A system to prevent the most unpleasant future aspects lies in the humility of considering them lesson learned, an activity often carried out with annoyance, since it admits errors that would otherwise be avoidable. If it is true that unpredictability can be decisive, it is equally true that its subsequent analysis can reduce the repetition of the same mistakes, considering that history, unfortunately or fortunately, repeats itself. The weak point lies in human nature, in the irrational belief that the bullet that will hit the infantryman in the assault has not yet been cast.
Historically pandemics have accompanied humanity, urges to remove (adelante and without juicio) negative experiences. In the twentieth century alone, outbreaks of infections developed that claimed hundreds of thousands of victims: the Spanish of '18 and cause of lost generation, decimated by conflict and contagion; there Pseudo Pandemic from '47; L'Asian from '57; the flu Spatial di Hong Kong less lethal but highly contagious in 68 and which led to around 20.000 deaths in Italy; there Russian (but developed in China) of '77; L'avian of '96, the pandemic A / H1N1 in 2009, not to mention yellow fever, monkey pox, cholera, malaria and, last but not least, ebola.
Infectious diseases change according to a deadly evolutionary model for every aspect of daily life; biology brings back to life microorganisms believed to be extinct but in reality mutated, immunologically unknown and of very high diffusion, always one step ahead of research, when sustained. A first element identified by Raffele Ghirardi (managing doctor), is that "All the major pandemics preceding and following the Spanish probably originated in Asia, in that area, between Siberian Russia and western China ..; ... It is in the vast Chinese countryside that, in precarious hygiene conditions, the close cohabitation between poultry, pigs and humans occurs, ... there the most relevant flu pandemics have arisen; not neglecting the role played by birds, migratory and non-migratory, the way of spreading pandemic disease and direct inter-human contagion "; we add a second element: the malicious presumption of being able to go beyond the limit of possibility and responsibility.
Biologically a thin red line unites the symptoms and the course of the various flu epidemics, as well as makes the consequences common; there Spanish in Italy, which hit hard with the second and third waves, it was subject to an underestimation which determined the delay, the lack of containment and the isolation of the sick, so as to cause the highest European number of victims, about 600.000, as many as the fallen to the front, with the censorship of The Corriere della Sera, guilty of publishing the death data.
THEAsian from '57, brilliantly examined by the Forlanini Study Center in Rome, although lighter than the Spanishglobally led to about 2 million victims; unlike in '18 the virus, which appeared in the province of Guizhou in southwestern China in February '57, and advertised in April by the NY Times, was quickly identified thanks to Maurice Hilleman, responsible for respiratory diseases at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (photo), who investigating the events in Hong Kong, and having the findings of an infected US military sent, predicted the arrival of the infection. Probably the luck of Hilleman, and of the many who with his vaccine managed to avoid the worst, was to have found a culture broth favorable political, strong of an establishment aimed at preserving the efficiency of a conscious apparatus not a se but of a when, different from the Chinese one who, in the same period, leaning towards the ideological defense of the economic plan of Mao del Grande leap forward, he neglected the effects of the epidemic as a cause of the subsequent tragic famine1.
The first outbreaks appeared among the crews of several Fighters in Newport, Rhode Island then, already in June between Navy recruits in San Diego (more than 1.000 infected) and army recruits in Fort Ord, California, where on July 26 began to inoculate the drug with following, after three days, the aeronautical base of Lowry in Colorado, which allowed an effective vaccination calibration. Another element to consider, for the purpose of calculating the effects of the infection, was constituted by the Cold War, which with the restrictions of international relations, prevented from doing the work now favored by the global context.
It was the US Navy that had the first contact with the infection, given the areas in which it operated, contiguous to the countries where the disease was epidemic. In late April, the USS Shangri La2, after leaving Hong Kong, he docked in Yokosuka with about a third of the infected personnel already on board3. The Shangri La it was quickly followed by other ships that had touched Yokosuka, the Saint Paul, Bayfield, SeamTurtle and Castor with percentages of infected people ranging between 22 and 35 percent; The outbreak also affected Navy and Marines bases ashore between May and June in Formosa, the Philippines, Japan and the Hawaiian Islands.
The epidemic spread in South America infected the crews on duty in the Caribbean, with an outbreak in Newfoundland in July and in Naples in August, with outbreaks that reached peaks of 70% over 10 days and duration of about 3 weeks, in analogy with the outbreaks of the Spanish which killed 5.027 sailors in the face of the 431 killed in combat, more men than in Pearl Harbor.
Given the possibility, similar to the current one of the USS Roosevelt, that high rates of contagion would have compromised operational effectiveness, an event that already happened in '18, the FA agreed on a vaccination program consistent with national production capacities, and capable of supporting the prophylaxis of the 85.000 men then engaged in naval exercise BORN Strike Back, the most important after the war.
Note, in '96, the outbreak of flu H3N2 occurred on board the cruiser USS Arkansas, an event that has shown a pathological pitfall capable of affecting healthy and vaccinated subjects, and of making the Unit inefficient.
That the US Navy has made the lesson its own can be deduced from the accuracy of the documentation produced since '18, and from the attention paid to the training of its personnel; no coincidence that the motto of the Navy Healthcare reads: medical power for naval superiority, in the awareness of the virus's ability to suddenly render most of the fighting forces incapable of the lethal effects of secondary bacterial pneumonia.
The medical adm Bruce Gillingham, head of Naval Healthcare, like his predecessors, has now become part of the strategy indispensable for maintaining the capabilities of the maritime instrument, the one most exposed to epidemic risk; that the US Navy is FA of its own autonomous culture and strategic projection united with political depth, has been demonstrated by the story of the USS Roosevelt and its commander, the Captain Crozier, whose terms of removal led to the resignation of Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
That in the USA the possibility of today's pandemic was being considered is more than likely: the federal exercise Crimson Contagion4 held in 2019 and which repeatedly recalls analogies with Covid 19, has however demonstrated the health gaps of a globalized context towards which even the '57 Hilleman could have done nothing, and which had already been reported by Christopher Kirchhoff, veteran of the White House and the Department of Defense at the time of the Obama administration.
In '57 the US system managed to contain the pandemic, in 2020 the outbreak on board the USS Roosevelt incarnated a strategic crisis that threatens to detach the Pacific front from the American thalassocracy, and which prompted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff January Mark Milley to declare that the Naval Group of the USS Truman, would have remained at sea until the Group of the USS Nimitz had not been ready for deployment, since, while the contagion seems to have spread to other aircraft carriers besides the Roosevelt, China has increased its naval activities.
The Navy, however, has not failed to support the nation in times of need, as demonstrated by its activity aimed at confirming American maritime power and supporting the commitment at home with hospital ships. Mercy e Comfort, un dual use interpreted actively and supported by a structure constantly supported over the years by the financial statements.
1 The famine led to the death of no less than 14 million people.
2 Aircraft carrier
3 About 700 men
4 It involved 19 federal agencies, 12 states, 74 local health departments, 87 hospitals
Photo: US Navy / US DoD
