@inquiline Historian John Barry wrote an excellent history of the 1918 flu pandemic and one of the strangest observations he makes in that book is that there’s almost no cultural trace of the disease. Where are the songs, poems, films, and novels portraying the days when people died in scores?
There’s almost no trace.
That seemed bizarre to me, but it’s pretty much what we’ve done with Covid
@grammasaurus @inquiline that's the weird thing. In 2020/21 I wondered if there'd be equivalents to Ring Around the Rosie/Roses nursery rhymes
media choices seem to have a lot to do with it; i notice when masks appear or there are small covid plot points lingering, but ofc most of the time they don't
found this pretty fascinating too (not an endorsement of the franchise's or author's positions):
https://screenrant.com/marvel-comics-ignore-covid-19-pandemic/
@grammasaurus @inquiline One of the knives out movies (glass onion) captures the pandemic theme somewhat including a not very bright glitterati wearing a thoroughly ineffective fashion mask. That was the only artistic take I've seen so far, but I found it to be a genuinely good one, because it was mostly "show, don’t tell".
@nblr @grammasaurus @inquiline it’s addressed in The Pitt S1, but as a past matter, not a live concern. And then I think not at all in S2, set just a few months later.
@fivetonsflax @nblr @grammasaurus
yes, i was gonna say that too--that show names it as a source of trauma for the healthcare workers/system
My grandfather was one of three brothers before the 1918 pandemic influenza and one of two brothers afterwards.
I used to wonder why he and my great-uncle never talked about that.
I no longer wonder.
@michael_w_busch @grammasaurus @inquiline My mother died during, but not of, the COVID pandemic in 2020, and in many ways it felt like the pandemic robbed me of the right to mourn her. There were so many other people who lost loved ones just in that same week in August; how dare I think my loss was in any way special? And almost no one attended her funeral -- not even her own sisters -- because people were afraid they would get sick if they traveled or congregated.
I can understand why no one talked about it. What I don't understand is why, when we have tools to combat it, vanishingly few people talk about or protect against an ongoing pandemic. It's sometimes lonely to be the only person wearing a mask in public.
i'm sorry for the loss of your mother
my household also lost an elder right when 2021 rolled around, similar circumstance--the death wasn't from covid but was surrounded and sort of subsumed by that going on all around it (understandably). no memorial was ever held... i think bc of vax rollout timing, family thought they could postpone a bit and then maybe hold in person, but waves kept happening and no event ever got planned. strange
@michael_w_busch @grammasaurus @inquiline I keep expecting to finally see an upwelling of covid novels, movies, artworks, pop songs, and very special episodes of tv the way we continue to get for HIV / AIDS, but it is seeming more and more like HIV cultural production is the outlier rather than covid
@grammasaurus @inquiline Future historians are going to be thoroughly baffled at the fact that the most accurate movie about COVID was released in 2011.
@lrhodes @inquiline what was it?
@grammasaurus @inquiline Soderberg's Contagion.
I made these posts in 2020 and 2021, collecting old newspaper stories about the 1918 & 1919 #SpanishInfluenza in the place where I live, #California. The stories are astounding. There's no echo, except ours.
https://fastestslowguy.blogspot.com/2020/04/second-wave-of-spanish-influenza-in.html
https://fastestslowguy.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-anti-mask-league-of-san-francisco.html
https://fastestslowguy.blogspot.com/2021/03/weapons-against-influenza-1918-american.html
Jun 28, 2026, 12:28 AM@morgan @grammasaurus @inquiline @moss
'Its members declare the masks insanitary and useless.'
How fascinating that they use the exact same arguments that these same groups used in the early 2020s. 'Not only do masks not work, but they are bad for you'
Remember the bullshit about masks trapping carbon dioxide? I ran into somebody the other day who still believes that. The guy who delivers my medical oxygen 🤦🏼
Jun 28, 2026, 12:54 AMThere are cultural traces and they are big, but they are not overt
1. Building construction. Where I live on the west coast of the US, there was a huge construction boom in the 1920s and 30s. And those houses and buildings are still around
The houses were built with 'sleeping porches' -- outdoor, usually upstairs, porches for sleeping safely in a time of airborne disease. They were later glassed in, and are now sunrooms
2. Fascism. The Nazis in Europe started with a campaign against the 'useless eaters', people who had been disabled by the 1918 flu, especially children
They started out by killing disabled people in concentration camps, before they moved on to LGBTQ people, travelers, Jews, and everybody else they didn't like
There's a substantial portion of the population who is susceptible to someone who seems 'strong', and who blames outsiders, when faced with existential dread
@grammasaurus
@inquiline
Interestingly the one genre where I have seen it not be completely erased is romance (a few movies and a few stories/books). Idk maybe it just folds more neatly into "how can this relationship cope with or get past this obstacle" 🤔