Special: The SPANISH FLU and You – with Nick Cohen and Laura Spinney

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics, Government

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What can the Spanish Flu of 1918 tell us about coping with Coronavirus – and maybe the next pandemic too? Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Laura Spinney, author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu Of 1918 And How It Changed The World, about the lessons from possibly the greatest public health disaster in history. Did populations weakened by the First World War provide a fertile breeding ground for the Spanish Flu? Is democracy really at a disadvantage when dealing with pandemics? Will post-COVID generations have to face up to the inherent viral dangers of eating meat? And the myth of a new Roaring Twenties: will we go from a new Spanish Flu to a new Wall Street Crash without a an intervening Jazz Age? “What matters is the level of trust in a society. If it’s not there when the outbreak happens it’s very hard to create it.” “Populations tend to bounce back rapidly from pandemics for the simple reason that pandemics tend not to destroy your capital cities.” “This is the first digitally-witnessed pandemic. Every detail has been tracked and traced.” “Every strain of flu that has ever circulated began as a pandemic. But the Spanish Flu was at least 25 times as virulent than most strains.” Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick is a special series of one-offs. I'm Nick Cohen and what I'm trying to do in this series is bring
1:18.1	you authors who've written books,
1:23.0	but have a contemporary relevance that are very well-written books.
1:25.7	I'm not going to pass you off with some academic who's recycled
1:30.1	a near and comprehensible PhD.
1:32.2	They're proper books by proper writers, and what could be more
1:36.4	contemporary than pandemics, and I am delighted to welcome Laura Spinni to the program. She's the author of Pale Rider, The Spanish Flu of
1:46.0	1918 and how it changed the world. And Laura I think is with us now. Yes I am, hello.
1:52.0	Hello. I guess when you were writing Laura, I mean you couldn't have possibly
1:56.0	have known that COVID was coming, but did you think that maybe another pandemic, another flu pandemic was on its way. Pandemics most certainly weren't history.
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