I am almost done with this book.
I read it once before at least ten years ago.
It was first published in 2004.
Back in January when I started paying attention to the talk about the coronavirus,
I decided to pull it out and tackle it again.
Such a fascinating read in so many ways!
In 1918 World War I was coming to a close.
The United States under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson was finally getting engaged.
The President held off for the longest time,
but when he decided that the USA would get involved he was all in.
Troops were being called up and trained by the thousands before being sent overseas.
The training camps were filled to overflowing.
Each facility was way overcapacity.
History is pretty sure that the influenza epidemic started on a small pig farm in the middle of Kansas.
A young man,
one of the first recruits of the war,
a resident of a small town in Kansas,
was stricken with what we know now to be a flu virus.
When he arrived at the overcrowded training center, he fell ill.
From there the unknown bug spread like wildfire.
A year and a half later the number of people who had died from this flu
numbered in the millions.
The suffering and loss of life are incomprehensible.
All during this epidemic, there was a race in the medical world to identify the bug and to find a cure. They never did until many years later.
My grandfather was on one of the ships that delivered troops to the war.
He arrived, and like most all of these transport ships, it was filled with desperately ill soldiers.
He never got off of the boat.
They turned around and brought all of them back home because the war was over.
This is a fascinating, terrifying, sobering read!!
The medical world has come so far in these last hundred years,
and yet this coronavirus is still causing great fear in the world.
It's the unknown that is so scary.
Remember this...
God is sovereign.
He knows.
He is in control.
Nothing happens apart from His determinate will.
We trust Him and rest in His word.
