“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” -Georg Hegel

Back in March, I was reading everything I could find about COVID-19 and about pandemics. Eventually that tapered off. But this week I decided that it was time to go back and learn a lot more about the 1918 Spanish Flu.

I've just ordered John M. Barry's 2004 book called The Great Influenza. Bill Gates wrote about it over the summer -- after he reread it -- and said that it will teach you almost everything you need to know about the influenza. He also said that it's never been more relevant.

Despite happening over 100 years ago, there are no doubt lessons that we can learn from this great influenza. The most important being that leadership and honesty, of course, matter a great deal during a time of crisis.

Barry also argues that the 1918 influenza was responsible for altering the flow of history. He makes the claim (convincingly according to Bill) that it was a contributing factor in the rise of Hitler and the start of World War II.

So I'm looking forward to receiving my copy later this week. If you'd like to purchase your own, you can do that over here. And if you've already read it, please let me know what you thought in the comment section below.

I am reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book right now, called Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, and I am intrigued by the chapter on Sylvia Plath's unfortunate suicide and the concept of "coupling." The idea behind coupling, which stands in contrast to displacement, is that when someone makes the very sad decision to commit suicide, it can often be coupled to a particular place or context.

Malcolm starts by giving the example of "town gas." Prior to it being phased out in the 1960s and 1970s, most homes in Britain relied on a form of gas that contained carbon monoxide. And sadly, it became the most popular way for people to kill themselves. When Sylvia Plath took her own life in 1962, the death-by-carbon-monoxide-poisoning stat was 44.2% of all suicides in England and Wales.

The concept of displacement, on the other hand, surmises that if somebody wants to kill themselves, they will eventually find another way. But Malcolm convincingly argues that that is not necessarily or very often the case. As town gas was phased out of British homes, the number of suicides also declined in lockstep. Turns out that many of the previous suicides had been coupled to that particular tool.

Why this is potentially valuable to this blog audience is that this same coupling phenomenon can happen within our cities and to particular places. Malcolm gives the example of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which has been the site of many suicides since it was first erected in 1937. The same, of course, can be the said about many subway systems around the world.

But again, there's evidence to suggest that if you can save somebody on the Golden Gate Bridge (a suicide barrier was erected in 2018) or on a subway system by installing safety doors, there's a good chance that many of those people will never actually find another way to commit suicide. In other words, you can save a bunch of lives by having the right provisions in place and not assuming that something is a foregone conclusion.

Photo by Chris Leipelt on Unsplash

Seeing people out at bars and at amusements parks in this WSJ video about Wuhan, China is a little odd given that in this part of the world we are decisively in our second wave. But that is what is happening. In fact, the title of the video is, "Wuhan, Former Pandemic Center, Emerges as Tourist Hot Spot."

Over a recent public holiday, the city saw nearly 19 million tourists -- the most of any Chinese city. And while tourist revenues are still thought to be down by some 30%, Chinese people are seemingly feeling confident enough to get back out and do things.

Based on what the WSJ is reporting, this seems to be supported by a few things. International travel isn't happening, so it's becoming a boon for local tourism, which is not that dissimilar from what's happening in other countries. (Domestic air travel is rebounding faster than international travel when you look at flight volumes across major airlines.)

At the same time, Wuhan implemented what sounds like some pretty extensive testing, which is in turn supported by a national healthcare platform that presumably makes contact tracing easier. These things seem to have given people the confidence to go out again. And I don't doubt that the same will eventually happen in the rest of the world.