We all know the story of the sage who, when promised an award by his Emperor, said he wanted only one grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth and so on up to the sixty-fourth square. “Done!” said the Emperor, and the process began. It’s amazing how fast things can add up…or multiply, as in this case. They hadn’t even got halfway there, when all the granaries and the Treasury of the Empire had been exhausted. What the Emperor did then is not revealed. Did he fly into a rage and behead the poet for his insolence? Did he meekly give up his kingdom and walk away? For, by the sixty-fourth square, if they ever got that far, the number of grains of rice would have been over 18 quintillion, or 18 followed by eighteen zeroes!
The story is an illustration of the power of the Exponential Curve. My reason for mentioning it here is to highlight the phenomenal rate of spread of the virus whose scientific name is SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2), which causes the disorder called Corona Virus Disease Nineteen (COVID-19).It starts from a single patient and can spread by multiples of…not two, as in the story of the Emperor and the Sage … but of three!
Alfonso XII of Spain
That is, unless its spread is arrested by the total isolation of its patients, so that the virus cannot find another human host to move into. And that is our only weapon against its spread. That and self-protection by social distancing.
Some of the world’s leaders seem quite confused as to the adequate response. Prime Minister Imran Khan keeps arguing against lockdowns while, fortunately, at least the province of Sindh has gone its own way and is now, to one extent or the other, being followed by other provinces. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thought that things should be let alone so that the hardy Anglo-Saxons should develop immunities. He went even further at one point by opining that doctors tending COVID-19 patients should not wear protective clothing!??!
And then there is US President Donald Trump, who said, “After all, it’s only another kind of Flu. Isn’t it?” Yes, Mr President, just like a man-eating panther is only another kind of cat - but try to stroke its fur, if you dare!
The worst affected country of all was India (‘British India’ at that time), where the death toll is estimated to have been over 17 million, but may have been considerably higher
This piece is about another kind of virus of the Corona family – of the man-eating panther, and not the pussycat, kind. That was the so-called Spanish ‘Flu, a Pandemic that spread exponentially around the world a hundred years ago. This was an unusually deadly kind of influenza. It is thought to have originated in birds, but was in fact of the H1N1 variety, similar to the Swine Flu of 2009.
The Spanish Flu Pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920. It infected more than 500 million people, a quarter of the entire world’s population at the time. By far the deadliest epidemic in history, its death toll is estimated to have been over 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million.
One of its early sufferers was King Alfonso XIII of Spain, which gave it its title. But it did not originate in Spain. A major World War I British Army hospital camp at Étaples in France has been theorized by recent researchers as being at the centre of the outbreak, which then spread rapidly through the wartime troop trenches in Europe. However, many scholars feel that it may have been circulating in the European armies for months before that outbreak. Some hold that the epidemic originated in America. Haskell County, Kansas, in the USA has been suggested as the point of origin. On 4 March 1918, company cook Albert Gitchell, from Haskell County, reported sick at Fort Riley, a US military facility that at the time was training American troops during World War I, making him the first recorded victim of the Pandemic.
As U.S. troops deployed en masse for the war effort in Europe, they carried the Spanish flu with them. The close quarters and massive troop movements of World War I hastened the Pandemic, and probably both increased transmission and augmented mutation. The War may also have increased the lethality of the virus.
The worst affected country of all was India (‘British India’ at that time), where the death toll is estimated to have been over 17 million, but may have been considerably higher. In September 1918, a troop ship bringing soldiers back from the War after the Armistice docked at Bombay - and sent the Spanish Flu spreading rapidly up from Maharashtra to Punjab. One of its early sufferers was a prominent lawyer named Mohandas K. Gandhi.
Three waves of the disease devastated countries around the world, the worst being the second wave that began in August 1918. Interestingly, it appeared to spread more rapidly in summer rather than winter.
The Pandemic took three horrific years, from January 1918 to December 1920, to finally die out. There are many theories about why and how it ended, but nobody knows for sure.
The point is that, while the Spanish Flu raged, the nations of Europe continued to fight World War I, right up to the defeat of Germany and the Axis Powers and the Armistice of August 1918. They then proceeded to the final humiliation of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. Earlier, Britain and her Allies had found it possible, despite the War against Germany, to intervene in support of the so-called White Russian Army of General Yudenich, Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin in their armed attempt to undo the Russian Revolution of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) and the Bolsheviks. The latter were of course successful, despite all odds, and continued to consolidate their Revolution right through the days of the Pandemic.
The Middle East was “reorganised” along the lines of the Sykes-Picot Plan, although Sir Martin Sykes had died in the Pandemic. US President Woodrow Wilson carved up the states of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The Treaty of Sevres ended the Ottoman Empire in 1920 and a Turkish commander named Mustapha Kemal struck out on his own for the founding of a new nation-state called Turkey.
In India, which had the highest numbers of victims, the atrocious Rowlatt Act was passed to control unrest in Punjab, leading to the Jallianwala Bagh atrocity in Amritsar. M.K.Gandhi, who had survived the Spanish Flu in Bombay, commenced the Non-Co-operation Movement and would go on to become a major figure in the Independence Movement. With the establishment of Turkey, the Khilafat Movement in India, which was parallel to the Non-Co-operation Movement, suddenly found itself without an objective.
In short, the processes of human history continued to churn out their usual violent outcomes through this worst of all previous pandemics. Can we hope that it will be different this time? With a roster of world leaders that includes President Trump, and Prime Ministers Johnson and Khan, it is hard to be positive about the answer.
