‘In a Mere Shirt and Capless’: The Uniform Crisis of the Polish Army During the Polish-Ukrainian-Bolshevik War 1918–21

This article presents issues relating to the uniforms of the Polish Army during the wars of 1918–21 in the context of the severe economic and epidemic crisis plaguing both the country and the region. Drawing on the accounts of participants and eyewitnesses of the war, and also by making recourse to the largely unpublished documents of the Sanitary Headquarters of the Polish Army Command-in-Chief, I look at the causes, scale and effects of the severe shortage of uniforms and equipment – shortages that would beset and plague Polish soldiers. The second part of the article presents institutional, top-down attempts to improve the situation involving substantial foreign procurements. Asking whether the crisis was ever truly resolved, the findings here offer ultimately a negative assessment of what ultimately transpired. The article’s final section indicates the relationship between the catastrophic situation regarding supplies and the threats posed by the Spanish flu and typhus.

Lessons from the past in the present: news from the Spanish flu pandemic to COVID-19

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the health conducts for combating the Spanish flu and its relationship with the COVID-19 pandemic in Rio de Janeiro. Methods: study from the perspective of microhistory, with analysis of articles published in Revista da Semana on the Spanish flu, having as criteria publications with the term "epidemic" referring to the Spanish flu or influenza in the period of the epidemic outbreak in Rio de Janeiro, Federal District. Results: 18 records, organized in three thematic axes: political, 4; social, 11; care, 3, were found. Final considerations: the lessons left by the Spanish flu epidemic in coronavirus times will be changes in the political, social and care field as marks of major epidemics.

Centenary conversations

Helen Clark is interviewed by Robert Yates for the first in a new series of ‘Centenary conversations’, celebrating 100 years of International Affairs. They discussed the COVID-19 crisis and reflect on whether the world is doing a better job than it did 100 years ago during the Spanish flu epidemic.

Predicting the course of Covid-19 and other epidemic and endemic disease

The Gompertz Function is an accurate model for epidemics from Cholera in 1853 to Spanish Flu in 1918 and Ebola in 2014. It also describes the acute phase of annual outbreaks of endemic influenza and in all of these instances it has significant predictive power. For Covid-19, we show that the Gompertz Function provides accurate forecasts not just for cases and deaths but, independently, for hospitalisations, intensive care admissions and other medical requirements. In particular Gompertz Function projections of healthcare requirements have been reliable enough to allow planning for: hospital admissions,intensive care admissions,ventilator usage, peak loads and duration. Analysis of data from the Spanish Flu pandemic and the endemic influenza cycle reveals alternating periods of Gompertz Function growth and linear growth in cumulative cases or deaths. Linear growth means the Reproduction Number is equal to 1 which in turn indicates endemicity. The same pattern has been observed with Covid-19. All the initial outbreaks ended in linear growth. Each new outbreak has been preceded by a period of linear growth and has ended with a transition from Gompertz Function growth to linear growth. This suggests that each of these outbreak cycles ended with a transition to endemicity for the current dominant strain and that the normal seasonal respiratory virus periods will continue to see new outbreaks. It remains to be seen if widespread vaccination will disrupt this cyclicality. Because both Gompertz Function Growth and linear growth are accurately predictable, the forecasting problem is reduced to identifying the transition between these modes and to improving the performance in the early Gompertz Function growth phase where its predictive power is lowest. The dynamics of the Gompertz Function are determined by the Gumbel probability distribution. This is an exceptional distribution with respect to the geometry determined by the affine group on the line which is the key to the Gumbel distribution's role as an Extreme Value Theory attractor. We show that this, together with the empirically observed asymmetry in epidemic data, makes the Gompertz Function growth essentially inevitable in epidemic models which agree with observations.

Epidemics X Popular Housing in Rio de Janeiro

The work comparatively analyzes the relation between popular housing and the main epidemics in Rio de Janeiro, from the end of the 19th century to the present day. The text rescues the memory of the tenements (the first popular form of housing), recalling the mortality of Yellow Fever and Spanish Flu; continues to study the formation process of the favelas, in parallel to the Dengue and Covid 19 epidemics, and the solutions implemented by the government with the objective of improve sanitary conditions in the form of housing estates, and more recently, in their urbanization. The SWOT Analysis, a reflection and positioning tool in relation to situations, widely applied in engineering and administration, it was used to list points of weakness and potential solutions in low-income housing in the face of sanitary problems and the solutions brought by the Government. In the methodology, consultations with secondary sources (books, articles, and newspapers) and iconographic research that illustrate the situations and provide support for the application of the SWOT analysis stand out. The conclusions highlight the extent to which epidemics overwhelmingly plague the population living in needy areas, whose absence of wholesome and appropriate urban solutions demonstrate the lack of Urban Planning and Management.

Controlling the worldwide chaotic spreading of COVID-19 through vaccinations

The striking differences and similarities between the Spanish-flu of 1918 and the Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) are analyzed. Progress in medicine and technology and in particular the availability of vaccines has decreased the death probability from about 2% of the affected for the Spanish-flu, to about 10-5 in the UK and 10-3 in Italy, USA, Canada, San Marino and other countries for COVID-19. The logistic map reproduces most features of the disease and may be of guidance for predictions and future steps to be taken in order to contrast the virus. We estimate 6.4 107 deaths worldwide without the vaccines, this value decreases to 2.4 107 with the current vaccination rate. In August 2021, the number of deceased worldwide was 4.4 106. To reduce the fatalities further, it is imperative to increase the vaccination rate worldwide to at least 120 millions/day.

The Likely Impact of COVID-19 on US Employment in the Medium Term

COVID-19 caused an abrupt increase in unemployment rates for people across various fields of work. This paper compares the COVID-19 crisis with the Great Recession and the Spanish Influenza. After careful data collection and analysis, it is clear that COVID-19 caused a steep, immediate decline in the economy although it did not last long. By comparison, the Global Financial Crisis was a persistent recession though less severe. Comparison of the health effects for COVID-19 and the Spanish flu reveals that the influenza was much more contagious as it infected 29.3% of the US population in three years. In contrast, this percent is 2.4% for COVID-19 as of August, 2021. The flu outbreak also coincided with WWI which caused further spread of the virus, and an effective vaccine was never developed. Therefore, the current economic decline should not be worse than that of the influenza. Moreover, the government is more actively participating in the economy now than it was during the flu pandemic. The Spanish flu had a V-shaped economic trend despite having minimal government involvement. Because the flu and coronavirus are both pandemic-induced crises, we would expect COVID-19 to be V-shaped as well, which is seen through the graphs below. U.S. data from the Federal Reserve is analyzed graphically in this paper, and it shows that the COVID-19 crisis exhibits a distinct V-shape pattern. This suggests that economic recovery will be faster than the less severe Global Financial Crisis, and that countercyclical government policies may not be as necessary.

COVID 19: Sharing Experience of Health and Treatment Diagnosis in India

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, discovered in the year 2019. It originated in Wuhan, Hubei Province in China. It became the 5th documented Pandemic after the Spanish Flu in 1918. The symptoms are typical of Influenza like Illness, which includes fever, cough, cold, sore throat, headache, generalised body pain, loss of taste and smell sensations. It ranges in severity causing Pneumonia – all caused by the virus known as Corona virus. The pandemic did indeed cause a havoc as it was declared as a Public Health Emergency. It not only had an impact on lives of people but had a worldwide impact on varied sections of society, not limited only to healthcare but also the economy, psychology, travel and tourism, to just name a few. There was even a certain stigma associated with contracting the virus and having to stay in complete Home Isolation from the World. It not only had pronounced effects on the physical well-being of an individual, but also on one’s mental make-up. It has been a constant learning curve across different walks of life, that placed Hand Hygiene, Mask Wearing and Social Distancing at the epicentre of the prevention of such a Communicable Disease. This article is a reflection of my experience, battling with Corona Virus. – a deadly Pandemic of the 21st Century.

Al-Muddaththir of the Quran Linked to the Covid-19 and Spanish Flu Pandemics: Circumstantial Evidence

Recently there have been speculations concerning a possible link between the covid-19 pandemic and al-Muddaththir, the 74th chapter of the Quran. An examination of this chapter presented in this article shows further evidences in support of these speculations. It is shown that indications of not only the current Covid-19 pandemic, but also the horrific 1918 Spanish flu can be detected in chapter 74. The main emphasis of this article will be to demonstrate the timings of the pandemic events as they appear to have been encoded in four of the chapter verses. The concept of Translational-Coding and in particular, its use in decoding one of the time-informing verses will be explained. A remarkable scheme of al-Muddaththir to announce the exact occurring years of the two major pandemics, will also be exposed. Coincidences of the Super Moon occurrences with major events of both, Covid-19 and Spanish flu pandemics, will be shown as the possible reason for “by the moon” swearing in verse 74:32. In connection with these observed coincidences, possible effect of the moon’s differential gravity on suppression of the human immune system during a Super Moon occurrence will be addressed. Some other verses in al-Muddaththir with possible relevance to the pandemic perspective of this chapter will also be discussed.