re: #156 Shiplord Kirel

My grandmother (then 10 years old) said the flu epidemic was the worst event of her life, which is saying a lot since she lived to be 105. Seven of her twenty-eight fifth grade classmates died, along with her teacher, a couple of cousins and many other people she knew. A lot of people thought it was literally the end of the world, that everyone might die within a few more weeks; as indeed they would have if the death rate had continued at its peak level. October 1918 still has the highest number of registered deaths of any month in US history, despite the population having increased 250% since then.
During some kind of flu scare a few years ago, in about 2010, some yokel media types contacted her and wanted to interview her about the 1918 epidemic. She was apparently the only person they could find who could both remember it and describe it coherently. She basically told them to jump in the river, that they were trying to spread hysteria and unnecessary alarm, and she would not be part of it. “If you start having 5000 people a day dying from it, call me back and I’ll talk about 1918.”

I post more infrequently than I’d like but I hope you’re doing okay.

I loved Camus’, ‘The Plague’. Metaphors aside, it was a keyhole into the kind of horror that is seeing loved ones die in such numbers that even the sensation of mourning is affected.