My great-grandmother from my father's side, Smaranda, was a survivor of the Spanish flu from the Focsani area. Mandita, as everyone called her, was 22 at the time. She was among the oldest children in her family and remembered it well. The pandemic had a death rate of about 3%. Almost every household had their dead. Both her parents died of the Spanish Flu -- a few days apart from each other -- leaving behind 11 children. The youngest was a baby -- her name was Emma.
A lot of soldiers died in that pandemic. She blamed it partly on the war and the co-morbid conditions it left behind. Yes, they were young, but many had lived for years in conditions worse than the world's homeless have today. They had suffered from hunger, cold and thirst. They lived in trenches soaked up to their knees in water and sewage together with the rats and lice. Many had survived typhoid fever and various other diseases, which left imprints even on those who had the strongest constitutions. The older people were home, and had a higher chance of surviving the flu than the young soldiers -- all clumped together and all recovering from war. Her parents were not part of the survivors -- perhaps the strain of having 11 children and of working hard to raise them healthy at the expense of their own health played a role. These were times when there, often, was not enough for everyone.
After their parents died, the siblings moved to Galati to start over and took everyone along. They built a bar/shop there, which helped them all survive the aftermath of the pandemic. They lived because the economy moved on. Emma grew up and married a colonel in the Romanian army, who was later discriminated against by the communists. Then, she and her husband moved back with Mandita, who, throughout her life, continued to help the siblings in need. I was born towards the end of Mandita's life, and her last words were that she was glad her mother's name was passed on to me. Her name had been Ruxandra.
The flu did not stop the war -- the war stopped when the Xis and Putins and other leaders of the time agreed on new borders. Even during the pandemic, people continued to fight for freedom and dreamed of a time when their opinions mattered -- when there will be democracy. In 1918, my great-grandfather from my mother's side was in prison. They first imprisoned my great-grandmother, Ana. Every day they would kill somebody from her village in front of her and let their blood run at her feet. Then they'd ask Ana "Tell us where he is!", and she'd answer "How, should I, a poor woman, know. He never tells me where he goes". He had been in a hidden attic of their home were she was taking him food. But once she was returned home, he gave himself up because he could not suffer the thought of having others die because of him. He was then imprisoned for more than a year in the cold together with other educated minds of the time who had favored the creation of Romania on a ship on the Danube river, and every day one of them would be shot in front of the others as they were told "another one of you will follow the next day, until you all perish". He did not die from the flu, and was eventually released -- many months after Romania formed. However, on that ship, he developed tuberculosis, which takes longer to kill. He returned home, and lived till 1928. This extra time allowed him to send his boys to school. My grandfather went to Berlin to study engineering -- he and his brothers left home in the years that followed to study in various corners of the world: Teodor studied law in Paris, Ghedeon started by studying marine engineering in Livorno, and later switched to law and joined Teodor in Paris, and Mircea studied religion in Monaco. I still have some of the books they used to study from -- most of them, once the communism came, were used to light various fires by uneducated minds who hated education and all that it stood for. I also have some of my great-grandfather's notes from that time, but they were written in Hungarian and, unfortunately, I cannot read the language well enough to understand their meaning. His wife, Ana lived to 94 -- through both world wars and most of communism -- she frequently talked about their fight for freedom (first with her husband, and later with her children), decried communism, and hoped and prayed that future generations will be free.
Today, we have given up the freedom that so many generations had fought for in over a quarter of the world in the name of a virus. This is the most documented pandemic the world has ever known. Yet, these decisions of giving up all freedom everywhere are unprecedented. They are, supposedly, based on apparent mortality rates, which are known to be wrong and on the idea that this halt will stop the virus from spreading, when it has already been shown it has a good grip on the population based on the large number of positive tests everywhere. We also know that, so far, the average age of those who died is within a few years of the life-expectancy of the countries they lived in. In spite of all this, all leaders from around the world have been given absolute power over their country and over their people in the hope that they will stop this pandemic without, of course, proving they had a plan -- other than stating that these measures will continue and become stricter "as needed" -- they first mentioned a few weeks, and now it might be a few months or longer. The stricter the measures, the more we vehemently applaud. In the same time, we acknowledge that, in times of peace, we would not have voted for most of these people to continue on. Nevertheless, we all wholeheartedly believe that all these leaders will give up this new-found power as soon as they are told to by scientists whom they have never listened to before -- in times of peace or war. Why have they never listened? because of their thirst for power, which they now have.
I am not a politician, and not even a "true" scientists any more. I am a woman and mother of three boys, who tell me Snow White is stupid -- how could she have not seen through the disguises of her step-mother? and not, once, but three times. They don't believe the latest version of the story where Snow lives happily ever after with the prince. They think 'in real life' she must have died and she deserved to do so for being so obviously wrong. Indeed, if one looks at versions of this story (and of most other bedtime stories), the earlier versions, do not have the happy ending. We fervently believe in happy endings today.
In the past, those who enforced measures who directly led to widespread death and destruction were part of "the ax" and those who applauded these measures were called "coada de topor" ("the tail of the ax"; those of you who have split wood know that an ax cannot function well without a fairly long tail). Today, I cannot help, but wonder, are most people in the world part of such an ax tail? driven on by the media? I do not know the answer to these questions. Most of my educated friends think I am insane for being worried and faithfully believe everything will return to normal, and will be over soon -- yet, I am worried. Economies from over a quarter of the world ground to a halt in exchange for promises of success in halting the pandemic. The various leaders have absolute power and no plan beyond stricter and stricter measures. I see unprecedented loss of freedom, and predictions of hunger, theft and unprecedented problems from those who lived through life. So, yes, I worry that I am right and that they are right, and that this is the beginning of a tragedy that knows no bounds.
I have visions of my children and all my nieces and nephews and their children -- those who make it through this and some will because they are many and they are all over the world -- blaming me and telling me "how could you have had everything and given it all up? how could you be this stupid to give up our future for a bunch of lies? we thought nobody could be worse than Snow White, until we were old enough to understand what you and your generation did, how could you?" In the position I am in, all I can do is stay home, take care of my children, and my father, and write on my blog when they sleep -- and they slept late today. So, I am doing this, and then I will get up, and dress, and with help from my mother get through another day of caring for the children, their pets and for my father. She got up at five, went to bed past midnight, and is way ahead of me at doing real work. I simply wanted to explain my reasoning to my applauding friends who worry less and believe more.
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