Posted by
Informal on Friday, June 19, 2009 12:00:00 AM
The other day I heard a reporter on a news programme say that 40% of the population died in 1919 because of the Spanish ’flu. Really? Did no-one else either in the control room or anywhere else at the TV tation think about the astounding death-rate. Think about the ramifications of such a catastrophe: would not your parents and grandparents, and everyone else who ever talked with a survivor of that terrible time, have had stories of horror and dreadful memories of the two-fifths of the population suddenly eliminated and of the immense number of entire schools, communities, cities, districts and even countries which were horribly depopulated, it would have seemed, almost overnight?