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Blood, Sweat and Tears: An Oral History of the American Red Cross, is the story of the modern-day Red Cross told through the voices of twenty-nine current and former Red Cross paid and volunteer staff from all parts of the country. The stories range from that of a World War II veteran who credits the Red Cross packages with keeping him alive when he was a POW in Germany to Americans who became heroes simply because they signed up for a Red Cross course and were later able to save a life, to volunteers who spent an intense year in Vietnam cheering up soldiers. We hear from the staffer who pulled people from an automobile before the medics arrive; the mom who saved a neighbor's child when he was drowning; the nurse who took off from her job to go half-way around the world to distribute food and supplies to victims of the tsunami that struck the day after Christmas 2004.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Dorvan Maldaner
reviewed Blood, Sweat And Tears An Oral History of the American Red Cross on July 09, 2011
Blood
Pandemics recur, just as history repeats itself, and it´s all simply a question of how much can be learned from it and how far technology has marched on.
They were at war, so they couldn´t tell that there were outbreaks, only the neutral Spain could say it without the danger of demotivating the population. Today there are mostly just trade wars anymore, but the rules have stayed the same and looking at the potential immense economical damage, the intuition of those trying to hide outbreaks was right.
The influence of such pandemics on human, primate, mammal, and rodent evolution must have been immense, as wiping out huge parts of the population or even the whole population until extinction, and might have happened many times. Without samples and more advanced technology to detect virus DNA and RNA in archeology, or to find the right fossils, it will long stay unclear how massive the impact on the development of higher life forms on the planet might have been.
The differences between 1920 and 2020 are so immense that it takes time to realize how real and ever more realistic this danger is, because we tend to believe that it can´t get so bad:
Medicine was very primitive, but we didn´t really come so much closer to a solution in preventing outbreaks and finding cures.
They didn´t have cars, planes, anything to spread it worldwide or just in a nation with such a speed as today. No freeways, just trains and some roads with horses on them. As long as the horses didn't get it, the spread was very slow.
Fewer people having not so much contact with another.
Just telephones to communicate, nothing to coordinate the efforts of a state or even a whole continent.
A large question is what population group is most affected and if, when the virus has found its prime target, it won´t mutate again and switch the victim again.
The book is not just about the Spanish flu, but also about the doctors and researches that tried to deal with it with methods that seem medieval compared to nowadays standards and by mixing the historical facts with these protagonists, it becomes very vivid for a nonfiction title. It has a bit much redundancy and it would be a five star if the author had put more focus on not repeating himself and telling very similar stories, wildly jumping between geography, personal stories, and the medicine of those days, making it all a bit blurry and unnecessary complicated to follow.
Even if nowadays governments wouldn´t be incompetent, the human factor alone is highly disturbing. Just some people who are immune to rudimentary hygiene rules and logical arguments are enough, and guess what one little piglet that refuses to wash hands, sneeze in the crook of the arm, etc. could do for spreading diseases. Not to speak of antisocial psychos who do it on purpose, try to get it, and spread it.
We didn´t write our own history, nature in the form of plagues did a lot of it and it would be arrogant and dangerous to believe that we are now so highly advanced and have so much fancy technology (and it´s a techno optimist who is saying that) that we are invulnerable, as if we already had nanobots patrolling each body and sending signals to produce individualized vaccines as soon as any invader is detected.
But we aren´t there and the incompetence, arrogance, and idiocy of the Western governments will cost many lives now and in the future, until technology will eradicate the last plagues, what is just a question of time, not of if.
There might even be already the potential for producing and developing new vaccines, testing methods, and preventive measures. But the pharma companies make no money with developing cures for plagues that might never occur and the state has no interest in investing in protecting its citizens, although this could even be seen as military research where a bit of money is invested in general. Why it´s even not possible to produce enough test kits or establish a global network of testing stations that monitor the world or to have intelligent plans for pandemics or to listen to experts or to not worsen the situation with polemics and fake news or to quarantine early enough or…
but, as said, the politicians are like: „Lalalala…..ignoring experts…..yada yada yada…. Stupid decision stupid decision stupid decision“, while unnecessary piles of corpses are exponentially growing.
Some links dealing with the current pandemic:
CNN live updates
John Hopkins CSSE world map
Youtube statistics
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
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