b'EditorA 2016 study released by the journal of the ChineseOf seemingly divine irony (a term just-invented),fact, have over the U.S. is a voluntary function of the Medical Association on the Spanish Flu of 98 years ear- our Presidents grandfather, who emigrated to the Unitedworldwide search for cheap labor, and the choice that lier, concluded that the virus did not originate in China,States from Germany at age 16, died in New York City onthousands of companies have made to send their busi-but in Europe. The timing of the studys release couldMarch 30, 1918, at the age of just 49, from Spanish Flu.ness to a country that exists, fundamentally, opposed to hardly have been moretimely. He owned a two-story home in Queens, five vacant lots,core Western values that date back to the Magna Carta. While intercontinental air travel had not yet beenand about $7,500 in cash and stocksa net worth of justAmerica is now home to its first adult generation who achieved, one of the great human advancements thatmore than $30,000 ($540,000 today)which he passedwere raised post-Cold War, and thankfully so. Those of came with the horror of World War I was the mass move- on to his wife, who continued his small real estate busi- us over the age of 40 grew up in an era of fear of a mentofpeopleandmilitaryequipmentbetweentheness with their son Fred, who was 13 at the time of hisworldwide nuclear holocaustremember The Day After hemispheres, in less than a week, and more reliably thanfathers death. ABC mini-series about post-nuclear-war America?ever before. This also meant the mass movement of theWhat went along with that fear was understanding Spanish Flu to every corner of the earth, infecting 500Apparently, one hundredwho the enemy was, and how it was more than a coun-million people, almost a quarter of world population. try or set of countriesit was philosophical: Western As opposed to Covid-19, which has been most deadlyyears notice was just notFreedom vs. Communist Oppressionalthough the front to the elderly and those with existing health conditionsand center nemesis was the Soviet Union (the U.S.S.R. like heart disease and diabetes, the Spanish Flu was es- enough for humanity to takeor Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), Russia having pecially lethal to young people in the prime of their lives,been its center of power and control. Since 1949, China aged 20 to 40 and in otherwise good healthand likethe threat of viral infectionhas stood as the worlds biggest and most economically those fighting on the front lines of the first Great War. and militarily powerful communist dictatorship, by a As though programmed by an evil scientist in a Fran- seriously, because wewide margin. With so much made over the threat of kensteins lab atop a dark, stormy mountain, the H1N1Russia, its GDP is less than our great state of Texas, and Spanish Influenza virus would use its victims healthyobviously have not. almost half of that is oil and gas and military weapons.immune system against them. This virus would induceThe Chinese have been massacring each other for Military nurses transporting aA Makeshift Spanish Flu ward Spanish Flu patient in World War Iassembled on the balcony of a hotelFree food lines in New York City for men unemployed during pandemica condition known as cytokine explosion, an overre- The failures that have led the U.S. and much of themillennia. In the 20th Century alone, over a million action of the bodys inflammation defense, that wouldworld into the descent in which we now find ourselvesalleged communists were rounded up and murdered, cause the lungs to fill with fluid, drowning the patientare aged one-day to a full century. Well, Happy 100 tosent to die in concentration camps, starved to death from the inside. you, that Deadly Flu! We looked at how it happened. and so on, between 1928 and 1935. When the commies WeveheardthetriviamoreAmericansoldiersgained control, Mao Zedong purged about five million died of Spanish Flu (45,000) than in battle; more peopleOUR FATE IS CEDED TO THE HANDS OF CHINA. of his fellow Chinese in programs with tasteful titles died in the U.S. (675,000) than in all wars of the 20thThe communist government of the Peoples Republiclike Land Reform, the rounding up of millions of pri-Century combined; ten times more people died aroundof China is not our friend. They do not have Americanvate landlords, executing them and then turning their the world (50,000,000) than all soldiers and civilians ininterests at heart, they have only Chinese interests atproperty over to peasant farmers, who then worked World War I. It was that bad, and the hope for ourselves,heart, and really, who can blame them? China is a fourundercontrolofthegovernment,and;TheSocial-wemightthink,isthattheentireworldwouldhavethousand year old country with almost a billion andist Education Movement, which was a program that agreed that an infectious pandemic, probably a virus,a half people. While mass media is keen on reportingpurged intellectuals, artists, students and other poten-was one of the big, big threats to our very existence as aChinese economic dominance over the United States,tial free thinkers from the Communist Party of China, species. Unlike an asteroid the size of the moon, reversalthe truth is that they are nowhere in our league of na- shipping them to the countryside to be re-educated.of the poles, or slowly crashing into the sun, we humanstional wealth. Chinas Gross Domestic Product (GDP),Despite this, and since a frenemy relationship actually have some control over viral infections. Polio,meaning the financial value of all work done in a givenwith China was christened by President Richard M. smallpox, measles, and an array of deadly viruses haveyear, is about $14 trillion, or about $9,500 per capitaNixons historic visit in 1972, thousands of corpora-been cured, that is to say, effective vaccines have been(per person), compared to about $60,000 in the U.S. tions from the U.S. and countries throughout the Free developed, but a universal influenza vaccine has not. The dominance and control that China does, inWorld have outsourced production to China, where the 12 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINEFEATURED: The Stories that Mattered TheCoastalBend.com'