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From what I can make out…human beings are scared of getting sick. For those of you who don't know me, I am an emergency room nurse, here in Canmore and in Banff. When a patient comes to the hospital hoping to get help, I am often the first nurse to whom they tell their story. You can see it in their eyes ……. the fear, the questions. They often fear the worst. And, right now, the worst in their eyes is the H1N1 flu, or the swine flu. And to tell you the honest truth, when I am about to speak with someone at a fairly close range that is coughing and looks ill, I too am frightened. So, the patient is asked to put on a simple surgical mask, which of course adds to their fear. Then, when I've finished my initial assessment, often they go back to the hordes in the waiting room, sitting in the midst of maybe 20 people, with a mask on, where they will wait, and wait, and wait. All this for a cough and fever.
I thought about preparing this reflection on the flu quite a while ago. It just couldn't be a public health message, or a reflection about ethics, because we're in a Church after all. You need to surround these thoughts with readings from the Bible, hymns, prayers. Hymns are easy, cause once you get Jan Tissandier thinking about a topic, she finds you some great hymns. It's the Bible readings that are the most difficult. So, I googled….the Bible and the flu. Not much of any help I'll tell you. My husband says I should of Yahoo'd it. Then, I got to thinking about contagious diseases in the Bible and the most obvious is leprosy. Leprosy was contagious, and generally the population was afraid of it. Lepers were made to live outside of towns, and could not even worship with others. I wonder how they fared getting their water, acquiring food, finding a mate…. But, these were public health measures that did make some sort of sense I suppose. And, it seems as if the priests acted as a kind of public health official…declaring a person "clean" or "unclean."
As you heard earlier, there are stories of Jesus healing the sick and specifically about healing lepers. Then there was the great ritual after someone was healed of leprosy that Ann and John acted out. That was so complicated, I felt we needed props! This was surely a ritual to make good and certain that the leper was clean. But, talking about rituals, evidently in Israel in July a group of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics took to the skies over Israel blowing ram's horns and ceremonial trumpets to help Israeli's deal with the H1N1 pandemic.
But, you know, there isn't much in the Bible about living with lepers. Did ordinary people speak with lepers? Interact with them?
In the last century, the world struggled with the Spanish flu. John Thorburn loaned me a book called The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. Interestingly, the Spanish flu, which was caused by this same H1N1 virus, did not probably originate in Spain at all. It probably started in Haskell County, Kansas early in 1918, where it then traveled east across the state to a huge army base and from there to Europe. It lay somewhat submerged in the summer of 1918, and by the Fall it hit with a vengeance world wide. It was called the Spanish flu because Spain, being a neutral country in WW1 was one of the few countries not censoring the news, and admitting to the flu. Elsewhere there was heavy censorship. Woodrow Wilson even developed squads of people country-wide who made sure that no ill was spoken, and no dire news was allowed.
The Spanish flu killed, and killed hard. In India alone the estimate is that 20 million people died. World-wide estimates range from 50 to 100 million deaths. Approximately 5 percent of the world's population succumbed to death. Many many more were ill. If a 1918-like pandemic hits again, it is likely that tens of millions of people would die, and the vast majority of deaths will occur in the poorest countries.
Soldiers in the US and Canada were the first to be infected and they were hit hard as they traveled across the countries in trains. They were stuffed into train cars like sardines, with no breathing room, and certainly no masks. This happened despite Army health officials themselves warning against the transport of troops. When they arrived at camps, they brought the flu with them. Despite quarantines in the camps, sometimes of the enlisted men but not the officers, the flu thrived. If a soldier made it this far unscathed, off he went into the ships, where again, despite efforts to isolate the men from each other, the flu thrived. Burials at sea were common.
In Philadelphia on Sept. 30, 1918 a war parade was not to be stopped despite warnings from public health officials. The proposed purpose of the parade was to inspire people to loan the government money by way of Liberty bonds because the war needed to be financed. But, guess what, two days later the flu had hit the civilian population in Philadelphia. The civilian population had been hit.
And on and on. What was life like with the flu? According to John Barry, it was ghost like. Cities were empty. In Philadelphia, for example, people were not allowed to congregate. Schools were closed. Churches were closed. No public meetings at all. People going to make a purchase at a store would negotiate from the sidewalk, and the parcel would be handed out to them on the street. Folks meeting each other would not speak without turning their heads away from each other.
And, the dead piled up. Bodies that could not be removed because there simply were so many. And, when the mortuary cart scoured the streets in the morning to take away the dead, there would be no coffins. One family begged, please, put my son in a box, any box, even if it's a macaroni box.
And around the world the story was the same. In India, there were so many dead that there was not enough fire wood to cremate, and the rivers were clogged with dead bodies. Some African villages were so badly decimated that when they were visited, there would be no one there at all, and the huts where the dead lay were caved in on themselves. Labrador and Alaska were also decimated of their populations. The mail boats would drop off the flu, and months later when they returned a huge percentage of the population had died.
So, how does a society go about its business in such a context? And what is the context right now?
This week the World Health Organization stated that there have been 2,000 deaths so far world wide, amidst 200,000 confirmed cases. No one actually knows what the Fall is going to bring. Will the H1N1 mutate? How bad will it be? Some epidemiologists are predicting that 30% of the world's population will be infected, with a death rate of .5% of the world's population. Eventually the flu will affect 2 billion people in some way. That is huge. It's numbing.
Yahoo has a slideshow about the H1N1 virus. 600 some odd pictures. There are oodles of pictures of people all over the world wearing masks. India, Korea, the Phillipines, Saudi Arabia, Japan… There are airports which have thermal testing of arriving passenger's temperature…..as people pass by the official with the lap top, their heat is registered on the screen.
As people living here in Canmore, in this community, we will have individual challenges if the flu hits. We will need to change our behavior, even if it's washing our hands more often. Will we go to work? Will we hold church services? Should our kids go to school? What about dropping the kids off at daycare? Where will we go for help if we get sick? Will we go to the hospital for help, or will we worry that the flu is so bad that we might get even sicker in the hospital? Should we get vaccinated? Will we help our neighbour? What will our local and provincial politicians provide in the way of leadership to the rest of us?
Then there are societal decisions. Who should get vaccinated? What about developing countries? The goal is for every Canadian to get vaccinated but that is only because of a contract we already have in place with a drug company called Glaxo-Smith-Kline. Canada is lucky, we can pay for it.
World-wide Oxfam and Doctors without Borders are worried about the fact that most of the manufacturing capacity for the flu vaccine is already spoken for through purchasing contracts negotiated by many of the world's wealthiest countries. WHO director Margaret Chan has negotiated 10% of vaccine production to go to developing countries free, through two of the three companies developing the vaccine. The third company, Novartis, has refused. 10% amounts to a total of 150 million vaccinations, which isn't near enough.
And, as an aside, not everyone is convinced that the vaccine will even work, or that it is safe.
Well, in the end, I think the question for us today is how can we love our neighbour as ourself in the event of a flu pandemic, or even if it turns out to be nothing more than a regular Fall illness? How, as a church, can we respond to a catastrophe in our midst? Will we be able to rise to the challenge of nursing the sick, offering support to those too ill to go to work, look after the families of the sick, gather food, love and support those around us? This may be in the midst of numbing fear, and it may be in the midst of personal tragedy for some of us.
I propose that we should establish ourselves as a kind of watch dog in the community. I think we should be alert to our friends and neighbours, and if the flu hits, lets get together, and figure out how we can help our neighbours. Let's educate on the meager prevention methods at our disposal, and figure out what it is that our community needs. And, after our meetings, we'll be sure to wash our hands.
Cathy Harrop
