Imagine the United States struggling to cope with a deadly pandemic.
Local and state officials are taking a series of social distancing measures, collecting bans, closure orders and disguise warrants, in an effort to stem the tide of cases and deaths.
The audience responds with widespread respect, mixed with more than one hint of buzzing, pushing and even direct defiance. As the days turn into weeks they turn into months, the strictures become more difficult to tolerate.
Theater and dance hall owners are complaining about financial losses.
The clergy mourn the closure of the church, while offices, factories and, in some cases, even halls are allowed to remain open.
Officials argue whether children are safer in classrooms or at home.
Many citizens refuse to wear masks in public, with some complaining that they do not feel comfortable and others claiming that the government has no right to violate their civil liberties.
As familiar as it sounds in 2021, these are real descriptions of the US during the deadly flu pandemic of 1918. In my research as a medical historian, I have seen again and again the many ways in which our current pandemic has reflected it. The one lived by our ancestors a century ago.
As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, many people want to know when life will return to what it was before the coronavirus. Of course, history is not an exact template for the future. But the way the Americans came out of the previous pandemic might suggest what post-pandemic life will be like this time.
Sick and tired, ready for the end of the pandemic
Like COVID-19, the 1918 flu pandemic hit hard and fast, moving from a handful of cases reported in a few cities to a national outbreak in a matter of weeks. Many communities have issued several rounds with different closure orders – corresponding to the ebb and flow of their epidemics – in an attempt to keep the disease under control.
These social distancing orders have worked to reduce cases and deaths. As today, however, they have often proved difficult to maintain. By the end of the fall, just a few weeks after the social distancing orders came into force, the pandemic seemed to end as the number of new infections dropped.
People asked to return to their normal lives. Business has pressured officials to allow them to reopen. Believing that the pandemic was over, state and local authorities began to overturn public health edicts. The nation has focused its efforts on tackling the devastation caused by the flu.
For the friends, families and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had died, the post-pandemic life was full of sadness and pain. Many who were still recovering from their illness needed support and care as they healed.
At a time when there was no federal or state safety net, charities began to act to provide resources to families who had lost their bread winners or to receive countless children orphaned.
However, for the vast majority of Americans, life after the pandemic seemed to be a boom throughout normalcy. Hungry weeks in the city, sporting events, religious services, class interactions and family gatherings, many were eager to return to their old lives.
Taking instructions from officials who – somewhat prematurely – had declared an end to the pandemic, the Americans were in a hurry to return to their pre-pandemic routine. They packed up in cinemas and dance halls, crammed into shops and stores and gathered with friends and family.
Officials have warned the nation that cases and deaths are likely to continue in the coming months. However, the burden of public health is now not based on policies, but rather on individual responsibility.
Predictably, the pandemic continued, spreading into a third deadly wave that lasted until the spring of 1919, with a fourth wave hit in the winter of 1920. Some officials blamed the reappearance on negligent Americans. Others downplayed the new cases or turned their attention to routine public health issues, including other illnesses, restaurant inspections and sanitation.
Despite the persistence of the pandemic, the flu quickly became old news. Once a common feature of the front pages, reports quickly shrank to small sporadic cuts buried behind the nation’s newspapers. The nation continued, assured by the number of the pandemic and the death that was to come. People were largely unwilling to return to socially and economically disruptive public health measures.
It’s hard to stay there
Our predecessors may be forgiven for not staying on course. First, the nation was eager to celebrate the recent end of World War I, an event that probably shaped more in American life than even the pandemic.
Second, death from disease was a much more important part of life in the early twentieth century, and scourges such as diphtheria, measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and pneumonia killed tens of thousands every day. of Americans every year. Moreover, neither the cause nor the epidemiology of influenza was well understood and many experts remained unconvinced that the measures of social distancing had a measurable impact.
Finally, there were no effective flu vaccines to save the world from the ravages of the disease. In fact, the flu virus would not be discovered for another 15 years, and a safe and effective vaccine was not available to the general population until 1945. Given the limited information they had and the tools at their disposal, Americans probably they have endured public health restrictions for as long as they could reasonably be possible.
A century later, and a year after the COVID-19 pandemic, it is understandable that people are now too eager to return to their old lives. The end of this pandemic will inevitably come, as it did with every previous one that humanity has experienced.
If we have anything to learn from the history of the 1918 influenza pandemic, as well as from our experience so far with COVID-19, however, a premature return to pre-pandemic life risks more cases and more deaths.
And today’s Americans have significant advantages over a century ago. We understand virology and epidemiology much better. We know that distancing and social disguise work to help save lives. Most critically, we have several safe and effective vaccines that are implemented, the pace of vaccinations being more and more weekly.
Respecting all these factors to fight coronavirus or reducing them could mean the difference between a new disease and a faster end to the pandemic. COVID-19 is much more transmissible than influenza and several disturbing variants of SARS-CoV-2 are already spreading around the globe. The third deadly flu wave of 1919 shows what can happen when people prematurely relax their guard.
J. Alexander Navarro is deputy director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This was first published by The Conversation – “People gave up on the flu pandemic a century ago when they got tired of it – and it paid a price.”