Tag Archives: spanish flu

SOME GOOD NEWS – FOR A CHANGE!

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The news lately has been very depressing lately – the Covid epidemic, police killings of unarmed black men, civil unrest, devastating fires, the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression – the list is endless. But the future isn’t completely bleak. Here are a few good things to think about.

Business Closings. A lot of neighborhood businesses have closed since the Covid epidemic began; however, 98% of all businesses that have closed since the epidemic began say that they plan to reopen. It is also important to remember that the failure rate for small businesses is always high. 1/2 of all small businesses fail within 5 years. The failure rate for restaurants is much higher. Over 1/2 of all independent restaurants fail within 1 year. It’s like that in both good times as well as bad.


Bankruptcies. A long list of big companies declared bankruptcy this year, but nearly all of these companies were in big financial trouble before the Covid epidemic began, and almost all of them had the same problem – they were drowning in junk bond debt: Hertz, Neiman Marcus, JCPenney, Chuck E. Cheese, GNC, Sur La Table, J. Crew, Gold’s Gym, 24 Hour Fitness, California Pizza Kitchen, to name a few. Just consider California Pizza Kitchen. If you divide their junk bond debt by the number of restaurants they own, it comes to $2 million per location. How can you make money running a pizza chain when you have $2 million of debt on every location? I sometimes wonder who buys junk bonds and why. Even in the best of times, a high percentage of junk bonds never get repaid. If you ever consider buying junk bonds, think about this one question first – Why do you think they are called ‘junk bonds’?

Progress Doesn’t Stop. Human progress doesn’t stop during epidemics. New products come to market. New things get invented. Scientists make important discoveries. People do productive things while they are in quarantine. In 1603 and 1606, there were plague epidemics in London that killed tens of thousands of people. One of the first things the government did was shut down all the theaters, just like now. While the theaters were closed, William Shakespeare was stuck at home, like everyone else in the entertainment business. While he was stuck at home, Shakespeare wrote King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, Othello, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and many other plays. Shakespeare’s most productive years were the plague years.

After the Epidemic. When epidemics are over, more often than not, life gets back to normal fairly quickly. Over 500,000 Americans died from the Spanish Flu, far more than have died so far from Covid. However, when the Spanish Flu epidemic ended in 1920, it had no lasting impact on the U.S. economy. In 1920, the U.S. economy took off in a period of great prosperity and economic expansion known as the ‘Roaring 20s’, and that continued for the rest of the decade.

MARK’S COVID MEDICAL ADVICE.

I am constantly telling people: ‘Don’t play amateur doctor’, but I am going to do that myself right now anyway. Here it is: Don’t leave home without a pen in your pocket. Viruses can live on nonporous surfaces like pens for several days. That means that the pen that a waiter or store clerk hands you so that you can sign a credit card receipt was probably used by dozens of other people before you. The same applies to pens in banks and post offices. And remember, flu season will soon be here. Of course, you know that stores and restaurants don’t sterilize their pens between customers. Think about that the next time a waiter hands you a pen.

CORONAVIRUS.

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MY CHOCOLATE ROOM.

The bad news is that my free chocolate room is closed due to coronavirus. The good news is that you can still get anything you want from my chocolate room! Here is the new rule. Go to: Chocolate List. There you will find a complete list of everything I have in stock. Send me an email with your shopping list. I will put what you want in a bag and leave it on my porch with your name on it where you can pick it up. (I am sorry if this sounds overly dramatic on part, but it the safest way to do this.)


HOW SIMILAR IS CORONAVIRUS TO THE SPANISH FLU?

You see comparisons everywhere between Covid-19 and the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but how similar were they? In 1918, people did many of the same things they are doing now: wearing face masks, stockpiling food, and avoiding crowded places. While the fear between the 2 epidemics is similar, the diseases are very different. The Spanish Flu was the deadliest epidemic in human history. It killed over 50 million people worldwide, far more than were killed in World War 1, which ended that same year. 500,000 people died in the United States alone. The most obvious difference between the Spanish Flu and Covid-19 was who was at risk. Most of the people who died of the Spanish Flu were in their teens, 20s, and 30s. Very few people over the age of 60 got the Spanish Flu, and people over 70 were at the lowest risk of getting or dying of it. That is just the opposite of Covid-19. No one knows why so few old people got the Spanish Flu. Below is a photo of soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas stricken with the Spanish Flu. World War 1 soldiers had a very high death rate, and most of them were under the age of 25.

GOOD NEWS!

The good news is that medical science is in a much better position to control an epidemic today than it was in 1918. In 1918, doctors knew that viruses existed, but no one had ever seen one. Viruses are very small, and they could not be seen with the microscopes available in those days. Today, viruses can be seen with electron microscopes. Scientists in 1918 could not identify the genetic materials that a virus is made from. Now they can. And perhaps most importantly, they had no way to test people in 1918 to see if they were infected, so they could not quarantine people who were infected with the Spanish Flu but didn’t yet show symptoms of the disease. Now, doctors can do these things and a lot more. Because there was so little that doctors could do about the Spanish Flu, people resorted to folk remedies. People ate huge quantities of garlic and onions in the belief that it would ward off the disease. Grocery stores ran out of garlic and onions. Hundreds of worthless cures were sold, including arsenic tablets and beaver oil. They were all useless, and many were toxic.

Junk Bond Debt, The Coronavirus Threat That Nobody Is Talking About.

In 2008, the stock market crashed, and major banks were on the verge of collapse. In order to save the nation’s financial system, the Federal Reserve reduced the interest rate that banks and big corporations pay to zero. Ever since then, interest rates have remained very, very low by historic standards. Because the Fed was lending money at almost zero percent interest, a lot of big companies piled on debt, and much of it is junk bond debt. (These bonds are called ‘junk bonds’ for a reason.) American companies now have a whopping $10 trillion of debt, and half of it is junk bond debt. Some of the companies that have the most junk bond debt as a percent of their total capitalization are in businesses that are among the most adversely affected by Covid-19; airlines, cruise ships, oil companies, hotels, and entertainment companies. How will these companies pay their junk bond debt? Their income has fallen off the cliff. I seem to be the only person who is talking about this. Very little is being said in the news about the junk bond problem.

Was the Spanish Flu Spanish?

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No. Because there was no test for Spanish Flu, there was no way to trace the disease back to where it began. So how did people get the idea that this disease started in Spain? The Spanish Flu epidemic began during World War 1. All of the countries at war had strict press censorship. In order to prevent panic and keep up public morale, newspapers in warring countries grossly understated their infection and death rates. However, Spain was neutral in World War 1 and had a free press. Newspapers in Spain were reporting that large numbers of people were dying of the flu before similar stories started appearing in newspapers in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. Spanish newspapers also accurately reported the infection and death rate in Spain, which was much higher than what was being reported in the countries at war. When high government officials in Spain got the disease, like King Alphonso XIII, who was gravely ill with it, it was covered daily in Spanish newspapers. However, when high government officials in countries at war got sick, it wasn’t reported at all. This gave people the impression that the disease must have started in Spain, but nobody knows where it actually began.