Monthly Archives: March 2020

When the novel coronavirus first emerged in Chinas Hubei Province, foreign reactions to the countrys handling of the epidemic swung between extremes. At a press conference held in Beijing in late February, Bruce Aylward, who co-led the World Health Organizations (WHO) joint mission with China on the disease now known as COVID-19, praised what he described as probably the most ambitious, and I would say, agile and aggressive disease-containment effort in history. Pointing to a graph that showed a steep decline in cases, he commented, If I had COVID-19, Id want to be treated in China.

Others have been far more critical. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia, Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College, suggested that Chinas less than impressive management of the crisis would reinforce a trend for global companies to de-Sinicize their supply chains. The use of the term sick man of Asia in the headline caused particular umbrage and provided a pretext for the expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters from China. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang condemned the use of racially discriminatory language, to which U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded with a defense of the free press.

The rapid politicization of the new coronavirus, and particularly of Chinas role in containing it, has historical precedents. From the bubonic plague at the end of the nineteenth century to HIV/AIDS in the 1990s to SARS in 20023, Western observers have long viewed Chinas responses to epidemic crises as indices of its relative political and economic openness. Chinas management of disease has also been crucial to how Chinese citizens have viewed their nation and how the Chinese state has reaffirmed its authority.

Between 1894 and 1950, an estimated 15 million people died of bubonic plague in a pandemic that began in China. The disease spread from Yunnan, on Chinas southwest border, to the Pearl River Delta, with Hong Kong serving as its global launch pad. Many Western commentators were convinced that the plague germ had incubated in Chinas crowded cities. These critics took the absence of modern sanitation as an indication that the Qing dynasty was incapable of governing. Disease, they concluded, had revealed the political system for what it was: moribund and in need of fundamental reform.

The plaguehit China at a time when rival imperial powers were competing to enlarge their spheres of influence. In 1894, Japan went to war with the Qing over control of the Korean Peninsula. Chinas defeat and its loss of Korea as a vassal state exposed the countrys inability to modernize; the Qing army and navy were simply no match for Japans remodeled forces. Then, in 1899, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay published his Open Door Note, which attempted to create a framework for competing foreign interests in China and protect Chinas recently weakened territorial integrity. But the proliferation of imperial networks and the push to open up Chinas markets had an unintended consequence: they provided the conditions for infections to globalize and a rationale for further foreign intervention in Chinese affairs.

Disease had revealed the political system for what it was: moribund and in need of fundamental reform.

The term sick man of Asia was coined in this postwar context. There was much soul-searching in China as to what had caused the countrys ignominious defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. Many reformers pointed to a pervasive cultural and political malaise, drawing on social evolutionary ideas to emphasize Chinas moral and physical atrophy. Foremost among these critics was the Chinese scholar Yan Fu, an esteemed translator who was educated in the United Kingdom. In On Strength, an article published in a Tianjin newspaper in 1895, he likened China to a sick man in need of radical therapy. The Chinese needed to jettison debilitating habits, including opium smoking and foot-binding. The nation was a living organism locked in a competitive struggle for survival; citizens were the cells that formed this vital whole, so their physical and moral well-being was paramount.

Calls for reform grew louder in the late 1890s. The intellectual Liang Qichao reiterated Yans claim that as a country inhabited by sick people, China was a sick nation. Ground down by an autocratic and incompetent state, the Chinese had become sick not only morally but also physically: rampant diseasesamong them plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, and smallpoxwere sapping the people. Reformers called for restoring the health of Chinas citizenry and rejuvenating the decrepit body politic.

Sickness and health thus provided the basis for justifying reforms that extended from the susceptible Chinese body to the enervated state. In 1923, Sun Yat-senthe first president of the Republic of Chinavisited Hong Kong to give a lecture. Describing his graduation from medical school some 20 years before, Sun told his audience, I saw that it was necessary to give up my profession of healing men and take up my part to cure the country.

A portrait of Yat-Sen in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, April2005 Jason Lee / Reuters

Efforts to reform Chinas political and public health would outlast the Qing dynasty and the bubonic plague. In 1910, as Qing rule crumbled, the British-educated, Penang-born physician Wu Lien-teh was sent by the Chinese government to curtail the spread of pneumonic plague across Northeast China. He enacted stringent containment strategies based on modern scientific teachings: postmortems, bacteriological investigations, and mass cremations, to name a few. Wus program was markedly different from the response to the bubonic plague just two decades prior, when endeavors to halt the contagion were left to local charitable organizations or to the foreign officials who staffed the Imperial Maritime Customs Service with minimal oversight from the viceroy at Canton.

Just as before, however, Chinas handling of the outbreak within its borders would have geopolitical implications. During the pneumonic plague outbreak, China, Japan, and Russia vied for political and economic dominance over Manchuria. With Japan rapidly modernizing and Russia bullishly expanding eastward, Chinas management of the disease was an opportunity to showcase its newfound efficiency and reinforce its territorial claims. But reform came too late. In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty. Coincidentally, the springboard for the rebellion was Wuhan, the city that would become the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The relative openness of Chinas republican period, from 1911 to 1949characterized by freer markets, a flourishing press, newfound liberties, and lively engagement with the worldwas also reflected in the countrys health sector. Chinese scientists took part in international meetings, new opportunities opened for women in health care, medical schools expanded, and a Ministry of Health was established in 1928, in part to address the rural-urban disparity in health.

That age came to an end with the communist seizure of power, led by Mao Zedong in 1949. Although the Peoples Republic, like previous governments, focused on disease prevention, health, and national strength, it acted upon these concerns altogether differently. The communist government viewed health through a statist lens and as an important rationale for one-party rule. Maos war on disease was a case in point. Ostensibly a health campaign, the war was actually part of an ambitious social program that sought to extract undesirables, promote unity, and fight against capitalist imperialism.

The communist government viewed health through a statist lens and as an important rationale for one-party rule.

During the Korean War, for example, North Korea and the Soviet Union alleged that the United States was using biological weapons to spread infectious diseases. China supported the charges, claiming that U.S. planes were dropping insects and other disease vectors to spread plague, cholera, encephalitis, and anthrax. Mao responded with a Patriotic Hygiene Campaign in 1952, admonishing citizens to root out and destroy invading pests: flies, mosquitoes, rats, fleas, and even dogs. Anti-bacteriological warfare measures were put in place, including quarantine stations. Although the veracity of the biological warfare allegations continues to be debated, compelling evidence suggests that the charges were fabricated as part of a concerted propaganda campaign. The accusations provided the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party with a pretext for pushing a domestic political agenda under the guise of biosecurity.

Mao continued to leverage health as a political tool during the Cultural Revolution, which was initiated in 1966 as a war against bourgeois institutions, including modern medicine. In 1964, Mao had attacked the Ministry of Health as an elite establishment; during the Cultural Revolution, he proceeded to persecute doctors and starve hospitals of support. The Cultural Revolution also created ideal conditions for infectious diseases to flourish. An outbreak of meningitis in Beijing in the late summer and fall of 1966 was soon spread across the country by the student paramilitarythe Red Guardstraveling on the railways. Chinese authorities made no attempt to contain the epidemic, since doing so would have put the brakes on the Cultural Revolution, which depended on the mass mobilization of the Red Guards to purge society of recalcitrant bourgeois elements. The United States offered assistance, which China flatly declined. By the spring of 1967, more than 160,000 people had died.

A Red Guard reenactor in Beijing, China, April 2006 Jason Lee / Reuters

And yet, even as his government cracked down on bourgeois medicine, Mao pursued an antidisease program directed at schistosomiasis, or snail fever, an infectious disease caused by a species of parasitic flatworm. The anti-schistosomiasis campaign involved rallying large numbers of rural workers to laboriously collect and destroy snails in central and southern China. In his poem Farewell to the God of Plague, Mao celebrated the campaigns success with a vision of restoring to life ghostly villages choked with weeds. Ultimately, however, the campaign failed to live up to Maos expectations: schistosomiasis remains endemic in China.

The communist state offloaded its responsibility for health onto the collective. In 1968, the barefoot doctor program became national policy. Villagers were recruited as part-time paramedics and underwent basic health-care training. They were given access to vaccines but otherwise received minimal state support. This putative from-the-ground-up vision of health helped inspire a global shift: in 1978, the countries that gathered at the WHO International Conference on Primary Health Care adopted the Declaration of Alma-Ata, which upheld health as a basic human right and emphasized community-based health care for all. Ironically, this affirmation of Maos legacy took place precisely as his successor, Deng Xiaoping, was introducing economic reforms. Chinas health-care system would be one of the first areas earmarked for change.

Chinas reform era coincided with the rise of new infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS. The first indigenous cases of HIV/AIDS in China appeared in Yunnan among heroin users, but by the early years of this century, infection was increasingly sexually transmitted. A booming plasma economy in the 1990s further fueled the epidemic. Third parties paid donors in impoverished rural areas for blood, from which they extracted plasma to sell to biotech companies. The residual blood was then returned to donors. As a cost-saving practice, blood from different donors was often mixed in the same centrifuges. The result was a sharp increase in infectious diseases contracted through cross-contaminated blood. More than one million people in China are estimated to have contracted HIV/AIDS.

The blood contamination scandal set the pattern for future infectious disease crises: rumors of an epidemic, attempts at a cover-up, an expos by a medical whistleblower, followed by an official admission of the problem and draconian containment measures to mitigate the damage. In the case of the plasma scandal, the whistleblower, medical researcher Shuping Wang, brought contamination to the attention of officials in Henan, the worst-affected province. The officials attempted to deny and cover up the crisis, but news soon leaked to the international media. The plasma collection centers were finally closed for rectification in 1996.

The Western media, however, had already portrayed the contamination scandal as illustrative of Chinas poor regulation and endemic corruption. Moreover, the episode exposed the awkward cohabitation of rampant capitalism and authoritarianism in post-Mao China: a toxic mixture of unregulated markets, patchy provincial oversight, and overregulated governance.

A travel checkpoint during the SARS outbreak in Xinjiang, China, May 2003 Alessandro Digaetano / LUZphoto / Redux

Similar concerns about the state greeted a different health crisis in November 2002, when the deadly SARS virus was detected in Guangdong Province. The SARS outbreak also played out on the public stage through leaked information, cover-ups, and crackdowns. Jiang Yanyong, a physician in Beijing, revealed the states efforts to conceal the true number of SARS cases in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. That same day, the reporter Susan Jakes published a searing expos in Time magazine, based on a signed statement by Jiang, under the headline, Beijings SARS Attack. These reports catalyzed a policy U-turn in China. The mayor of Beijing and the minister of public health resigned, and the government embarked on a concerted and much-publicized campaign to contain the epidemic.

SARS was a major test for Chinas leadership. The outbreak threatened to derail Chinas export economy. And at least initially, Beijings bungled response set off a panic that undermined the governments international aspirations. China had joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and that same year, Beijing was chosen to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Membership in the WTO and hosting the Olympics were both viewed by the Chinese leadership as important platforms for promoting Chinas role as a global player and for ensuring foreign investment. SARS jeopardized that. As Premier Wen Jiabao declared, the health and security of the people, overall state of reform, development, and stability, and Chinas national interest and international image are at stake.

Not surprisingly, many commentators have drawn parallels between SARS and the current epidemic. As with SARS, officials in the province where COVID-19 broke out first downplayed the problem, and the public accused them of a cover-up. The government cracked down on whistleblowers, such as Li Wenliang, a doctor who had tried to share information about the virus. Li was hounded by the police and died of the disease.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has set out to contain the epidemic through a campaign strikingly reminiscent of the one against SARS. The Chinese government has marshaled tens of thousands of health-care workers and military personnel in what Xi has described as a total war. Ding Xiangyang, the deputy secretary-general of the State Council, has called the epidemic a battle for China and a risk to the nation unprecedented since the founding of the Peoples Republic.

This war has challenged Xis authority in some respects, but it has also provided an occasion for Xi to reaffirm his credentials as Maos heir. By emphasizing the scale of the crisis, Xi can affirm his reputation for resourceful and clearheaded leadership when he overcomes it. For the moment, at least, Xis strategy appears to be working, bolstering his support in many parts of China, if not in Hubei Province, where the disease first emerged. As Chinas citizens watch the chaotic scenes of COVID-19 panic across Europe and the United States, Xis response to the virus suddenly looks proportionate.

Paramilitary containing the spread of coronavirus in Beijing, China, March 2020 Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters

Read the rest here:

Past Pandemics Exposed Chinas Weaknesses - Foreign Affairs Magazine

The State Department on Thursday hailed the anniversary of an agreement limiting biological weapons by noting the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Today we observe the 45th anniversary of the #BiologicalWeaponsConvention and reaffirm the importance of #BWC Parties commitments to preventing biological weapons, the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation stated in a tweet.

The #Covid-19 pandemic highlights the importance of #BWC Parties commitments to reducing all biological risks, the tweet noted.

The coronavirus outbreak has been traced to Wuhan, China, but details about the exact origin have not been determined. Most virology experts believe it was not engineered as a biological weapon.

Experts have voiced differing views on whether new bat-origin virus mutated naturally to humans from a wild animal market in Wuhan, or may have escaped from a research lab studying coronaviruses.

The Biological Weapons Convention first entered into force on March 26, 1975.

The multilateral convention prohibits the 183 states that are signatories from developing, producing or stockpiling biological and toxin weapons.

The Wuhan virus, known officially as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, first surfaced in Wuhan and has since December spread rapidly throughout the world.

Biological warfare experts say the virus is not an ideal biological weapon because of difficulties of controlling its spread.

The main toxin and biological weapons that are studied by the U.S. military are called the big six by Dr. Mark Kortepeter, a retired Army colonel who is an expert at germ warfare and worked at the Armys Fort Detrick biological warfare defense research lab.

The six are botulism toxin, tularemia, Ebola and other hemorrhagic viruses, plague, smallpox and anthrax.

Each pathogen has unique skills and attack strategies to outmaneuver humans and rain death and destruction on individuals or societies, Dr. Kortepeter wrote in his book Inside the Hot Zone: A Soldier on the Front Lines of Biological Warfare.

The State Department said in its latest annual report on arms control compliance that the United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat.

China signed the convention but the report said there is no available information to demonstrate that China took steps to fulfill its treaty obligations to give up its offensive biological weapons program.

The rest is here:

State Department marks bioweapons accord with reference to pandemic - Washington Times

Moscow, March 25: A woman watches a live address to the nation from Russian President Vladimir Putin about the coronavirus pandemic.

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

Russia and China have launched what experts say are disinformation campaigns against the West, seeking to change the global narrative about where the coronavirus pandemic originated, and which countries are leading the fight against it.

The subplot to the stories Moscow and Beijing are selling is one of Western societies in decline, with authoritarian systems proving themselves superior to democratic ones in managing the crisis.

A report prepared earlier this month for the European Union pointed the finger at both Russia and China for their roles in feeding an infodemic of untrustworthy information about COVID-19.

Story continues below advertisement

State-sponsored disinformation is different from some of the simpler hoaxes being spread online including a lot of bad, or unproven, advice about how to avoid or treat the virus in that it is being spread to advance geopolitical aims.

As of Friday, the European External Action Service, an arm of the EU tasked with combating propaganda, had compiled a list of 162 examples of coronavirus-related disinformation, which it traced to pro-Kremlin media outlets or social-media accounts.

One report on a pro-Kremlin website said those with money had unleashed secret germ warfare on the rest of the world. Another claimed that the pandemic had forced the closing of the metro in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Lviv does not have a metro.

For Russia, the effort to sow chaos is seen as an extension of the hybrid war an undeclared conflict fought in the military, economic and information spheres that it has been waging against the West since 2014, when Moscows annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine made it the target of crippling economic sanctions imposed by Canada, the United States and the European Union. Victory for Moscow means breaking Western solidarity, and bringing the sanctions to an end, while keeping Crimea.

Analysts say Beijings aims are even loftier, with an eye to replacing Washington as the preeminent global power the capital other countries look to for leadership.

Russia would like to see the EU divided, and to pick off some of the countries like Italy, turning them from pro-U.S. to pro-Kremlin, said Agnieszka Legucka, a senior research fellow on Russia at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Russia is also transferring Chinese disinformation and propaganda that Western democracies are not able to help and save their people, that only strong countries like Russia and China are able to manage the coronavirus.

Story continues below advertisement

Wuhan, March 10: A screen at a near-empty shopping centre broadcasts Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the epicentre of China's COVID-19 epidemic.

Thomas Peter/Reuters

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, has amplified conspiracy theories on Twitter that the virus was introduced to Wuhan by the U.S. military.

Twitter

A key piece of disinformation spread by both China and Russia and then repeated by friendly governments such as Irans is a baseless accusation that the coronavirus, which originated in December in a seafood and live animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was instead a U.S. military bioweapon gone awry.

In Chinas favoured telling of that story, COVID-19 was actually brought to Wuhan by infected U.S. military personnel who attended the Military World Games in October. That version was given prominence by Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, who retweeted an article published by a Montreal-based website known for propagating conspiracy theories and pro-Russian disinformation.

It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! Mr. Zhao wrote in another tweet.

Russian media have pushed out a similar tale with a local twist. REN TV, a channel controlled by Kremlin-friendly businesspeople, carried its own evidence-free report blaming the U.S. government for coronavirus, but switched the point of origin to the U.S.-funded Lugar Research Center in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, a country where Washington and Moscow have spent decades wrestling for influence.

This is propaganda. What can we do? Paata Imnadze, the director of Lugar, told Coda Story, a news website based in the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. The Lugar lab has actually led the Georgian governments response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the EU report on Russian-sponsored coronavirus disinformation unfounded allegations which in the current situation are probably the result of an anti-Russian obsession.

Tehran, March 22: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addresses Iranians in a televised speech.

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

The unfounded allegations about the U.S. military creating COVID-19 have also been pushed along by Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said it was one of the reasons his country could not accept an American offer of help dealing with the crisis.

Youre accused of having created coronavirus. I dont know how true it is. But when theres such an allegation, can a wise man trust you? read a posting on his English-language Twitter account.

Bill Bishop, an expert on Chinese media, said Beijing was equally keen to muddy the waters about the origins of COVID-19, both for domestic political purposes, and to protect the countrys international reputation.

At home, the Communist Party regime had successfully via social-media networks that are tightly controlled by state censors persuaded many Chinese to blame a foreign enemy for the outbreak, rather than their own government.

The fact that an official foreign ministry spokesman helped spread the same disinformation on Twitter (a platform that is blocked inside China), suggests that the effort to push out an alternative narrative about the origins of COVID-19 was directed from the very top.

Zhao Lijian would not be doing this if he didnt believe that he had approval to do this stuff, said Mr. Bishop, who edits the Sinocism e-newsletter, which is popular with China-focused academics. And if you look at how the system works people who censor all the time are not censoring this.

Story continues below advertisement

U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently called COVID-19 a 'Chinese virus' despite advice that this inflames anti-Asian racism.

Twitter

The Chinese effort to rewrite the viruss origin story were partly defensive. Mr. Zhaos inflammatory tweets came two days after U.S. President Donald Trump first retweeted a post referring to COVID-19 as the China Virus. Mr. Trump has since made a point, on Twitter and during televised news conferences, of referring to the disease as the Chinese virus.

Mr. Trump promised this week to stop using such language after a rise in racist attacks targeting Asian-Americans but he made it clear that he believed he was only fighting his corner in a propaganda war. I dont regret it, but they accused us of having done it through our soldiers, they said our soldiers did it on purpose, what kind of a thing is that? he told Fox News on Tuesday.

But a day after Mr. Trump made his promise to stop using the racially charged term, G-7 foreign ministers were unable to agree on a joint statement on the coronavirus outbreak because of a U.S. insistence on including the term Wuhan virus.

Mr. Trump has himself been accused of spreading unproven and unsafe medical ideas by using his press conferences to talk about potential coronavirus remedies that have not yet been tested. However, experts say that his remarks have generally fallen into the category of bad advice, rather than a state-sponsored propaganda campaign.

Belgrade, March 21: Crew members wave Chinese and Serbian flags after medical experts from China arrived with supplies to help the Balkan nation fight the coronavirus.

Marko Djurica/Reuters

Beyond blurring the origin story, Russian and Chinese outlets as well as social-media accounts that reliably parrot them have also sought to give the impression that Moscow and Beijing are leading the world both in terms of managing the pandemic, and in lending a helping hand to others.

China, the country that was hit first and, initially, hardest, is now keen to show that it has the virus under control, with cities such as Beijing and even Wuhan returning to normal as the rates of deaths and new infections slow.

Story continues below advertisement

The Kremlin, meanwhile, had until this week resisted the lockdown measures adopted by many other countries, pointing to its relatively low infection rate, and the fact that only one death in Russia has been officially attributed to coronavirus. That narrative has changed only in the past few days, as the number of infections has shot up, causing President Vladimir Putin to order a one-week work stoppage next week to contain the spread of the virus.

Mr. Putin also indefinitely postponed an April 22 referendum on constitutional changes, which, if the measures pass, would give him the ability to remain in power until 2036.

Maria Snegovaya, a post-doctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on Russia and Eastern Europe, said the public should be skeptical about both Chinas and Russias versions of the story.

Definitely, we should not trust the data that comes from authoritarian regimes. This is somewhat true about China, and particularly true about Russia, she said, pointing to how the Soviet Union initially denied there had been nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, and how Mr. Putins own government lied for days about the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in 2001.

Tied into the idea that China and Russia are handling their own coronavirus problems better than the West are their showy donations of medical aid to crisis-stricken Italy and Spain, which have seen the worlds deadliest outbreaks to date.

The way this is portrayed in pro-Russian media is, See, the EU is so weak and the U.S. is unreliable. Only Russia and China are coming to help them, said Ms. Snegovaya. Its a typical [Russian security services] disinformation campaign. Its very convenient that the West is weakened at this moment, so you try to undermine it further.

Story continues below advertisement

But after days of headlines about Russia and China helping where Brussels could not, Italys La Stampa newspaper reported Thursday that 80 per cent of the medical help delivered by Russia, which included disinfection equipment, was useless. Spains Health Ministry, meanwhile, found that test kits donated by China werent sensitive enough to detect most coronavirus cases, and decided to return them.

Sources: GOVERNMENT WEBSITES, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AND JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Show all

How many coronavirus cases are there in Canada, by province, and worldwide? The latest maps and charts

Go here to see the original:

For China and Russia, coronavirus hoaxes are another strain of disinformation warfare - The Globe and Mail

By Janice Dunnahoo

Special to the Daily Record

I know by now everyone is getting weary of hearing the word pandemic. It is scary and yes, we are living in a time and place we have never navigated in our lifetimes, but historically, this is not that unusual. I have written about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic a couple of years ago, but in doing research I found a bit more, which I would like to share here, just to prove that times do change in some ways, but in others they do not.

Lets start with some Roswell Daily Record articles from the year 1918.

The first one is dated October 25, 1918

Notice To The Public

Whereas the present epidemic of Spanish influenza requires rigid regulations to control and abate it.

Therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Health of the City of Roswell.

1. That all places of business in the City of Roswell, except drugstores, hotels and restaurants, and auto filling stations and garages, be closed during all hours of the day except from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, except Saturdays, when they should close at 7:30 PM, and all persons are urged to stay off the streets except when attending to necessary business.

2. Physicians must require patients with colds and running temperature, which in their opinion are incipient influenza cases, to remain at home as long as danger threatens.

3. All persons suffering from this disease are required to remain at home for three days after they cease to run temperature.

4. All physicians are required to report at the home of the City Physician during the morning hours for all additional cases of this disease.

These orders to take effect Monday, October 21, 1918.

Board of Health of the City of Roswell,

By W.C. Buchly, secretary

Another Roswell Daily Record article is dated October 25, 1918.

Warning To The Public

All persons are hereby warned not to congregate upon the streets or in stores or other public places at any time. All people are forbidden to congregate at night upon the streets or in other places after six oclock, and people having business to transact in stores or other places open to the public are hereby requested and directed to go into such places of business, immediately attend to the matter in hand, and at once return to their homes.

By order of the Board of Health of the City of Roswell, this October 12, 1918.

By W.C. Buchly, Secretary

A proclamation was published in the Roswell Daily Record, Oct. 26, 1918 by Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, who was the third governor of New Mexico after it became a state in 1912.

A PROCLAMATION

By The Governor Of The State Of New Mexico

Notwithstanding the continued publication of precautionary advices touching the control of the epidemic of Spanish Influenza in the State of New Mexico, it is apparent daily increase, warrants the exercise of utmost diligence on the part of all our people in the observance of rules and regulations promulgated by competent health authorities designed to curb its progress.

In the absence of an organized system for compulsory health conditions reports in the State, reliance as to such conditions must be had upon the news columns of the public press and other less effective media. The volume of information thus accumulated relative to the epidemic intensity, universal spread and high percentage of fatality of this disease should alarm every citizen to combative repressive action.

While several municipalities in the State have published and are enforcing repressive regulations very effectively, not state wide suggestion has yet gone forth.

NOW THEREFORE, I, W.E. LINDSEY, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO, in the interest of the public health welfare and the war work of the people of this state do urgently request the discontinuance of all pending court sessions in the State; the adjournment of the public schools, the isolation or quarantine of all collegiate Institutions; penal and charitable institutions; the discontinuance of all church and other public assembly; the avoidance of unnecessary burial attendance and services; the prevention of the group assemblage of children in homes.

I further urgently request that all the people give strict observance to instructions relative to prevention of infection and the proper care and treatment of those attacked.

I respectfully but urgently call upon on the police authorities of the state to actively aid in the enforcement of all health laws and regulations and to urge the observance of the requests enumerated in this proclamation as well as the observance of all other proper and necessary precautionary and remedial measures.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of New Mexico to be affixed. I one at the City of Santa Fe, this the 17th day of October, 1918 A.D., 1918.

W.E.LINDSEY,

ATTESTED: Antonio Lucero

Following is a segment Dr. Elvis Fleming wrote on the epidemic:

The flu epidemic of 1918-19

The annual flu season always seems to elicit discussions about the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918-19, in which deaths attributed to the disease are estimated at some 20 million.

More than 500,000 Americans died during the epidemic, which is more than the deaths in both world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The flu was no respecter of people. No matter whatones station in life, place of residence, or any other factor, no one was assured of eluding the dreaded disease.

More than 1,000 New Mexicans perished in the flu epidemic, according to an article in the Valencia County News-Bulletin published on Nov. 25, 1998, by Richard Melzer and Oswald Baca. The writers observed, Much of the epidemic remains a mystery to this very day. Not even its name, The Spanish Flu, is understood because the epidemic did not originate in Spain or any other Spanish community. Evidence points to its origin in March 1918 at an Army camp in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread in two terrible waves around the world.

Some people felt sure the epidemic was caused by germ warfare launched by the Germans during the final stages of World War I, according to Melzer and Baca. The leading evangelist of the times, Billy Sunday, proclaimed that the epidemic was the wrath of God against a sinful generation.

Vital statistics for the city of Roswell show that 92 people died of influenza, influenza pneumonia and pneumonia between Oct. 12, 1918, and March 10, 1919. The deaths were spread out over the six-month period, with 52 coming in October, 15 in November, 16 in December, seven in January and only one each in February and March. These numbers show, as Professor Melzer puts it, that the epidemic hit with incredible force in the last days of the First World War, showing no mercy to a world already ravaged by four years of violence and death.

Most of the Roswell deaths took place at home, but 36 percent of them were at St. Marys Hospital. Eight patients of Dr. C.M. Yater died at his sanitarium at 310 North Richardson Ave. Yaters ad in the city directory stated: Medical and Surgical; special facilities for the care of confinement cases, including a perfectly equipped confinement room. All on the ground floor.

Strangely, the ad also claims, No contagious diseases admitted.

Thirteen other doctors also lost patients, the largest number being the 21 patients of Dr. W.C. Buchley. Dr. J.B. Keister lost 12; Dr. Eugene M. Fisher lost 10; and Dr. W.W. Phillips and Dr. Yater lost eight each. Dr. W.E. Goodsell and Dr. J.E. Crawford each had seven patients deaths; while Dr. David H. Galloway lost six; Dr. C.T. McClane lost four; Dr. W.T. Joyner lost three; and Dr. J.J. Walker lost two. Dr. C.L. Parsons, Dr. Charles F. Beeson and city physician and health officer Dr. R.L. Bradley each lost one patient.

A local doctor who was also mayor of Roswell at the time also succumbed to this flu. A note from his obituary dated October 14, 1918 reads as follows:

Dr. C.F. Montgomery, the mayor of the city and also one of Roswells finest types of manhood passed away today. In his passing the city and the state loses one of its most capable and conscientious workers as well as a perfect gentleman.

The demographics of the victims show that 54 percent were male, two thirds were Anglo and one third were Mexican. No other ethnic groups are listed. None of the victims were more than 70 years old, and only five were between 57 and 70. All the others were under 50. Most of them were in their late 20s and early 30s. The age categories were as follows: 36-50, 11 deaths; 16-25, 17 deaths; 6-15, 10 deaths; 0-6, 11 deaths. Eight of those under six were infants. (Totals do not add up to 92 deaths because some of the information is not available on some of the victims.)

The occupations most frequently listed for the victims were housewife, 10; rancher, five; farmer, two; bookkeeper, two; New Mexico Military Institute cadets, five; and other students, two. Several other occupations were listed once, including a doctor and a teacher.

In an interview in February 1975, Colonel E.L. Lusk, one-time high school principal at New Mexico Military Institute, remembered that the commandant, Captain H.P. Saunders Jr., took it first. Lusk came down with it about three days later and was sick for a week. The hospital was full, so many of the cadets who were ill with the flu could not be admitted.

Some of the faculty took cadets into their homes to nurse them back to health. About the time Lusk got over his affliction, Capt. R.G. Breland, the English instructor, took it. Luskbrought Breland to his house where Mrs. Lusk attended him for about a week. Then Mrs. Lusk took down with it herself.

Thus, World War I ended in Roswell and the United States.

To paraphrase Melzer and Baca: The epidemic took the lives of innocent people who lived thousands of miles from any battlefield of the war, but they had no protection from an enemy so minuscule that they could not see it even with the most powerful microscope of the time.

Following is a remedy of the day, I thought it would be fun to include. Dont try this at home:

Cough medicine

The following is a recipe for cough medicine that will give relief when all others fail; 1/2 pint flax seed, two quarts water, juice of six lemons, one pound honey, 1/2 pound sugar, 1/2 pint good whiskey. Boil the water and the flaxseed together for a few minutes, strain and add lemon juice, honey and sugar. Boil this mixture a few minutes until well mixed. When it is cool add the whiskey, which is to preserve it. Half of this recipe makes two large bottles full.

Janice Dunnahoo is chief archivist at the Historical Society for Southeast New Mexico Archives. She can be reached at 575-622-1176 or at jdunna@hotmail.com.

Read this article:

Historically Speaking: The flu epidemic we've been here before - Roswell Daily Record

As we sit within the confines of our homes, lockdown is making us yearn for the gift of time travel. What wed give to go back just by a few months before our fears and anxieties regarding coronavirus manifested themselves. Well, the folks of Orania have managed it because theyre living outside of the 21st century.

The whites-only Afrikaner enclave in the Northern Cape acts as its own entity. Turning its back on South Africas democratic project as apartheid came to an end, the clutch of citizens who still live in the town an estimated 2 000 to 3 000 still pay homage to the system that was labelled a crime against humanity.

But where, exactly, do they stand on the current coronavirus crisis? Are they following the rule of the land which engulfs and dwarfs their humble landscape, or do they simply follow their own advice? Well, in contrast to certain other policies in Orania, its not actually that black and white.

We know that they are observing social distancing, and theyve been taking quarantine measures since the middle of March. Local sewing groups have stitched together masks that people are being asked to wear during the coronavirus crisis. They may have self-isolated from South Africa since the early 1990s, but theyre leaving nothing to chance in the face of a global pandemic.

Not many people leave Orania, and even fewer visit. Their base in the Northern Cape is one of the most remote in the land. But, playing it safe is very much the mantra here. They have even manufactured some of their own hand sanitizers, treating the gravity of the situation with the respect it deserves.

They have published their own set of hygiene guidelines, very similar to those issued by the South African government. An emergency command centre made up of the town board provides regular updates on their preparedness to deal with coronavirus, and how the situation outside of their compound is developing. Gawie Snyman, Ronald Bain, Harry Theron and Frans de Klerk are named as the information-givers.

Those who have shut themselves away on ideological grounds, fearing an outside threat, perhaps never thought the biggest battle of their lives would be related to germ warfare. The communities within communities such as elderly care facilities also receive visits from singers and performers to lift their spirits during times of isolation.

Virtual braais and radio-streamed concerts make up for the lack of open-air activities on offer to the inhabitants of Orania. It hasnt been all fun and games, though. The idyllic image this settlement likes to portray against the backdrop of its controversial origins suffered a slight wobble last week.

A statement shared on the towns official Facebook page stated that one resident of Orania was showing symptoms of coronavirus. Its claimed that they were privately tested while receiving medical treatment. The test came back negative. But the fear factor of COVID-19 remains in place.

An image showing a warehouse full of toilet paper unapologetically boasts about having one of South Africas most treasured commodoties by the pallet-full. Indeed, this desperation to prove something to the rest of the country runs deep.

A local community group posted this message on their social media channels over the weekend Kim Jong-Un would be proud of this purposeful propaganda:

The SAPS came to visit in Orania yesterday to check that everything is in order. Thanks to Oranians discipline, they found nothing that upset them. After the visit, Colonel Jooste said: Thank you to the residents of Hopetown and Orania for your obedience. It goes bad in other towns and cities in the country. I love you all and I dont want you to die.

Work continues in the town: Binmen are seen wearing full hazmat suits and masks, whereas families are now learning how to cope with homeschooling. Pieter Krige, a community leader in this enclave, posts a photo of his two children beavering away at their studies.

It still remains anyones guess as to when normal life resumes both within the gates of Orania and beyond despite our tentative end-of-lockdown date of Thursday 16 April.

Social distancing has always been Oranias thing but they are now faced with keeping themselves apart from each other, without having a say in the matter. Its not business as usual here, nor is it anywhere in the world. And thats perhaps a source of great humility for this unique, often-maligned town.

As much as Orania has tried to isolate itself, the world is too big of a place to stay shut-off from. Society isnt exactly something you can opt in or out of. The looming threat of coronavirus casts a shadow over this region, and although it may only strengthen their resolve to hunker down and keep themselves in exile, one fact is inescapable: The enemy is not, and never will be, your fellow South African.

Read this article:

Coronavirus: How Orania has been affected by the disease - The South African