1855 United States Tycoon

In 1918, in the expectation of Scrooge and many people like Scrooge, the United States declared war on Germany a few months ago, but as German generals estimated, the United States army’s Expansion takes time. So until the beginning of 1918, the British and French eager United States troops were still being formed.

However, the German generals did not explain to their emperor in detail, that is, the United States Navy will not take that long to participate in the war. Compared with every time a war is finished, the knife and gun are immediately put into the warehouse. The United States Army and the United States Navy in Nanshan have always been armed to the teeth. Therefore, the United States Navy can go into war almost immediately from the time it declares war.

Although the United States Navy does not have much experience in anti-submarine, however, as the world's third navy, they have quite a good amount of anti-submarine potential. The United States owns hundreds of destroyers, and quickly obtained anti-submarine airships from Republic Aviation on the proposal of some navy officers.

Before the war, when the German Zeppelin first started to study his hard-shell airships, he received investment from McDonald’s Venture Capital. In the course of this cooperation, McDonald also obtained a lot of hard-shell airships. Of technology. By this time, these technologies have been applied in the anti-submarine airship project of the Republic.

Republic’s anti-submarine airship is almost a copycat version of the Zeppelin. It is a bit smaller than the Zeppelin, and of course it is cheaper. The maximum speed is comparable to that of a Zeppelin, about 80-90 kilometers per hour. These airships do not carry too many weapons. Their main weapons are their telescopes and radio stations.

In that era, submarines were floating on the water most of the time. In this way, airships that were condescending and painted themselves gray-blue had a chance to spot those submarines floating on the sea, and then they would track them. Submarines, and continuously report the location of those submarines to the regional anti-submarine team responsible for anti-submarine by radio.

The so-called regional anti-submarine team generally consists of three to five destroyers. They are not assigned to the merchant fleet to perform escort tasks, but are independently responsible for anti-submarine attacks in an important sea area. Unlike the escorted destroyers, those destroyers cannot entangle the submarine for a long time. They must follow the merchant fleet. The destroyers in the regional anti-submarine squad are different. They have nothing to protect and can stay entangled with the submarine until the submarine is sunk.

Once the submarine is discovered by the airship on the sea, it will not be long before it will be attacked by the regional anti-submarine squad that was called. Therefore, once the submarine is discovered by the anti-submarine airship, they must dive and act as a sentry among the wolves. The submarines of the wolves often have to hide underwater and cannot transmit the news of the transport fleet back in time, which naturally makes the organization of night attacks by wolves more difficult. So, unfortunately, the Germans still failed to cut off the Atlantic route.

Of course, both the regional anti-submarine squad and the anti-submarine airship mean more orders, but these orders are only a small number compared with the orders currently provided by the Army to McDonald. The number of the Army will expand from hundreds of thousands today to about 4 million. The provision of weapons, various equipment, and logistics services to these people has made the entire United States companies crazy. Now under the Macdonald’s banner, Or in any company owned by other people, you will see that machines are not shut down 24 hours a day, and workers are busy in three shifts. Even high-level people like Greystone and Donald are too busy to get to the ground.

As for Scrooge, he has been very busy recently. In recent years, McDonald's has established several modern herbal planting bases in the Philippines and China, and now many medicinal materials have come to harvest. These medicinal materials were all shipped and shipped back to United States, ready to come in handy.

In March 1918, the long-awaited plague Scrooge finally arrived. The plague that caused the second largest number of deaths in human history began to appear in Europe. This is the famous Spanish flu in history. In this flu, more than 20 million to more than 40 million people died globally, and the number of deaths far exceeded that of the First World War. This number is still relatively conservative, because countries are busy with wars and have not done a good job of statistics. Therefore, the number of missing unregistered Deaths will be very large, especially in India. According to some accounts, the entire world may have killed about 70 million people.

In North America, this disease caused more than one million deaths. In October 1918 alone, 200,000 people died from the Spanish flu in the United States. Because of the plague, the average life expectancy in United States in 1918 was 12 years lower than the previous year.

Scrooge still remembers how, in his previous life, a gadget called SARS created unlimited business opportunities in the Chitu Kingdom. This pandemic has only caused the deaths of more than 900 people around the world. It has made a variety of drugs, including antiviral drugs, including the folk remedy Isatis root, which is said to be useful, and various masks sold hot.

In a population of more than one billion, the disease that caused the death of less than a thousand people can make the entire Banlangen out of stock in the entire Chitu country, sell out all the masks in the medical stores, and even make the dust masks in the labor insurance stores. Everything is sold out. And now such a plague that can kill more than one million people in United States and tens of millions of people in the world in one breath. How much money can Scrooge make? Just think about it, Scrooge feels excited.

Over the years, for this kind of influenza, Scrooge has spent much time and effort. Under his direct intervention, the University of Cleveland School of Medicine conducted a very detailed study on influenza. And they have successively published many related papers in journals such as The Lancet and Science. They put forward the view that China, Yunnan, Guizhou and even parts of the Southeast Peninsula are the birthplaces of the vast majority of influenza, although it is not yet complete. Proved, but at least it has become the most mainstream view on the source of influenza. Of course, they proposed that some treatment methods in traditional Chinese medicine may have a certain reference effect on the treatment of influenza, but they have not received much recognition. This is because the white people are natural to the Asian barbarians. Contempt, on the other hand, is also because the people at the University of Cleveland School of Medicine have always just advertised this concept in their mouths, and have never come up with any dry goods.

In fact, if it weren't for explaining in the future how McDonald's Medicine could suddenly come up with a life-saving medicine, Scrooge would never reveal so many things in academic journals.

In history, there have been three epidemics of the 1918 Spanish flu. The earliest was in Europe in March and April. The scope of the epidemic was not too large, and the number of infected people and deaths was relatively limited. At that time, the World War had been fought for several years, and Europeans' sensitivity to Death had dropped drastically. Therefore, this epidemic did not bring much panic.

However, Scrooge was particularly concerned about this epidemic. Under his direct concern, a charity medical team from Salvation Hospital was sent to Europe to treat related patients and to test McDonald’s Pharmaceuticals. The effect of the "anti-viral oral liquid".

...

"Mr. MacDonald, there is a new telegram." The secretary handed a telegram to Scrooge. Scrooge looked down, and then he couldn't help laughing.

"Very good, immediately notify China to buy all the A drug ingredients available on the market." Scrooge ordered.

"Okay, sir. I'll do it right away," the secretary replied.

The so-called A drug material refers to the main medicinal material used in the antiviral oral liquid-Radix Isatidis. The telegram just now was sent back from Europe. It said that McDonald’s anti-viral oral liquid has a very good therapeutic effect on this difficult new flu.

Scrooge knew that in history, the impact of this epidemic between March and April was very limited, but when it came to the second epidemic in the fall of that year, it was the most terrible one. Now he has plenty of time to prepare for this fall pandemic.

Buying all the raw materials is of course one of the preparations, but this is only the simplest preparation, and the more important preparations are from the aspect of public opinion. Otherwise, the current hoarding behavior is enough to make his name dirty like the mother river of a certain South Asian country in later generations.

"We must first give warnings in the newspapers," thought Scrooge, "just issue relevant warnings in the New York Times and the British Times. Anyway, such warnings are of no use at all."

Indeed, such warnings in newspapers generally do not have much effect. First of all, the reliability of this warning is very uncertain, even for an expert in epidemics, in that era, his guesses about the epidemic situation of any future epidemics were quite unreliable. Secondly, it takes a lot of money to make countermeasures. European countries are busy with wars. United States is also busy preparing to participate in wars. Moreover, it is so far away from Europe that there is naturally no sense of urgency for colds in Europe. At this time, no one has the financial resources to spend so much money on a cold that may or may not happen, or even more likely to not happen. And once such a warning is issued, Scrooge can say: "Look, I have reminded everyone to prepare, but everyone has no response. So I can only do the preparations for everyone personally. How can it be called hoarding?"

"That's it, let Grey Stone arrange it, and we'll issue a warning in the newspaper first." Scrooge thought.

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