| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Press Lies Exposed
00:02:55
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|
| It's crazy. | |
| This book that was written about the great influenza, it said the number one thing. | |
| Know that the government still lies. | |
| It's going to lie. | |
| They don't want people to be afraid, so they're not going to tell you. | |
| And when the time is, they tell you prepare, it's going to be too late. | |
| That's right. | |
| On page 335 of the great influenza, it says, as terrifying as the disease was, the press made it more so. | |
| They terrified by making little of it. | |
| For what officials in the press said bore no relationship to what people saw and touched and smelled and endured. | |
| People could not trust what they read. | |
| I mean, there's many examples. | |
| I don't know how many. | |
| I could just keep going with this. | |
| On page 336, the Bronxville, the New York, in 1918, Review Press reporters simply said nothing at all about influenza. | |
| Absolutely nothing. | |
| These are direct quotes from the book. | |
| Fear, that was the enemy. | |
| Yes, fear. | |
| And the more officials tried to control it with half-truths and outright lies, the more the terror spread. | |
| On page 179, it says this. | |
| Those in control of the war's propaganda machine wanted nothing printed that could hurt morale. | |
| Focus on the political machine. | |
| That's what's important. | |
| Ignore the virus. | |
| Two physicians stated flatly to newspapers that the men had not died of influenza. | |
| They were lying. | |
| Page 181 of the great influenza, Royal Copeland, head of the New York City Health Department and the port health officer jointly stated there was, quote, not the slightest danger of an epidemic because the disease seldom attacks, quote, a well-nourished person, which is actually the exact opposite of the 1918 great influenza. | |
| It acted quite contrary to the other strains of influenza, where typically it takes the life of the elderly for compromised immune systems or the young for their immune systems have not quite developed. | |
| No, the healthy, able-bodied men and women were actually attacked most often. | |
| Page 205 and 208. | |
| On September 28th, a great liberty loan parade designed to sell millions of dollars of war bonds was scheduled. | |
| Weeks of organizing had gone into the event, and it was to be the greatest parade in Philadelphia's history, with thousands marching in it and hundreds of thousands expected to watch. | |
| Several doctors, practicing physicians, public health experts at medical schools, infectious disease experts urged this man named Crewson, who was the director of public health in Philadelphia, to cancel the parade, urging him. | |
|
Editor Refuses Warning
00:00:37
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|
| Another man by the name of Howard Anders tried to generate public pressure to stop it, telling newspapers, reporters that the rally would spread the influenza and kill. | |
| No newspaper quoted his warning. | |
| Such a comment, well, might after all hurt morale. | |
| So he demanded of at least one editor that the paper print his warning that the rally would bring together a ready-made inflammable mass for a conflagration. | |
| And the editor refused. | |
| They went on with this particular parade. | |
| And just in Philadelphia alone, tens of thousands of people died. | |