Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

One of the factors that made the 1918-1919 flu pandemic so deadly was when it happened: in time of war.  In fact, if it hadn't been for the war, there might never have been a pandemic.  Not only did returning soldiers help spread the disease around the world, it now appears likely that war time preparations helped foster the disease in the first place.

Despite going by the name of the "Spanish flu," there's little evidence that the Iberians had anything to do with the flu's origin.  In fact, well before the disease began its rapacious spread across the globe, small towns in England were already suffering a much greater rate of flu deaths than normal.  A year earlier, recruits in the United States who were training to fight the war in Europe, faced an alarming string of deaths.  It now appears that the origin of the worldwide pandemic might not have been in Europe at all, but in the barracks of Kansas.

GI's traveling to fight "the good war" carried the disease first to England, and then into the trenches, where the flu spread among the exhausted troops.

What made those army facilities such a good breeding ground for flu was a series of converging factors:  

o Young men removed from their homes and grouped together outside their normal environment.
o Tightly packed humanity in less than perfect sanitary conditions.
o Close association with animals, both swine and birds

Take people from different regions and cram them together so that they are exposed to germs they don't normally experience.  With their immune systems already struggling with this influx, now expose them to a disease of pigs or chickens that might normally have a hard time taking hold in humans.  Bingo.  You've got yourself one human incubator.

So, where can you find conditions like that today?  In general, anywhere there is a war.  More specifically: Iraq.

While the bird flu has so far failed to take solid hold among the human population, it's far more likely to get on its feet (if it had any) among tightly packed soldiers displaced thousands of miles from home.  Iraqi troops, and civilians in towns where the sanitary systems have been damaged, are just the warm up.  US soldiers, crammed together behind their barricades, could well find themselves facing an enemy immune to bullets.

No Green Line will keep out flu.  If the bird flu spreads across Iraq, the country could become the same kind of hot spot that Western Europe became at the end of 1918.

We might look back on today as the good old days, not just for Iraq, but for the rest of the world.