More Influenza

Matt Yglesias has a few posts wondering why text books don't really deal with the Influenza Epidemic of almost 100 years ago. Like my own experience, I guess Yglesias learned nothing of this in class either - how could such a cataclysmic event be so overlooked in our school textbooks? He wonders if it's mostly due to history books only wanting to give the "good news;" back in June I wondered if the flu epidemic was TOO GREAT for text books (not sexy, like 9/11 may be seen.)

But the above quotes back up what I’ve always kinda thought. 9/11 was bad, sure; but what nobody wants to say out loud is that it wasn’t THAT bad. It was just bad enough for us as a country to embrace our very own “tragedy,” to give ourselves a JFK Assassination date if you will. To give ourselves a reason to practice rituals of collective mourning. It was a tragedy, but it was small enough that we don’t mind commemorating it with any gift shop piece of crap that we can sell. I don’t see shot glasses with pictures of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and I certainly have never seen wifebeaters with INFLUENZA 1918: NEVER FORGET pictures on them. Something that "real" I guess it's easier to just try and forget it. Anything "real enough," we love to collectively hurl ourselves on the casket during the funeral and cause a scene.

As per one of the quotes from the doc I saw on the subject:

FANNIN: Why? Why wasn't that part of our memory? Or of our history. I think it's probably because it was so awful while it was happening, so frightening, that people just got rid of the memory. But it always lingers there. As a kind of an uneasiness. If it happens once before, what's to say it's not going to happen again. The more we find out about influenza virus, the more real that fear becomes.

Mostly, Yglesias needs to quit being 8 months behind me.