In 1918, in anticipation of Scrooge and many others like Scrooge, the United States had declared war on Germany a few months earlier, but as German generals had estimated, it would take time for the American military to expand. So until the beginning of 1918, the American army, which the British and French were looking forward to, was still being formed.

However, the German generals did not make it clear to their emperor that the U.S. Navy would not take that long to enter the war. Compared with the U.S. Army, which immediately put swords and guns into storage after every war, the U.S. Navy has always maintained a state of arming to the teeth. Therefore, the US Navy can be put into war almost immediately from the moment of the declaration of war.

Although in terms of anti-submarine, the US Navy does not have much experience, however, as the third navy in the world, they have quite a good anti-submarine power. The Americans had hundreds of destroyers, and soon also on the proposal of some officers of the Navy, received anti-submarine airships from Republican Aviation specifically for anti-submarine purposes.

Before the start of the war, when the German Zeppelin first began to study his monocoque airship, he received investment from MacDonald Ventures, and in the process of this cooperation, MacDonald also obtained a lot of hard-shell airship technology. By this time, these technologies were applied on the Republic anti-submarine airship project.

The Republican anti-submarine airship is almost a knock-off of the Zeppelin, which is a little smaller and certainly cheaper than the Zeppelin. The maximum speed is comparable to that of a zeppelin, about 80-90 kilometers per hour. The airships themselves did not carry much weaponry, and their main weapons were their telescopes and radio stations.

In those days, submarines were mostly floating on the surface, so condescending, and at the same time painted themselves gray-blue airships had every chance to spot those submarines floating on the surface, and then they would track these submarines and constantly report the location of those submarines by radio to the regional anti-submarine detachment dedicated to anti-submarine submarine.

The so-called regional anti-submarine detachment, which is generally composed of three to five destroyers, is not assigned to the merchant fleet to carry out escort duties, but is independently responsible for anti-submarine attack work in an important sea area. Unlike the escort destroyers, those destroyers could not be entangled with submarines for a long time, they had to sail with the merchant fleet. And the destroyers in the regional anti-submarine detachment are different, they have nothing to protect, they can entangle with the submarine until it 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 summoned regional anti-submarine team, so once it is discovered by the anti-submarine airship, they must dive, so the submarine that acts as a sentry in the wolf pack will often be unable to send the news of the transport fleet back in time because it must hide underwater, which naturally makes it more difficult for the organization of the wolf pack to attack at night. So, unfortunately, the Germans still failed to cut off the Atlantic route.

Of course, both regional anti-submarine squads and anti-submarine airships mean more orders, but these orders are only a small number compared to the orders that the Army has provided to MacDonald today. The number of the Army is going to expand from hundreds of thousands to about 4 million, and providing these people with weapons, and all kinds of equipment, and logistics services, and all that makes the whole of America crazy, and now in McDonald's business, or any other company, you will see machines working 24 hours a day, and workers working in three shifts. Even high-level officials like Gladstone and Donald were too busy to get their feet on the ground.

As for Scrooge, he has also been busy recently, in recent years, MacDonald Medicine has established several modern herbal planting bases in the Philippines and China, and now it is time for many medicinal herbs to be harvested. The herbs were loaded onto ships and shipped back to the United States, ready to be put to great use.

In March 1918, Scrooge's long-awaited plague finally arrived. The plague, which caused the second deadliest in human history, began to appear in Europe. This is the most famous Spanish flu in history. In this flu, more than 20 million to more than 40 million people died worldwide, far more than in the First World War. And this figure is still a relatively conservative number, because countries are busy with wars and do not do a good job of statistics. So the number of missing unregistered deaths can be very high, especially in India. And according to some accounts, the entire world may have died about 70 million people as a result.

In North America, the disease killed more than a million people, and in October 1918 alone, 200,000 people died in the United States from the Spanish flu. As a result of the plague, life expectancy in the United States fell by as much as 12 years in 1918 compared to the previous year.

Scrooge still remembers how in his previous life, a thing called SARS created unlimited business opportunities in the Red Rabbit Country. The epidemic has killed just more than 900 people worldwide, and has led to a boom in sales of a variety of medicines, including antivirals, including supposedly useful folk remedies for the root of the blue, including various masks.

Among more than one billion people, a disease that kills less than a thousand people can sell out all the banlangen in the entire Chitu country, sell out all the masks in the medical store, and even sell out the dust masks in the labor insurance store. And now such a plague that can make the United States die more than a million people in one breath and the whole world die tens of millions of people in one breath, how much money can Scrooge make? Just think about it for a moment, Scrooge gets excited.

Over the years, for this flu, Scrooge has not put a lot of thought into it. The University of Cleveland School of Medicine, with his direct intervention, conducted a fairly detailed study of influenza. They have published a lot of related papers in journals such as The Lancet and Science, and their view that China's Yunnan-Guizhou and even part of the Southeast Peninsula is the birthplace of most influenza has not yet been fully proven, but at least it has become the most mainstream view about the source of influenza. Of course, the idea that some of the treatments in traditional Chinese medicine may have some reference to the treatment of influenza has not received much recognition, partly because of the natural contempt of the Caucasian people for the Asian savages, and partly because the people at the University of Cleveland Medical School have always only talked about this idea, and have never come up with any dry goods.

In fact, if it weren't for the future explanation of how MacDonald's medicine could suddenly come up with a life-saving cure, Scrooge wouldn't have leaked so much in academic journals.

Historically, there have been three epidemics of the 1918 Spanish flu, the earliest of which was in Europe in March and April, and the epidemic was not very large, with a relatively limited number of infected people and deaths. At that time, the world war had been going on for several years, and the Europeans had become much less sensitive to death. So the epidemic didn't cause much panic.

However, Scrooge was particularly concerned about the epidemic, and under his direct care, a charity medical team from Salvation Hospital was sent to Europe to treat patients and test the effects of McDonald Pharmaceuticals' "antiviral oral solution".

……

"Mr. MacDonald, there's a new telegram." The secretary handed a telegram to Scrooge, who looked down and laughed out loud.

"Very good, immediately notify the Chinese side, and buy all the raw materials of drug A that can be bought on the market." Scrooge ordered.

"Yes, sir. I'll do it right away. The secretary replied.

The so-called A drug raw material refers to the main medicinal material to be used in the antiviral oral liquid - Banlan root. The telegram was sent back from Europe, and it said that McDonald's antiviral liquid had a pretty good effect on this new flu, which was difficult to deal with.

Scrooge knew that in history, the impact of this epidemic in March and April was very limited, but it was the second epidemic in the autumn of this year, and it was the most fatal one. Now he has plenty of time to prepare for the 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 preparation is public opinion. Otherwise, the current hoarding would be enough to make his name as filthy as the mother river of a certain great South Asian country in later generations.

"First of all, give a warning in the newspapers," Scrooge thought, "in the New York Times and the Times in Britain." Such warnings are of no use at all anyway. ”

Indeed, such warnings in newspapers generally do not have much effect. First of all, the reliability of such warnings is very uncertain, and even an expert on epidemics, in his time, would have been quite unreliable in his predictions about the epidemic of any future epidemic. Second, it takes a lot of money to deal with it, and now that European countries are busy with war, the United States is also busy preparing to participate in the war, and it is so far away from Europe, there is naturally no sense of urgency for the cold in Europe, and 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 the greater probability of not happening. And once such a warning is given, then Scrooge can say: "You see, I warned everyone to prepare a long time ago, but no one responded. So I can only do the preparation work for everyone personally, how can this be called hoarding? ”

"That's it, let Greystone arrange it, and we'll give the newspaper a warning first." Scrooge thought.