Over a year ago I wrote about my relationship with a disease I contracted in 1968. It was called the Hong Kong Flu. On a December 16, a Monday morning I could feel the flu coming on. I left my teaching job at 8 am and drove the ten miles to my apartment and passed out---------------for five solid days except for fifteen minutes on a Wednesday. Folks, I can't tell you I was puking sick because I wasn't but I was in goony land and didn't know about it. My roommate said I had a hot forehead. I'll have to go with that.
There was a big ruckus about that flu. I've always maintained the reason for this was that the Vietnam War was going on and the media's nightly news made it their special story. I read a story about that flu versus the sickness we have today. The duration of the Hong Kong flu was about two years--I think. I do know it didn't interfere with Woodstock in 1969 and those people didn't even have the common courtesy to wear masks but a lot of them wore condoms.
What I found interesting is that with a world population in 1969 there were 3.5 billion people. Of those 4 million died from that strain of flu. Now, to put this in perspective we now have 8 billion people(give or take a few hundred thousand) and deaths attributed to Covid is 5.5 million. How weird is this?
Diseases come and disease go. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
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