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Almost a century before the coronavirus, the Spanish flu strikes France


Almost a century before the coronavirus, the threat level of which was raised to “very high” by the WHO (World Health Organization), another epidemic struck the world and France, while the conflict over World War I was about to die out.

October 25, 1918, the Assembly should exult in front of the victory which is announced at last, after four years of nightmare. However, no. It is agitated and heated up, like feverish fever in the face of the sneaky and invisible enemy which puts the whole country flat, as surely as the first offensive of the Kaiser in the Marne, in the first weeks of the war. Albert Favre, the Under-Secretary of State for the Interior, promises to strengthen border surveillance. “Microbes don’t have a business card,” replied a member dryly. The ink would not even have time to dry: the flu hardly takes a few hours to declare itself. When the epidemic hits, it is already too late to hope to contain it.

Parisian high schools close their doors

The debates of the day, at the Palais Bourbon, throw a harsh light on the helplessness of the government, harassed with questions by members who no longer know themselves how to respond to the concerns of their constituents. Disinfect transport and public places? Okay, but the cleaners are on the carpet. Better care for the most ill? Yes, except that most of the doctors are at the front, and that there is no question yet of demobilizing them and returning them to their civil tasks. So in the meantime, the authorities ban a little derisory dry sweeping in the streets, or shaking the carpets of the house.

The government, in full confusion, seems to delegate to local powers the task of taking real measures. This Friday, October 25, the Parisian high schools, on the orders of the rectorate, are finally closing their doors … closed for a while already in Lyon. But the capital has obviously not taken the measure of the drama that is playing out: the performance halls remain open, and transport continues to circulate. Finally, almost: for lack of valid drivers, the metros are scarce, and the trains, crowded, take many infected passengers to a celestial terminus.

Undertakers lack coffins

In Paris, the week that is ending has seen corpses pile up: three times more than a “normal” end of October. Undertakers lack coffins. In overcrowded hospitals, true centers of contagion, feverish patients are delirious or completely apathetic; they lie like fish out of the water, their faces cyanotic, whose color turns blue leaded by dint of lack of air. Among these unfortunate people with gunshot lungs, whole contingents of patients return from the front where promiscuity offers viral fire a fantastic battlefield. Many do not return from this trachea war.

The most curious thing is that the disease does not strike babies or the elderly, like the usual winter flu. It particularly harvests adults in the prime of their lives. The playwright Edmond Rostand, beloved author of Cyrano de Bergerac, will be struck down a month later, at the end of November, at only 50 years old. Guillaume Apollinaire, he was only 38. The poet of “Pont Mirabeau” expires on November 9, without having the joy of knowing the end of the fighting in which he had failed to leave the skin.

30% of French people are bedridden at the height of the epidemic

Strange slaughter, which the press belatedly takes over when the dead fall as in Gravelotte. For months, the virus has been prowling in general indifference. It had been invited for the first time on April 10, in the trenches of Villers-sur-Coudun (Oise), before spreading throughout France at a prodigious speed. But most of the victims got away with a good fever and some aches. We were not going to complain for so little, while the hairy paid the price of blood to save the country! A thin article in “Le Matin” on July 6 set the tone: “In France, the flu is mild. Our troops resist it wonderfully. But on the other side of the forehead, the Boches seem very touched, ”writes a quill dipped in propaganda ink.

When the pandemic – which may have mutated in the meantime – returns at the end of the summer, it no longer plays, it kills. The virus takes a village, puts half of its population on its side, buries some of them and then resumes its morbid road. Everywhere, we bury the night, at the chain. No vaccine, no antibiotics: nothing can stop the harm, especially not the potions sold at high prices by unscrupulous charlatans. Alcohol then? We will never have had as much drink as during this fall when 30% of French people are bedridden at the height of the epidemic. The Spanish flu will return for a third round in the spring of 1919, before finally ending the fighting. France, relieved of 250,000 souls, could finally breathe.

Why was it called Spanish flu?

For a time, it has been called the Chinese, then Russian, flu since the Bolshevik revolution raised fears of the spread of the communist “virus”. Seen from France, the flu inevitably becomes “boche”: a gift that the Germans left in the trenches which they abandon to the allies, and even a poisoned vaccine sent sneakily by the enemy! The name “Spanish flu” was imposed on everyone (except, of course, in countries where the language of Cervantes is spoken) in the summer of 1918, and for a reason that had nothing to do with the origin of the virus: in May-June, Barcelona and Madrid were hit by the epidemic. The newspapers of neutral Spain, which are not subject to military censorship, speak freely of this evil which is bedeviling the whole country, and even its king, Alfonso XIII.

“The Great Flu”, by Freddy Vinet, Vendémiaire editions. Price: € 22.

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