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1918 Pandemic Was Deadlier, but College Football Continued.

PlayerRep

Well-known member
"On Sept. 28, 1918, Riley Shue played in his first college football game. Eleven days later, the Miami (Ohio) guard died of the flu.

A starter at Texas also died of influenza that fall. So did a player at West Virginia, and Ohio State’s team captain from the year before. That’s just a few we know about. It isn’t clear how many college football players died of the flu in fall 1918.

The 1918-19 flu scourge was more lethal than the current coronavirus pandemic, killing 675,000 in the U.S., and was especially fatal in 20- to 40-year-olds. Covid-19 infections have killed more than 180,000 this year, and the U.S. has more than three times the population it did a century ago.


Why would universities in 1918 forge ahead with football while a virus decimated the ranks of young, healthy men? The answer is something arguably even bigger than a global pandemic: a global war.

But the overlay of World War I made 1918 unique, and gave grim weight to the metaphor of football as a battle.

The U.S. War Department warned in September 1918 that college football could be canceled because it would distract from military training.

A couple of weeks later, the government pivoted like an All-American receiver. The game could help build the aggressiveness to fight and the grit to endure grinding days in the trenches of France, it reasoned. “It would be difficult to overestimate the value of football experience as a part of a soldier’s training,” President Woodrow Wilson later wrote.

But military leadership at the time included giants like former Yale coach Walter Camp, who was advising the Navy on athletic activities. Wilson himself had coached football while teaching at Wesleyan University.

Military boot camps across the country had formed teams after the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, many made up of former college stars. In 1918, the mighty team at the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago boasted three players later enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: George Halas, Jimmy Conzelman and John “Paddy” Driscoll.


On college campuses, football teams were depleted of students who’d left for the war, so many called upon freshmen to play. Teams also got help from the ranks of the Student Army Training Corps, on-campus boot camps set up nationwide. Some colleges played games against military teams.

The 1918 flu first surfaced in the U.S. among military personnel in spring 1918, but the resurgence caught campuses by surprise. ll practice time and restricted travel from university campuses in October to Saturday afternoons. Overnight road trips were out.

Some teams, like Alabama and LSU, were so depleted by the war effort that they’d already canceled their seasons. Others scrambled to remake their schedules, some booking games days or hours before kickoff.

Meanwhile the virus spread, prompting regional health authorities to ban fans from games or prohibit large gatherings. At one point all games scheduled in Illinois and Iowa were called off.

By the third week in October Michigan’s team, packed with Army training corps members, was playing with masks. “Until further orders they will practice with the piece of gauze fastened about their mouths,” read a story in the Daily Pennsylvanian.

At one point, 673 members of Pitt’s Army training corps contingent were hospitalized. Of those whose cases developed into pneumonia, 99 died, according to the story.

Yet on Nov. 9 the highly touted Panthers, led by coach Pop Warner, managed to start their season. They outscored their opponents 140-16 over five games, losing only to a Cleveland Naval Reserve team led by a rugged former Auburn standout named Moon Ducote. Pitt and 5-0 Michigan both claim national titles for that season, decades before a championship game existed.

Still, death hung over 1918. U.S. average life expectancy plummeted 12 years from the year before, mostly due to the flu. A December story in the Pittsburgh Press listed dozens of notable athletes who’d died that year: A former Dartmouth quarterback killed in a German raid. The 1917 Ohio State captain, Harold Courtney, dead of pneumonia—the cause often given for people who contracted the flu.

The 1918 and 2020 college football seasons carry a few striking parallels.
Yet even in 1918, financial forces prodded college football: A late October 1918 story in the Pittsburgh Press expressed hope that West Virginia could mount a few games to raise money toward a $170 million fund for the Red Cross and other war charities.
"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-1918-pandemic-was-deadlier-but-college-football-continued-heres-why-11599048011?mod=hp_major_pos1#cxrecs_s
 
Lead paint was deadlier, but we continued to use it...

So, because stupid decisions were made in the past, we should replicate them?

This logic is stupid.
 
We're so fuck!no soft as a society. The Continental Congress met during multiple pandemics and signed the Declaration of Independence. The tough SOBs who conquered the West persevered. Our Armies lost thousands of Soldiers to disease during our many wars...

Today, we shudder ourselves in our homes cloaked by fear.

Soft and weak.
 
SoldierGriz said:
We're so [#]f###!no soft as a society. The Continental Congress met during multiple pandemics and signed the Declaration of Independence. The tough SOBs who conquered the West persevered. Our Armies lost thousands of Soldiers to disease during our many wars...

Today, we shudder ourselves in our homes cloaked by fear.

Soft and weak.
:clap:
 
SoldierGriz said:
We're so [#]f###!no soft as a society. The Continental Congress met during multiple pandemics and signed the Declaration of Independence. The tough SOBs who conquered the West persevered. Our Armies lost thousands of Soldiers to disease during our many wars...

Today, we shudder ourselves in our homes cloaked by fear.

Soft and weak.
According to your logic, Americans shouldn’t be taking any precautions. Instead of 190,000 deaths, we might have 500,000 deaths. Sounds like you were on the sauce.
 
Spanky2 said:
SoldierGriz said:
We're so [#]f###!no soft as a society. The Continental Congress met during multiple pandemics and signed the Declaration of Independence. The tough SOBs who conquered the West persevered. Our Armies lost thousands of Soldiers to disease during our many wars...

Today, we shudder ourselves in our homes cloaked by fear.

Soft and weak.
According to your logic, Americans shouldn’t be taking any precautions. Instead of 190,000 deaths, we might have 500,000 deaths. Sounds like you were on the sauce.

Nope. Leading a combined arms live fire exercise. No masks, thousands of weapons, lots of HE, and the intoxicating smell of cordite with young men and women who are not soft or weak.

Back to your locked doors and shuttered windows spankster.
 
Spanky2 said:
SoldierGriz said:
We're so [#]f###!no soft as a society. The Continental Congress met during multiple pandemics and signed the Declaration of Independence. The tough SOBs who conquered the West persevered. Our Armies lost thousands of Soldiers to disease during our many wars...

Today, we shudder ourselves in our homes cloaked by fear.

Soft and weak.
According to your logic, Americans shouldn’t be taking any precautions. Instead of 190,000 deaths, we might have 500,000 deaths. Sounds like you were on the sauce.

..75 years and older maybe you should take some precautions according to CDC numbers...
 
SoldierGriz said:
Spanky2 said:
According to your logic, Americans shouldn’t be taking any precautions. Instead of 190,000 deaths, we might have 500,000 deaths. Sounds like you were on the sauce.

Nope. Leading a combined arms live fire exercise. No masks, thousands of weapons, lots of HE, and the intoxicating smell of cordite with young men and women who are not soft or weak.

Back to your locked doors and shuttered windows spankster.
Well, Soldier, I hope they don’t get the virus! You called it re the doors/windows!🙈
 
grizghost said:
Spanky2 said:
According to your logic, Americans shouldn’t be taking any precautions. Instead of 190,000 deaths, we might have 500,000 deaths. Sounds like you were on the sauce.

..75 years and older maybe you should take some precautions according to CDC numbers...
Ghost, remember the virus attacks you youngsters as well.
 
Spanky2 said:
grizghost said:
..75 years and older maybe you should take some precautions according to CDC numbers...
Ghost, remember the virus attacks you youngsters as well.

As of 8/21, in MT, 1 death between 30-39, 3 40-49, 3 50-59.

"Most of these counties report ages comparable to the state average, with median ages between 36-40 years old. [These are cases.]

Reported cases in Gallatin and Missoula Counties tend to be younger than cases in other counties. Gallatin and Missoula counties report a lower median age of 29 and 32 years old, respectively.

Persons who died were between 30 [woman in Bighorn county] and 95 years of age, with a median age of 78 years old. Fifty-four percent were male. For those who died, and race was known, 54 (68%) of them identified as white and 25 (32%) as Native American.

There are 54 counties reporting COVID-19 cases and even though 30 of those counties indicate that at least one person acquired the virus in the community, 13 counties have reported widespread community acquired transmission occurring in their county. Of current data available, about 45% of cases were contacts to a known case, either within the household or otherwise. Clusters identified 24% of case reports, and 22% of all cases with known transmission information likely acquired the virus in the community; most of those are in Gallatin and Yellowstone counties. Eight percent of reported cases likely acquired the virus through travel-related exposures."

https://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/publichealth/documents/CDEpi/DiseasesAtoZ/2019-nCoV/COVID%20EPI%20PROFILE%2008212020.pdf
 
PlayerRep said:
Spanky2 said:
Ghost, remember the virus attacks you youngsters as well.

As of 8/21, in MT, 1 death between 30-39, 3 40-49, 3 50-59.

"Most of these counties report ages comparable to the state average, with median ages between 36-40 years old. [These are cases.]

Reported cases in Gallatin and Missoula Counties tend to be younger than cases in other counties. Gallatin and Missoula counties report a lower median age of 29 and 32 years old, respectively.

Persons who died were between 30 [woman in Bighorn county] and 95 years of age, with a median age of 78 years old. Fifty-four percent were male. For those who died, and race was known, 54 (68%) of them identified as white and 25 (32%) as Native American.

There are 54 counties reporting COVID-19 cases and even though 30 of those counties indicate that at least one person acquired the virus in the community, 13 counties have reported widespread community acquired transmission occurring in their county. Of current data available, about 45% of cases were contacts to a known case, either within the household or otherwise. Clusters identified 24% of case reports, and 22% of all cases with known transmission information likely acquired the virus in the community; most of those are in Gallatin and Yellowstone counties. Eight percent of reported cases likely acquired the virus through travel-related exposures."

https://dphhs.mt.gov/Portals/85/publichealth/documents/CDEpi/DiseasesAtoZ/2019-nCoV/COVID%20EPI%20PROFILE%2008212020.pdf
These were the US numbers straight from the CDC 5 days ago...

85+ - 53,383 - 30.50%
75-84 - 45,022 - 25.73%
65-74 - 36,434 - 20.82%
55-64 - 21,552 - 12.31%
45-54 - 9,047 - 5.17%
35-44 - 3,450 - 1.97%
25-34 - 1,318 - .753%
15-24 - 300 - .171%
5-14 - 28 - .016%
1-4 - 14 - .008%

Of the deaths we've experienced, over 77% of them were 65 or older. This doesn't take into account what we know now, and what many of us knew the whole time, that nearly all of those deaths were to people with 2-3 other underlying health issues.

How can anyone look at those numbers and continue letting this virus dictate their lives and education?! I read that Idaho is moving to eliminate all Covid protocols. Is this true? I hope so. And I hope others follow suit.
 
SoldierGriz said:
Spanky2 said:
According to your logic, Americans shouldn’t be taking any precautions. Instead of 190,000 deaths, we might have 500,000 deaths. Sounds like you were on the sauce.

Nope. Leading a combined arms live fire exercise. No masks, thousands of weapons, lots of HE, and the intoxicating smell of cordite with young men and women who are not soft or weak.

Back to your locked doors and shuttered windows spankster.

thanks, i needed a laugh this morning, and nothing makes me laugh like an old man pounding his little chest on egriz about fighting thin air with guns.
 
argh! said:
SoldierGriz said:
Nope. Leading a combined arms live fire exercise. No masks, thousands of weapons, lots of HE, and the intoxicating smell of cordite with young men and women who are not soft or weak.

Back to your locked doors and shuttered windows spankster.

thanks, i needed a laugh this morning, and nothing makes me laugh like an old man pounding his little chest on egriz about fighting thin air with guns.
Soldier, thanks for fighting thin air with your guns. I like knowing that when it comes time to fight something other than thin air, you and yours are prepared to protect guys like me and argh. VERY much appreciated!
 
argh! said:
SoldierGriz said:
Nope. Leading a combined arms live fire exercise. No masks, thousands of weapons, lots of HE, and the intoxicating smell of cordite with young men and women who are not soft or weak.

Back to your locked doors and shuttered windows spankster.

thanks, i needed a laugh this morning, and nothing makes me laugh like an old man pounding his little chest on egriz about fighting thin air with guns.

VERY BIG GUNS. AIR IS DEAD.

Stay indoors geezer. Scary out here.
 
SoldierGriz said:
argh! said:
thanks, i needed a laugh this morning, and nothing makes me laugh like an old man pounding his little chest on egriz about fighting thin air with guns.

VERY BIG GUNS. AIR IS DEAD.

Stay indoors geezer. Scary out here.

Shouldn't you be out raking Montana's forests? Seems big fires are hitting the state pretty hard.
 
GrizLA said:
SoldierGriz said:
VERY BIG GUNS. AIR IS DEAD.

Stay indoors geezer. Scary out here.

Shouldn't you be out raking Montana's forests? Seems big fires are hitting the state pretty hard.

There are 250 active duty Soldiers fighting fires in California today. They are out of Joint Base Lewis-Mchord. There are 250 more ready to go out of Fort Carson. If the State needs them, they simply need to request assistance from the National Interagency Fire Center located in Boise.

What else do you want your Army to do for you? Good chance the young men and women serving will be ready to do so.
 
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