While reading the poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt on the flu pandemic I could right away sense the emotion and struggle she was going through during this time. Nothing was really easy, and their lives were completely flipped around due to an illness; something completely out of her control. She had to change her lifestyle, mindset, goals, and whatever else she had in mind when pursuing her everyday life. It was no longer about having sanitary precautions, having the healthiest diet, or spending a relaxing day in the house or enjoying the weather. I could easily tell this was a very dehumanizing, and harsh time to go through. When reading through this I had a strong visual image of her cutting the cats throat and allowing the carcass to sit in order to allow the flies to migrate towards it. That really caught my attention and got me wondering why it had gotten to this point to kill your own pet to possibly better her health. I do see some parallels when connecting the 1918 flu pandemic to our current COVID-19 pandemic. One obvious one to me was the struggle of being quarantined and having a shortage of supplies. None of it is easy, and I couldn’t imagine it back then without the technology and lack of sanitary precautions that we now have. To them back then, staying in their own homes without any additions here and there was the biggest thing allowing them to survive. For us, a lot of us are still going about their day, but don’t realize that if we took this precaution seriously, we may be able to hit out peak now and see the decline in slope earlier than expected.
I do have a couple of questions when talking about this poem. One that struck to me was, what was the full reasoning to killing the cat? I know it was for food and to attract the flies in order to get them out of the house to bring out the illness, but was there really no other way to do this? Was it really a matter of life and death to where this was her only option? I know relating this to my life, it would probably be my last resort to kill my pets or put them in danger. Another question I had was how was this flu being passed around? Was it more by contact, through air contamination, was it being transported by animal to person contact or other way around? Also, how was this all being cured? I know technology wasn’t really advanced then and it has come a long way and we now have a flu shot, but back then, were they just hoping people could recover due to their stronger immune system?
