excess deaths around 1928?

[thetyreman]

What's a coach potato?

potatoes that coach builders threw out of their wooden coaches in anger because it was weighing it down.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

seems odd that the UK and the US would both suffer from the same flu epidemic, I'm assuming that the majority of travel would be by boat so you wouldn't have thought it would happen in both places at the same time?

That’s an interesting view point just because it took a week to travel between the U.K. and USA doesn’t stop an infection travelling between the countries!

 

[TRITON]

What's a coach potato?

Something you cook with a Spanish flue ?

 

[Doug B]

What's a coach potato?

I believe it’s couch potato when on holiday, instead of aimlessly staring at a tv from the safety of its sofa it stares through a coach window at scenery, so not a deal of difference really

 

[Steve_Scott]

Then drops into a 'better than normal' year almost instantly.

To be expected due to a combination of what is being measured (deaths compared to average over past five) and the nature of what is being measured (deaths... yet to be established but it’s a fair bet to say whatever event it was knocked out the vulnerable so they aren’t there to knock out the following year).

 

[NormanB]

I have just been watching tonight‘s news on the BBC with very similar graphs of deaths and I am extremely sceptical, but are they any worse than any other news organisation? They all love to exaggerate.
They based their graphs on a previous five year average, I can guarantee that showed what they wanted to show.

Don’t get wrapped around the axle with graphs shown on the media - go to the Gov.uk website and look at the raw data. I never bother with deaths data it does not tell you anything (if you take the emotion out) that data is a done deal. The data on hospital admissions/ICU beds/patients on mechanical ventilation are the key ones.

What is going unsaid in media but is implicit in the ‘save the NHS’ message is the clinical management measures being put in place right now. I know already that patients who go into ‘respiratory distress’ aged 70 and over are now being excluded from clinical intervention and flagged for palliative care (in the regions under the most pressure). As the pressures continue that age limit for intervention will reduce - it has to. This applies for Covid and Non Covid patients. One can only imagine what the resultant spike in Covid and non Covid deaths will be - but whatever it will be a done deal.

One thing is for sure now is not the time to require emergency care for any reason or cause.

 

[Lefley]

so, highest excess deaths since WW2 according to the BBC today, horrible, but not unexpected. They showed a chart showing spikes in the first and second world war, understandable, what I can't understand is a slightly smaller, but still significant spike around 1928. Can anyone explain this? My first thought was Spanish flue, but I think that was around 1918 / 1919. included the chart from the bbc site (doesn't show WW1 but did on TV earlier). All history lessons gratefully recieved

View attachment 100780

That would be the great influenza epidemic of 1928-1929. A sort of second wave of Spanish flu of earlier, then penicillin waS discovered in 1929-30 I believe.

 

[TheUnicorn]

That’s an interesting view point just because it took a week to travel between the U.K. and USA doesn’t stop an infection travelling between the countries!

A week? I thought boat travel between the UK and US was a good month, maybe I'm way off on that, one of those ideas that stick in your mind as facts and don't get challanged.

 

[billw]

A week? I thought boat travel between the UK and US was a good month, maybe I'm way off on that, one of those ideas that stick in your mind as facts and don't get challanged.

Doesn't it take modern cruise liners 5 days to reach NY from Southampton?

 

[TheUnicorn]

I think I was definately wrong on my idea that it would have taken a month (in fact I was thinking it probably took longer), working backwards from this graph, it maybe 20 days.
https://transportgeography.org/cont...on-systems/liner-transatlantic-crossing-time/

 

[profchris]

I think I was definately wrong on my idea that it would have taken a month (in fact I was thinking it probably took longer), working backwards from this graph, it maybe 20 days.
https://transportgeography.org/cont...on-systems/liner-transatlantic-crossing-time/

From the graph, in 1928 it took around 5 days.

 

[Lons]

There could be many factors linked to the fisrt word war, e.g. Lack of food poor conditions during and long after the war would take it's toll and huge numbers of returning forces personel were bady injured and many with lung damage from being gassed in the trenches. 10 years later isn't too long for people still to be dying. Those with lung damage would have been hard hit by any serious flu epidemic

 

[TheUnicorn]

From the graph, in 1928 it took around 5 days.

embaressed to say I was looking at 1828, doh!

 

[sometimewoodworker]

From the graph, in 1928 it took around 5 days.

Slightly less is the fastest time but the less expensive ships would probably have been quite a bit slower

By the early 20th century (1907), the liner Mauretania with a capacity of 2,300 passengers, was able to cross the Atlantic in 4.5 days

but 5 days or a week neither will stop flu