Jay-Z may be the only MC with the flu (he rhymes sick), but he wasn’t the first person to rhyme about it. Children at play in 1918 added a new jingle to their stock of jump-roping tunes:
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.
The rhyme was inspired by the great flu pandemic of 1918, also known as the Spanish flu, which claimed more than half-a-million American lives and is estimated to have killed more than 30 million people worldwide. It’s good to recall the 1918 flu epidemic to put current fears about H1N1 in context. Medicine has improved dramatically since then, as have public health agencies, which have been making a concerted effort to minimize the potential impact of H1N1. It should pale in comparison to 1918 and other past flu pandemics.
MU and Columbia were particularly hard hit in 1918. More than 1,000 students contracted the flu that fall, and both the city and university were quarantined. The virus made its first domestic appearance in neighboring Kansas, and halted that year’s Border War (now Showdown) between the MU and KU football teams, the only cancellation in the rivalry’s 118 year history. H1N1 shouldn’t get in the way of this year’s late November matchup in Kansas City.
