About the book: 2020 / So, how did people become infected with the “Spanish flu” a hundred years ago. “To better appreciate the mystery of this mass disease, an attempt was made in November 1918 to simulate the infection with volunteers in Boston. These were 62 healthy sailors accused of crimes and sent to prison. They were promised pardon on the condition that they take part in the experiment. 39 of them did not have the flu, so the theory was that they would be especially susceptible to infection and disease. But the results proved nothing of the sort, as American science journalist Gina Kolata describes in her book The Flu: “Navy doctors collected mucus from people who were desperately ill with the flu, collecting thick, viscous secretions from the nose and throat. They sprayed mucus from flu patients into the noses and throats of some men and threw it into the eyes of other men. In one attempt, they took mucus from the back of the nose of a person with the flu and then immediately rubbed it onto the nasal septum of one of the volunteers.” In an attempt to mimic what happens naturally when people are exposed to flu victims, doctors took ten volunteers into a hospital ward where men were dying from the disease. The sick lay on their narrow beds, burning with fever and delirious. Ten healthy men were given instructions: each was to go to the sick man's bed and approach him, lean towards his face, inhale his foul breath and chat with him for five minutes. To be sure that the healthy person was completely exposed to the sick person's illness, the sick person had to exhale deeply while the healthy person breathed directly next to him. Finally, the flu victim coughed in the volunteer's face five times. “Each healthy volunteer repeated these steps with ten different flu patients. Each flu patient was seriously ill for no more than three days, a period during which the virus or whatever was causing the flu would still be present in his mucus, in his nose, in his lungs. “But not a single healthy person got sick.” A similar experiment, conducted under much harsher conditions, was conducted in San Francisco with 50 imprisoned sailors. But, again, the results were not what doctors expected: “The researchers were stunned. If these healthy volunteers did not contract the flu despite the doctors' best efforts to make them sick, then what was the cause of the disease? How exactly did people get the flu?’” In my opinion, this is useful information for the current Covid panic, although those who make decisions do not read such information or anything at all. Why should they read? They have assistants.