Killer Viruses III. The Camp Funston Funk

[deddygetty]

Originally posted by Pat Holscher

Originally posted by deddygetty
After returning from WW I occupation duty in 1919, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment arrived at Ft Riley in July. I couldn't find any mention of the "Camp Funston funk", but it was noted that during the years 1922-23, Troops G & F took turns dismantling Camp Funston completely.

Don't attract gunfire. It irritates the people around you.

Sorry, the "funk" addition was my own. That's not a contemporary term, to be sure (at least I think not).

Pat

I just threw the "funk" in also, but there was no mention of any disease or any problems what-so-ever at Funston.

Don't attract gunfire. It irritates the people around you.

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by deddygetty

Originally posted by Pat Holscher

Originally posted by deddygetty
After returning from WW I occupation duty in 1919, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment arrived at Ft Riley in July. I couldn't find any mention of the "Camp Funston funk", but it was noted that during the years 1922-23, Troops G & F took turns dismantling Camp Funston completely.

Don't attract gunfire. It irritates the people around you.

Sorry, the "funk" addition was my own. That's not a contemporary term, to be sure (at least I think not).

Pat

I just threw the "funk" in also, but there was no mention of any disease or any problems what-so-ever at Funston.

Don't attract gunfire. It irritates the people around you.

One of the other threads on this topic likely discusses it. Indeed, there's a link somewhere to the outbreak at Camp Funston, to a site that discusses it. Really horrific. It started off with one soldier reporting on sick call, and was a raging epidemic just a few days, maybe even only really a matter of hours, later.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by deddygetty</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Pat Holscher</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by deddygetty</i>
<br />After returning from WW I occupation duty in 1919, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment arrived at Ft Riley in July. I couldn't find any mention of the "Camp Funston funk", but it was noted that during the years 1922-23, Troops G & F took turns dismantling Camp Funston completely.

Don't attract gunfire. It irritates the people around you.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Sorry, the "funk" addition was my own. That's not a contemporary term, to be sure (at least I think not).

Pat
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
I just threw the "funk" in also, but there was no mention of any disease or any problems what-so-ever at Funston.

Don't attract gunfire. It irritates the people around you.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

If you put in the following search on Yahoo or Google, you'll get lots of hits:

"Camp Funston" flu

Another one that will get lots of hits is:

"Camp Funston" pandemic

There's a large number of web articles, some quite scholarly, some personal accounts, on the topic.

Here's one example:

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
The Spanish flu got its name because Spain suffered from an early and acute outbreak, but it did not originate there. Its actual origin remains uncertain. The first strain was mild enough to prompt most World War I military forces to dismiss it as a pesky ailment. When the second strain hit North America in the summer of 1918, however, the virus caused a surge of deaths. First hit was Camp Funston, an army base in Kansas, where young soldiers were preparing for deployment to Europe. The virus then spread swiftly to other camps and on troop ships crossing the Atlantic, killing 43,000 U.S. military personnel in about three months. Despite the entreaties of the military's surgeons general, President Woodrow Wilson ordered continued shipments of troops aboard crowded naval transports, which soldiers came to call "death ships." By late September 1918, so overwhelmed was the War Department by influenza that the military could not assist in controlling civic disorder at home, including riots caused by epidemic hysteria. Worse, so many doctors, scientists, and lab technicians had been drafted into military service that civilian operations were hamstrung.

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

From Foreign Affairs.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050701f ... demic.html

An article that the first search brought up had this horrifying graph in it, showing the progress of Spanish Influenza in Kansas.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/flustat.html

There's also a Wikipedia article that mentions Camp Funston.

Its probably impossible to pin down an exact location for the origin of the disease. Most flu epidemics come out of Asia, as Asia has a concentration of birds, pigs and humans, necesseary to create new strains. But, as pointed out in the earlier thread on this topic, that same situation existed at Ft. Riley.







Pat

[Pat Holscher]

The reference to "Death Ships" above is interesting. I suppose in the climate of the times that was endured, but its hard to imagine that not causing a huge public outcry now. It says something for the discipline of WWI era US troops that they didn't complain en masse, or even refuse to get on them, given that they were bording vessels they knew were floating coffins.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

An updated look at the 1918 Flu Epidemic.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no01/05-0979.htm

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

And then there's the horse's role in medicine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/healt ... ref=slogin

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

Man, sounds like you UK residents might need to review these Funk threads:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/health/7170948.stm

Yikes!

Pat

[Couvi]

Influenza Pandemic of 1918

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,405144,00.html

Click on the photograph to enlarge. Note the bunks in this photograph of Camp Funston, Fort Riley, KS, in 1918 were still in service in the 1970’s.

[Todd]

Influenza Pandemic of 1918

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,405144,00.html

Click on the photograph to enlarge. Note the bunks in this photograph of Camp Funston, Fort Riley, KS, in 1918 were still in service in the 1970’s.

1970s nothin' - Missouri NG cantonment had these in active use as late as 1986.

[Couvi]

Influenza Pandemic of 1918

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,405144,00.html

Click on the photograph to enlarge. Note the bunks in this photograph of Camp Funston, Fort Riley, KS, in 1918 were still in service in the 1970’s.

1970s nothin' - Missouri NG cantonment had these in active use as late as 1986.

If memory serves, the adapters that allowed the stacking of two of these bunks made a dandy weapon in a fight.

[Pat Holscher]

Today's Casper Star Tribune ran a wire service article revealing that recent studies of survivors of the 1918 flu have retained their immunity to it. They've taken blood samples from them, and flu samples, and done a mice injection study.

Indeed, not only have they retained their immunity, but mutations in the humans have made the immunity stronger, while the flu itself, as to its evolved form of the 1918 virus, is now pretty benign.

The study is significant in that the researchers confirmed that we really retain immunities to virus we develop for our whole lives.

[Todd]

Today's Casper Star Tribune ran a wire service article revealing that recent studies of survivors of the 1918 flu have retained their immunity to it. They've taken blood samples from them, and flu samples, and done a mice injection study.

Indeed, not only have they retained their immunity, but mutations in the humans have made the immunity stronger, while the flu itself, as to its evolved form of the 1918 virus, is now pretty benign.

The study is significant in that the researchers confirmed that we really retain immunities to virus we develop for our whole lives.

Really fascinating stuff - opens up a lot of validity for research done for microbiology historical mapping. Could lead to all kinds of interesting immunology studies.

[Pat Holscher]

Today's Casper Star Tribune ran a wire service article revealing that recent studies of survivors of the 1918 flu have retained their immunity to it. They've taken blood samples from them, and flu samples, and done a mice injection study.

Indeed, not only have they retained their immunity, but mutations in the humans have made the immunity stronger, while the flu itself, as to its evolved form of the 1918 virus, is now pretty benign.

The study is significant in that the researchers confirmed that we really retain immunities to virus we develop for our whole lives.

Really fascinating stuff - opens up a lot of validity for research done for microbiology historical mapping. Could lead to all kinds of interesting immunology studies.

Here's the article:

http://www.trib.com/articles/2006/12/19 ... 82564c.txt

[Pat Holscher]

Funny how this is popping back up in the news. Last years' ineffective flu vaccine still in folks minds?

Anyhow, here's another new article, this one maintaining that bacteriological infections played a role:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=93747214

Of note, I saw this link on the WWI list, where one of the moderators, a physician, is skeptical of this article. Kelton, what do you think?

[Pat Holscher]

[
Still, the idea of a pulmonary-hemmoraghic death is more than a little scary.

That's for sure.

On the topic of hemorrhagic diseases, the current issue of Wyoming Wild Life has an issue on Deer Mice.

Deer mice, it states are responsible for more human deaths than any other predator in North America, due to their role in spreading disease.

Nasty little creatures.

Interestingly, Horse Mice, a mouse variant I'd never heard of, but which are apparently the ones folks normally see in houses, are not responsible for very much.

[Pat Holscher]

By the way, does it seem to anyone else that for the last several years we've been treated, every year, to a series of news stories that start right about this time of year, which sort of state A New Flu, SARS, Insert Nasty Disease Here, is going to get us all in a big Pandemic? Last year I actually heard an NPR interview in which the experts discussed the possibility of SARS and the Bird Flu circulating in simultaneous pandemics. The result would be, well. . . bad.

Be that as it may, the prediction always is that a pandemic is definitely coming.

I suppose, in the long history of things, some pandemic is coming. But does it seem the annual prediction of Big Pandemic This Year is a bit overdone?

[Pat Holscher]

Given the onset of flu season, perhaps, the History Channel must have been running one of their various low budget thrillers. Or at least they were running something a bit peculiar the other morning related to this topic.

I didn't watch the whole thing, as I only turned on the tv to catch that other morning favorite, The Weather Channel, but the History Channel came up as that was the last thing that had been on.

Some expert was discussing the 1919 Flu Epidemic, and proclaiming that it was caused by. . . comet borne pathogens.

Yes, that's right. Flu from outer space.

Which lead into a series of history ignoring "proofs" that it was a comet borne flu.

And here we all thought it was pigs and ducks.

[Couvi]

The old “Comets are harbingers of death” thing again!

[Pat Holscher]

The old “Comets are harbingers of death” thing again!

Yeah, and from a supposedly modern objective source.

While this is goofy enough to be laughed at, it was illustrative how video and completely ignoring facts can be sewn together to support a ludicrous thesis. The string of supposed "facts" that supported this theorist were ridiculously easy to poke holes in, but they were presented slickly. That ought to give us pause when something equally novel, which we know little about, shows up in that medium.

[Pat Holscher]

A graph of deaths due to the Spanish flue in Kansas.

http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/flustat.html

Impressive.