Their parents in 1918. People of all cultures struggled with the same terrible threat. And within a matter of months as many as 50 million would be dad. In the United States, the death toll reached 675,000. Five times the number of u. S. Soldiers killed in world war i. What was that deadly threat . There were many people who died, who had just come from before from mexico where we were living. On account of the mexican revolution. I was about ten years old. I was the oldest, and my Four Brothers and sisters of the family, only my dad and my sister didnt get it. My two brothers were in one room sect. I was sick in the other bedroom with my mother. My poor dad and sister had to be our attendance and see what they can do for us. We had such a high fever. Mother told me that i saw her black hair was a cat. And i was afraid that it was delirium from the high fever. Every week on account of the high fever, and most schools, public spaces, every place was closed. For two or three weeks. I was eight years old. We live near my dads mother. She and her daughter and two grand children were living close to us. When they got the flu and got sick my parents, we just moved in with them, to where my mother could nurse older patients and take care of them. At that time my mother was 25 years old. She had three children. She was estce que ces expecting another baby in gens devraient etre may. Admissibles avant que le this was in gouvernement february. Chinois she had taken care of nun reglement sur la it Securite Nationale . voix de linterprete decker, patients desole de vous. Interrompre, monsieur falconer, nous allons maintenant passer au deuxieme tour de question. Nous allons terminer vers 6 heures et dix. Le deuxieme tour, quatre minutes chacun pour les deux premiers deputes et deux minutes chacun pour madame normandin et madame kwan. On va commencer avec monsieur hallan, quatre minutes. voix de linterprete merci, madame la presidente. Merci aux temoins detre venus a lot of people from the village that had gone were brought back sick. There were brought back in a train he said. Similar to the one that passed away in tennessee, in 1918 my mother was just 11 years old. She remembers the list on the south side of the village. She remembers that church bell would ring every day, theres a certain bell for a notice. And she says she remembers as a little girl how it sounded. [noise] in 1918 as now, most people didnt think of influence as a disease that could lead to death. We suffered through the flu season every winter. In the u. S. , the flu season usually picks between jenner and then of march. The symptoms are usually a runny nose, sometimes i hate fever and just feeling a little wiped out. Influence on the other hand as much much more pronounced than that. People who generally have high grade fever. Absolutely no energy whatsoever. Muscle aches, a dry cough, you may feel bad for days. After four to five days youre starting to fill yourself again. With influenza sometimes two to three months or more of really severe and can go onto cars ammonia. Complications from the flu cause and average of hundred thousand hospitalizations every year in the u. S. On average, 36,000 people die from the complications. There are seasonal influenza epidemics in the United StatesYoung Children in particular, those less than two years of age, elderly people, particularly people 65 years or over, people of any age with underlying conditions such as asthma, chronic lung disease, chronic cardiovascular disease, and in addition pregnant women are at higher risk of complications from violence et de la victimisation seasonal influenza. Fondee sur le sexe but seasonal et sur lexperience du influence as a serious colonialisme chez Health Threat for les inuits. Pourriez people withvous nous donner un peu plus de complications. Details sur la meilleure the facon de mettre en influence oeuvre of the swept the nation ces pluies caution . In 1918 and early de 1919 killed more than half mettre en oeuvre 1 Million People in the u. S. In the population was only a third of what it is today. I was four years old at the time. I was living on the ranch. In mexico, my mother was a need wife and she tended to the people. Delivering babies and all that kind of thing. She would take me with her to visit the new mothers. I would love to go see the new babies. I cried because at the time didnt want me to take me with her because she was with the second the dying. According to her, none of us at home got either. She would tell me about how people would die, sometimes during the and they had no Funeral Services or anything. They just carried them off to bury them. It was very hard for them to keep up burying the dead, because they were dying so fast. The one thing that stayed in her mind because i would see later was the nailing of coats together. I called them boxes. Boxes for the people. Whether people call influenza, the grit, are the spanish flu, its clear that this isnt the food that comes every year. Now we know the influences caused by a virus. Influenza virus. We know that the virus spreads from one person to another, when people cough and sneeze or through contact with the virus on someones hand. Or contaminated surface. In 1918, no one you would coughed state, where it started, or how to stop it. They were scared because it happened so rapidly, and didnt know it was going on, what was happening. There were few communities in the United States so small and isolated that they were sheltered from the weaves of deadly disease that swept around the world. The influence of 1918 even touched remote inuit villages in alaska. Sometimes killing every man, woman, and child. Or killing the adults and leaving the children with no one to care for them. The 1918 influenza struck so many people in the southwest very hurt as well. I dont think the doctor resided here but he came from albuquerque. A lot of our people, older people, didnt speak the english language so my dad would interpret what he was asking them to do, i have to take care of themselves. They would work from Early Morning until late at night, point every single home. In the morning when they got them in the home maybe two or three people in the family, they had passed away during the night. Every day they were burying people. The church now would be towing from morning to evening because there were so many deaths. The borough of Indian Affairs sent dr. Da richardson to investigate the situation near albuquerque, new mexico. He wrote, the strength of the pebbles was enough taken by the infants but from the young adults a life of the tribe. And this was true around the world. With the influenza that hits us every fall or winter most healthy adults are sick for a week or two and recover. When people die of the flu its almost always the very young in the very old. But the influenza of 1918 was not only much more lethal than seasonal flu, the death rate was very high among young adults. Strong young men and women working to support and care for their families. My parents came to this country from romania. In 1918, my family was living in south philadelphia. I think it was a neighborhood mostly of immigrants. It was a rough life. My mother and father and my two sisters all had the flu. It was a very sad period. There is sadness over the city. When you look down use a hardly anybody walking around. People say they have to because they were afraid. They said that the benefit i remember them telling me that a young neighbor, they saw him coming home, they watched him coming from work in the next day in the afternoon they saw him carried out. He died. Almost all cities of the u. S. , philadelphia had one of the highest rate of sickness and death and the most disruption. The city resisted putting measures in place that might have limited the spread of the flu. Measure such as prohibiting public gatherings where the flu is spread easily. The city allowed a large parade to take place to take reason money for the troops funding world war i. Although the crowds were masks many got the flu from those who were already infected. Baltimore fared almost as badly as philadelphia. Soldiers south of the city became sick in mid september and by early october there were 2000 cases in baltimore. Officials hesitated to close schools and other meeting places which would have reduced contact between the second the well. Hospitals and Funeral Homes were overwhelmed. And the workers that kept the city and its businesses running were too sick to get out of bed. Got around and got all these men from down south, we had thousands of men coming off from the mills. My father worked for the bakery. The only bakery they had was my fathers. People were very kind to one another and it was a place where everybody looked after one another, and nobody lived in there but the men who work for the death of steele died, and the man who around them didnt know they were dead. The women and men know how long they were dead because they want to work, leave them Early Morning, they didnt know he will stand. My mom was sick and everything, and they quarantined us. We dont visit anybody, and nobody visited us except this lady. She went around, helping everybody who was sick, they never got sick or anything. Back in 1918, between 12 ten and 12 years old i got the flu and was just my mother and i, two of my friends we want to Elementary School together, and all of them were stricken with the flu and i would go around to the hospital to visit her. They were out on the porch in the cold wintertime and they had blankets, blankets and hood on, but she died. Both of them died at a young age. People didnt understand, and there was no vaccine, but your parents do the best they can for you. The influenza of 1918, 1919 was a pandemic. The outbreak of disease around the world which caused serious illness and death. Why was the influence of 1918 so much more deadly than the seasonal flu we experience every winter . What was different about the influenza virus in 1918 . The seasonal influenza viruses that cause annual outbreaks and epidemics infinite states during our fall, winter, early spring. Those are influenza viruses that are circulating among people worldwide and they are evolving and changing just a little bit. But theyre human viruses. So some percentage of the u. S. Population and the worlds population gets infected every year. Some become ill. Some percentage recovers, from the selfinflicted illness, and all the people that survival have some immunity. Other people get vaccinated and we receive some immunity through that vaccine, so there are two ways to acquire immune protection. One is the natural infection in which you recover and survive, and iranian, and the other is the vaccination. Vaccination stimulates our body to against the specific virus strains that are contained in the vaccine. The influenza pandemic is different. The influenza pandemic is the emergence of a very new influenza virus to which most of the population has not previously been exposed and doesnt have any immunity. No immune protection. So what you see is very high numbers, very High Percentage of people becoming sick worldwide. In her last 100 years, new influenza viruses have caused for pandemics. In 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. Also coming from birds. Wild foul, hes, ducks and all kinds of birds. They can go into domestic poultry, we also know they can go into human beings directly. Pigs, various aquatic mammals. They can go into pigs, dogs and cats. In theory they can get into people by either coming directly from a bird, or going through a circuitous route. By a variety of limitations that occur for a number of reasons, these types of viruses can under certain circumstances adapt themselves to other spaces. As they probably get themselves in other species the adapt themselves better to spread from pick the pig, or bird to bird, or 4 person, and the hearst the host we worry about the most from a human standpoint is the human species. She had a family of four children, and she was expecting, she had taken the flu, and of course she passed away, she was very sick and she passed away. Anyone who took the flu and was pregnant died. We dont know why pregnant women die from influence at a high rate, its been in full documented for well over 100 years. Whatever the reason its pretty clear that pregnant women in 1918 were very high risk. Pregnant women often in the young age range, much higher risk of dying. Why this happened we dont know. In any flu pandemic any percentage will die but it tends to be the older folks, people who have chronic conditions like Heart Disease and lung disease, pregnant women, infants and so on. This time in 1918 Something Different happened otherwise young adults died at a high rate and considered a very large percentage of the total deaths, something thats never been seen before. Why that happened is a mystery. Only five adults and three children survived the flu pandemic. Over 50 years ago, a young man with an interest in viruses found his way to the village. I was a medical student in sweden and i just started to travel to the United States and get a masters degree in biology and then one thing led to the next, the next and then i started to go for my phd and one day we had a visitor, very prominent virologist and i remember him talking about everything that had been done to find out what was it. Like a 15 second comment fell at the end of his tour, he said someone ought to go to the northern part of the world and try to find a victim of the 1918 spanish flu pandemic and bury it in the permafrost. Its likely to have been remained frozen since 1918. At that time it was something of 35 years or 40 years. For we want to somebody else and that 15 seconds i happen to be fearing it any mediately want to my faculty adviser to ask him, phil oh yeah, why dont you go ahead. I happen to have worked during the summer of 1949. For paleontologists in alaska. The paleontologist had worked on the peninsula and knew the missionaries in the villages there. With help, he was able to review copies of Mission Records from the fall of 1918. He found that the military had very good record showing the location talks and think there is permafrost in alaska. On the basis of that i decided on three villages. I showed up in june and went to the first village was, its a rather large city. Went into the mass grave of the cemetery and discovered the river and you had changed course since 1918 and have come in to the village and melted at the permafrost. And then i engaged flipped to fly me into another village called wales. I found it where the vast grave was clearly marked with a large cross it and hold on to the beach and all excavators invaded the mass graves. I think if there is no permafrost year, so they pushed for roomy but there was no way to land their. At the land on the beach at some distance away from another village and that i had to cross a border wall. I got across this really decisive and i had to walk six miles in soggy time full. They had a village counselor, the counts of the elders. And as a matriarchal society, so the woman of the largest family makes decisions. Heavily influenced decisions. Little did i know that that was going to be very important later on. Fortunately for me, there were three survivors of the 1918 pandemic still alive. So i asked them to please tell the other members what it was like that november one 90 of the village died . Then i said, if you allow me to enter and are fortunate enough to find the right specimen for, i will take the specimen back to my laboratory and if everything works out well, it will be possible for us to develop a vaccine. The next pandemic coming, we will have a vaccine to immunize the protection. They understood what vaccine was because they had warsaw immunized against smallpox. The matriarch was in favor of all that so that influence the decision that allowed me to open the grave. So i went down, open the grave, started to dig and dig about a foot down came up the permafrost. Big this started a fire for a breakthrough of the beach flag and started to melt the permafrost. On the end of the second day i came in about four feet i found the first victim fog. A girl, estimated 20 years of age, but the condition flag of her body at four feet from was so good that i was confident bag that it would be even better preserved. 72 bodies in that grave. Now i didnt come along to alaska, i had my advisor, i had a pathologists, in high, to perform a postmortem examination. I was ahead of them to scout the grade grave, to scout the testing. A day later i landed to the same detail landed earlier and we traveled the same way back to breivik. Big we could do the digging very rapidly. Three days later we were down six feet and then we found three perfectly preserved fought ease and the pathologists performed postmortems on them and the lungs were perfectly preserved. We left, thanked them, close the grave, i took some pictures all the time. So eventually we started to fall try to grow the virus. Trying to find something that influenced a virus. Week after week after week i got more discouraged and eventually i had no more specimen. The virus was that dead and there were my phd. I could see it fly out through the window dog. I started to go back to sweden to continue my medical education and i was extremely, extremely fortunate that we offered to continue medical school in iowa. I got my empty there, became a pathologists but cole back in my mind i had the memory of not getting my phd and it just kind of collapsed. Molecular pathology is a specialty in medicine where pathologists use the tools of molecular biology and molecular genetics to make diagnoses and provide insight into patient care positions. You can make diagnoses of Infectious Diseases by looking for the genetic material of the infection organism. The virus, the bacteria, for example. I was in the National Council institution as a pathologists eighties and in 1993 i moved to the Armed Forces Institute of pathology to set up a new group devoted to molecular pathology both for clinical molecular pathology as well as for search. One of the things we have to do for both sides of that is to work out ways to recover genetic material from typical biopsy material. It goes back to the civil war so they have huge collections of millions of tissue samples reflecting all aspects of clinical disease, tumors, infectious disease, including autopsies of soldiers who died of flu in 1918. We wanted to think of a project that would highlight the utility of having such an old tissue ar