While the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has also wreaked havoc throughout the South, there was an even more deadly epidemic that attacked a number of Southern states almost a century and a half ago. In the spring of 1878, thousands of refugees from Cuba fled to New Orleans at the end of an unsuccessful ten-year war to gain their independence from Spain. With them, they brought the yellow fever virus that quickly spread through the city. Despite draconian efforts to contain the infection, the disease killed over four thousand people in southern Louisiana before it began its murderous advance up the Mississippi Valley through northern Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas . . . and then on to Tennessee where it caused five thousand more deaths before its final invasion of Missouri.
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Point:
ReplyDeleteWithout radio, TV, government ads, &c, no one in the South (or anywhere else) would think there is a deadly virus on the lose and taking toll
In 1878 ---without any help from government, newspapers--- people noticed that there is contagious something in the neighbourhood that is making people sick and killing many (there were wanted ads for grave-diggers)
Point two:
yellow-fever didn't stop because of vaccine, or 21st century medical science