel: Three substances were responsible for most chemical-weapons injuries and deaths during World War I: chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas. And I would add: what other chemicals have been used during those conflicts that nobody wants to talk or know about it?
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Finn McCool
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Man correlates Spanish Flu to salt found in an ice core.
I had to check the source of this drivel and found myself at the ‘Popular Science’ website.
Popular, it maybe. Science, it certainly is not.
I also read the original paper by Alexander More et al. Yet more fanciful drivel!
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MattH
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The interpretation of higher than normal sea water content in the precipitation is interesting.
Because of engine failure I was caught out in a storm in a 16′ cabin runabout, Tasman Sea, one time. We used 3 dive bags as sea anchors off the bow to avoid capsize.
Wind strength was reported as 45 knots with heavier gusts.
In the early hours of the morning one was unable to see ones hand when held 8″ in front of ones face, it was so dark.
We did however, have a light show. The gusts of wind was blowing the tops off the waves into the air and high into the “heavens”. The light show was green phosphorescence in the water being blown airborne in sheets.
Some miles away were two distinct glows like the lights of a city glowing over the horizon.
The only explanation I could rationalize for this phenomenon was the two harbour bars to our East and the agitation of water and wind on those harbour bars causing sea spray and inherent phosphorescent to be scattered skyward.
High winds can increase seawater content in the atmosphere and the rest of this article makes sense other than was it a multi year weather anomaly or climate anomaly?
Seeing is believing, oops, knowing. Our survival did make the front page of the National newspaper.
Have a Nice day. Matt
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Tom O
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I thought the process of evaporation, which is what generally gets moisture into the air tends to leave chemicals behind. I would think if “salty marine air” was possible, hurricanes would be dumping salt water on the land as they come ashore, and we would have salt poisoned land inland. Is it really possible for the “salt” in ocean water to be lifted with evaporation and deposited vast distances inland? Especially from a cold climate versus a warm one?
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Tom Anderson
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Correlation is not causation; except of confusion.
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MattH
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Correlation is not causation; but it can and usually must necessitate further analysis, study and understanding.
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Dean Michael Jackson
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There was no 1918 pandemic, just as there’s no COVID-19 ‘pantasy’ today. People were dying in vast numbers due to the patent coming off of Bayer’s Aspirin in 1917, coincidence, huh?
“7. Aspirin overdoses were responsible for thousands of deaths [sic: millions]
The Spanish Flu pandemic coincided with the patents on aspirin held by Bayer expiring. Scores of pharmaceutical manufacturers began making and marketing the drug, which was widely prescribed by doctors for relieving the symptoms of the illness. The severity of the symptoms led some doctors to prescribe huge doses of aspirin. The American Medical Association in its Journal recommended doses of between 8 and 31 grams of aspirin, a suggestion which was backed by the Surgeon General of the United States. A normal dose of two aspirin is 650 milligrams. The massive doses administered by physicians, or self-administered by their patients, led to often fatal consequences.
The consequences of an aspirin overdose were little understood by the physicians of the day. It later became understood that a dose at the levels being recommended in 1918 could cause hyperventilation in about one third of all patients. It could also cause congestion to build up in the lungs, leading to congestive heart failure. The death rate from Spanish Flu spiked in October, 1918, coincident with the recommendations to use massive doses of aspirin to treat the symptoms of the illness. How many died of aspirin overdoses has never been accurately determined, since aspirin killed in much the same manner as the flu itself, and the consequences of aspirin overdose were masked by the same symptoms it was prescribed to treat.”
https://historycollection.com/19-sickening-events-during-the-spanish-flu-of-1918/7/
Aspirin, and other toxic drugs, were responsible for over 90% of the so-called Spanish Flu (regular flu seasonal deaths taking place concurrently, representing approximately 10% of attributed deaths)…
https://www.ecampnd.com/homeopathy/A_Chorus_of_Fifty_in_Harmony.pdf
…and by September 1918 physicians of the day who relied on these toxic drugs were so informed by those physicians who didn’t use toxic drugs for treatment.
“In a plant of 8,000 workers we had only one death. The patients were not drugged to death. Gelsemium was practically the only remedy used. We used no aspirin and no vaccines.” – Frank Wieland, M.D., Chicago.
“I attended over one hundred cases without any fatalities…I never gave aspirin…” – G. H. Wright, M.D., Forest Glen, Md.
“I had 300 cases and one death; one good homeopathic had 275 cases and no deaths. I am a health officer of my city. One old school man had 294 cases and reported 15 deaths. Aspirin and Iodized lime were the remedies used by the old school.” – H. H. Crum, M.D., Ithaca, NY.
“I treated 455 cases of influenza and 20 cases of pneumonia with no deaths. Remedies: Gelsemium, Bryonia, Epis, etc.” – T. G. Barnhill, M.D, Findlay, Ohio.
“Murphy, of Lansing, Michigan, treated 325 cases of influenza in a camp where the mortality rate had been 20%, while the mortality rate under his homeopathic treatment was less than 3%.” – W. H. Wilson, M.D., Chicabo.
“In the month of October 1918 I treated, in round numbers, 200 cases of influenza without a death.” – W. R. Andrews, M.D., Mannington, W. Va.
“Dr. M. I. Boger of Portsmouth, N. H. treated 331 cases with two deaths. Dr. G. G. Bascom of Lake Wilson, Minn., 300 cases with no deaths.” – E. C. Price, M.D., Baltimore.
“In the Public Heath service in New Mexico among the Mexican population chiefly Veratrum viride, Gelsemium, and Bryonia were introduced and excellent results followed their use in influenza. No cases died under homeopathic medication.” – C. E. Fisher, M.D., Chicago.
“My low death rate at Camp Lee was due entirely to the fact that I avoided the use of Aspirin absolutely. I was complimented by the chief medical officer as having the lowest death rate in the hospital. After the medical chief had noted the effect of Aspirin on the blood and the results which I was having in using Homeopathy he discouraged the use of Aspirin and the death rate came down very rapidly after that ruling.” – Carleton A. Harkness, M.D., Chicago.
https://www.ecampnd.com/homeopathy/A_Chorus_of_Fifty_in_Harmony.pdf
At my blog, bead the articles…
‘House of Cards: The Collapse of the ‘Collapse’ of the USSR’
‘Playing Hide And Seek In Yugoslavia’
Then read the article, ‘The Marxist Co-Option Of History And The Use Of The Scissors Strategy To Manipulate History Towards The Goal Of Marxist Liberation’
Solution
The West will form new political parties where candidates are vetted for Marxist ideology/blackmail, the use of the polygraph to be an important tool for such vetting. Then the West can finally liberate the globe of vanguard Communism.
My blog…
https://djdnotice.blogspot.com/2018/09/d-notice-articles-article-55-7418.html
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