Blog Post #7 The Ramifications of my Hypothesis that Teddy Roosevelt Died of the 1918 Flu
The United States failed spectacularly in its response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, due to a lack of political leadership. A similar lack of leadership happened during the last global pandemic in 1918, when an outbreak of bird flu occurred during WWI. We know the effect the pandemic had on the public; less well-understood is the effect the pandemic had on American politics and international affairs. Not only did the virus incapacitate President Woodrow Wilson, causing him to concede to French Premier Georges Clemenceau on the Versaille Treaty and setting up the perfect political and economic conditions for Hitler’s rise, I hypothesize it also caused the death of President Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt became ill after his son Quentin died in combat in France in the summer of 1918, just after the first wave of the pandemic. Then on January 6, 1919, during the third wave, his butler woke up to the former President’s labored breathing, and watched as he passed away. His doctors susp...