Influenza and Bush

I’ve been slowly reading The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (knitting all these Christmas gifts is cutting into other areas of my life) and came across a passage describing Woodrow Wilson that just really struck me as relevant to GWB:

He was one of those rare men who believed almost to the point of mental illness in his own righteousness.

Wilson believed in fact that his will and spirit were informed by the spirit and hope of a people and even of God. He talked of his “sympathetic connection which I am sure that I have with” all American citizens and said, “I am sure that my heart speaks the same thing that they wish their hearts to speak.” “I will not cry ‘peace’ so long as there is sin and wrong in the world”, he went on. “America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”

He is probably the only American president to have held this belief with quite such conviction, with no sign of self-doubt. It is a trait more associated with crusaders than politicians (p. 121).

Currently I would have to ask Mr. Barry if he still felt that Wilson was the only American president to have these characteristics.

The scary thing is that Wilson’s sheer righteousness caused him to severely limit free speech and crush any opposition to the war….and one result was the influenza pandemic of 1918, started in the United States and spread to the rest of world via World War I.

So far this book is extremely fascinating and very well written. It goes into detail regarding how several different variables contributed to the pandemic, from political to social to medical. It’s absolutely terrifying.

To give a perspective on the death toll:

Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century; it killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years (p. 5).

A 2003 study estimates the annual deaths in the United States (data taken from 1990-1999) due to respiratory and circulatory complications from influenza and pneumonia to be approximately 36,000.

36,000 a year just from the flu.

Maybe this year I should get my flu shot…