Grim metaphors about war-like conditions and similarities to the devastating 1918 Spanish flu are doing little to keep morale high. Dramatic language may be necessary to force ‘imbeciles’, as one French minister described the irresponsible, to distance and self-isolate but it runs the risk of making a perilous situation sound like an apocalypse.
Spanish flu killed off, on rough estimates, anywhere between 1 and 6 per cent of the global population – perhaps 25 to 50 million people. It was exacerbated and spread by troop movements at the end of World War 1 and killed more in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS did in 24 years. Curiously it mostly killed young adults it is thought because the older population had built up immunity from a previous flu exposure. It came in three waves – over early 1918, receded through the summer, built up again in the autumn and killed most in the USA over the winter of that year.
In comparison this pandemic – so far – has claimed 13,000 plus lives globally, with 5000 deaths in Italy, though only 100 in South Korea which moved much faster with mass testing, enforced social distancing and contact tracing, because of experience with the 2003 Sars outbreak. The high Italian death rate, in comparison with elsewhere, is partly down to it having a higher proportion of older people, as well as heavy pollution in Lombardy where it started, and political dither before lockdowns were imposed.
When the Spanish flu struck around January 1918 the Saturn Neptune conjunction in Leo was in place with Pluto in early Cancer as it had been since the start of World War 1 in 1914. Saturn Neptune is the classic astrological signature for epidemics and illnesses. But it doesn’t mean it always shows for every epidemic since the early 1950s Saturn Neptune in Libra, while it coincided with one minor flu outbreak, was more notable for the setting up of The Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) by WHO to monitor the evolution of influenza viruses. (See Health and Medicine below.)
This time round there is no Saturn Neptune aspect, though there was the hugely restrictive Saturn Pluto conjunction in place, almost exact for the start of the outbreak. Saturn Pluto in Capricorn is associated more with financial deprivation and hardship than with illness. And one treads warily in saying so but the economic distress caused by coronavirus – so far – far outweighs the health damage.
The next Saturn Neptune conjunction comes due in early 2026 in Aries, with hints from mid 2025 when both are in late Pisces. Pluto then is in early Aquarius. Saturn Neptune has other meanings than illness – it coincides often with the advancement of women’s and workers’ rights.
Odd additional thoughts. It shows up the false economy of shrinking national health services. Germany is faring better than most with a well-resourced health service, testing kits and respirators – it runs a mainly state-funded set-up with mandatory private insurance paying the residue of costs, like France.
The authoritarian regimes have been better at containing the outbreak. Living as I do in France it is fascinating to watch the difference with the UK. The UK PM Boris says plaintively avoid pubs, please stay at home. France doesn’t do plaintive. An edict is issued about a mandatory lockdown. If you emerge you will have a signed form stating your reason. Transgressors are fined and then imprisoned. The UK and the USA are not temperamentally well-designed for having these kind of conditions imposed on them.
Below from my Astrological History of the World.
Saturn Neptune: Health and medicine
The dual face of Saturn–Neptune in providing practical care for the suffering and in the insidious undermining of the body’s health both find a place in world history. An epidemic of St Vitus Dance (chorea) broke out in Europe in 1021 when Saturn and Neptune were together in Aquarius; the disease causes involuntary jerky movements and leads to brain deterioration, and was so called because victims prayed to St Vitus, the patron saint of dance.
The plague that devastated Europe and Asia during the 1340s was marked by the Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aquarius of 1344, and the Uranus–Pluto conjunction at the same time. The outbreak of bubonic plague in London in 1665 and the Great Fire of London a year later both took place when Saturn and Neptune were together in Capricorn.
In 1846 in Aquarius, widespread famine in Ireland followed the failure of the potato crop. During the 1917 and 1918 conjunction in Leo, there were massive casualties in the First World War, especially at Passchendaele, and the Spanish ‘flu epidemic of 1918 killed 20 million in Europe, the United States and India. By the conjunction of the late 1980s in Capricorn, the AIDS virus was running amok, causing countless deaths in Africa, Europe and the United States.
Medical advances are also highlighted under Saturn–Neptune, with the physicians’ meeting place in Rome, the Schola Medicorum, being set up in AD 17 in Sagittarius; in 1739 in Cancer, the London Foundling Hospital was established; and by 1881 in Taurus, Louis Pasteur had discovered the anthrax vaccine.
Here’s an article (below) on the origins of the 1918 flu pandemic. Perhaps the Saturn Neptune conjunction points more to the obfuscation of the various governments around the world and the yet-unclear origins of the flu? Since the Spanish press widely reported on it, what does its chart & transits at the time say?
I seem to recall that the US mundane chart has a Gemini ascendant. Could that mean that the destruction (and rebuilding) of its (form of) government (Saturday Pluto conjunction) will come through financial means (the 8th house)? 45 has been leveraging the false buoyancy of the economy to prop up his reelection platform & he’s currently trying to usurp / consolidate his power, with the help of the DOJ to suspend Habeas Corpus (leading to the indefinite jailing of political prisoners?). Aside from that, the pandemic has allowed him to declare a national emergency & use those powers. With the GOP trying to curb voting rights (for years) & if the COVID19 pandemic necessitates remote voting, there would be more opportunities for fraudulent vote-counting or hacking to take place.
Since habitat destruction comes with overpopulation and climate change will allow for the spread of more novel diseases, the coronavirus pandemic may just be a dress rehearsal, provided we survive it and all its cascading effects.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/03/23/fact-check-how-did-1918-pandemic-get-name-spanish-flu/2895617001/
Apocalyptic rhetoric is necessary, especially in the US, since hardly anyone is taking it seriously. Plus, Trump’s roaring exchange was an illusion held up by pumping money into stock. It’d been slipping for the past year to year and a half, but now, “TPTB” are using CV-19 as an excuse for why they’re cashing out their ill begotten gains.
What interests me is when will the truth about China hiding knowledge of this virus for months come out?
Perhaps the eclipses might be interesting to analyse in search of the true timing of this virus pandemic. The whistle blowing doctor in China, now deceased poor man, was when – December? so he must have observed something odd in at least November. Which more or less pushes it back to October, possibly earlier. We may never know. And until there are sufficient antibody tests, we have no idea how many had it and recovered.
I really want to know, as I was very unwell in January- February with something very odd, no cough but the exhaustion and headaches was extreme. Several friends had this then. It was unlike anything I have ever had before.
I fear that the economic fallout and the ensuing social and political disruption, may be worse than the health effects of the virus.
“Curiously it mostly killed young adults it is thought because the older population had built up immunity from a previous flu exposure.”
If this theory is right, why this time it’s older peoples dying? They also should have built up immunity from previous flu exposure.
A few years ago I came across an interesting book… worth the read.
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry.
There were 3 waves of infection with the “Spanish” flu.. the 2nd being the most ferocious. It appears to have been a mutated strain from the first wave probably created in the close quarters of army troops (from the USA) who were now in Europe.
Although older and vulnerable people also died, the spike in deaths of the young and healthy was because of something called a “cytokine explosion”. That is, these young people had such a vigorous immune response BECAUSE they were healthy!
Cytokines are messenger proteins that stimulate an immune response. This mutated virus triggered a massive cytokine release which, in turn, caused a massive, deadly immune reaction in these healthy young adults.
From first onset of symptoms to death was often only 24 hours. Their lungs filled up with fluid causing death.
This is NOT what the current iteration of the COVID-19 virus does, so it is still primarily a danger to the elderly and medically vulnerable. However, it is still a new virus that spreads very easily (it’s smart! – doesn’t kill it’s host quickly).
So please follow all precautions to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
“Although older and vulnerable people also died, the spike in deaths of the young and healthy was because of something called a “cytokine explosion”. That is, these young people had such a vigorous immune response BECAUSE they were healthy!”
Interesting…might be why healthy young people catch the virus and died.
May have been a relatively similar flu bug they got immunity from prior to 1918.
Probably!
Hi Linda,
This covid-19 virus belongs to the family of corona viruses and you are referring to what’s commonly called ‘the flu”, short for the influenza causing viruses. It’s like comparing apples and pears. So in theory you could build up immunity against a flu strain and still get very ill from a disease caused by a corona virus.
The two generations don’t directly compare with today’s generations, because of advances in medicine and nutrition.
There would have been millions fewer older people living with underlying health conditions. Only the very healthiest people born in 1841 would make it past their 40’s. So there is a big difference today in terms of sheer numbers and general health in the older population.
During the First World War the average height of a British soldier was 5’7″, today it is 5’10”.
Marjorie, the number of deaths that is widely used in North America for the Spanish flu is 50 to 100 million at a time when the world’s population was roughly 1.5 billion. It killed more than both world wars combined. It is usually described as having appeared in the trenches of the First World War in the spring of 1918, on the German or Allied side or both. The second wave in the fall of 1918 and winter of 1919 was the worst.
This was a time of heavy censorship of newspapers because of the war. There was no radio yet, so newspapers were the only media. Spain had no censorship because it remained neutral in the war. Western newspapers were alarmed when it was learned that the King of Spain, the prime minister and members of the cabinet were ill. They falsely called it the Spanish flu.
The Canadian province of Quebec, where I live, probably infected the rest of North America. In the summer of 1918, it is said a returning soldier from Europe attended a Catholic congress in a small town here in a time of great religious fervor. About 40,000 pilgrims attended, an outsize grouping at the time, many of whom came from the US and the rest of Canada. God bless them all.
On another note, I agree France doesn’t do plaintive but a smirking Swiss official said that France was over-dramatizing as usual.
Well, they are not doing too well in Switzerland now, are they? I am amazed how relaxed/delusional some people seem to be here in the UK, with no thought for those working in the overstretched NHS whatsoever. I do think we need to just stop everyone milling about, and probably should have closed pubs and restaurants earlier and gone full on Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn! Is this Neptune plus Mercury retrograde’s effect? Really, the stricter the lockdown, the sooner we can at least slow this down – both themes of Saturn and Pluto I suspect. It is horrible to live like this, but there isn’t really any choice.
The government’s initial herd immunity theory (which experts advised against) was proposed by Dominic Cummings an article in the Times claimed today. No one should be surprised that the poundshop Machiavelli was behind that daft idea.
Yes, I am beginning to think that’s why Boris said something about many people dying before their time. Herd immunity would mean an awful lot of deaths. Since Cummings seems to hate humanity, that would be fine by him. A less jovial Sagittarian can hardly be imagined.
“The Canadian province of Quebec where I live..”
Which town? Speaking French? I am from Quebec, speaking French.
Take care all!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1345
Black Plague aka Bubonic Plague
And from this link, this is interesting…
March 24, 1345 – Guy de Chauliac observes the planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars conjoined in the sky, under the sign of Aquarius, and a solar eclipse on the same day. This sign is interpreted as foreboding by many, and Chauliac will later blame it for the Black Plague.
Wonder if the program Janus can do a chart for this date???
Hi Thanks. Will maybe do a run down tomorrow on the great plagues of the past – the Solar Eclipse was 4 March 1345 JC in late Pisces, with Neptune, Mars, Saturn Jupiter in Aquarius, followed by a Total Lunar Eclipse on March 18th in early Aries, close to a Uranus Pluto conjunction in Aries, so quite a disruptive time.