{"id":3097,"date":"2020-03-28T08:03:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-28T13:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2020-03-28T08:03:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T13:03:45","slug":"the-influenza-pandemic-of-1918-and-its-lessons-for-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/28\/the-influenza-pandemic-of-1918-and-its-lessons-for-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and its Lessons for Covid-19."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the Covid-19 virus spreading around the world it’s critical that we study the lessons learned from past pandemics if we are to have any hope of minimizing the loss of life than now threatens our society. Since this is as much history as medical science I decided that for this post I would ask my brother Tom, a history teacher at Mastbaum High School here in Philadelphia for his help in telling the story of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the year 1918 the world was fully engulfed in the First World War. After three years of conflict the continent of Europe had become nothing more than a single large battlefield. Then, in January of that year a new player entered the war, Influenza. Ironically, the influenza pandemic of 1918 has since become known historically as the Spanish flu because, since Spain was a neutral in the World War, they were the only country that would honestly report the large numbers of the sick and dead that were caused by the disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The horrible conditions in the trenches that millions of soldiers lived in during World War 1 were perfect breeding grounds for many diseases. (Credit: Britannica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To\nthis day scientists are still not precisely certain where the outbreak started.\nThere is evidence that it may have started at a field hospital outside the\nFrench lines. Or it could have begun in an US Army training camp in Kansas. No\nmatter where it began by the end of the pandemic an estimated 17 to 50 million\npeople had died worldwide. Now influenza is of course the flu, a disease that\nwe are all familiar with. This particular strain of the flu however was a flu\nlike no other however as it struck down the strong and youthful as well as the\nold and the very young who are the usual victims of the flu.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French field hospital that is considered by many to be the original source of the disease was overcrowded and plagued by sanitation problems. Food for the hospital\u2019s patients came from livestock that were kept behind the hospital, much too close to the large number sick and injured soldiers. Many scientists are of the opinion that the disease began in a flock of chickens that were being kept for food behind the hospital. The bird’s droppings passed the infection to some pigs that were also being kept as food before leaping into human hosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A French Field Hospital early in the war, caption says 1914. I doubt it stayed this nice a clean for very long! (Credit: Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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One of the greatest success stories in human history is our domestication of other animals. This carries a downside with it however as animal diseases can more easily pass into human populations. (Credit: Center for Disease Control)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those soldiers who recovered at the field hospital then carried the flu with them back to the trenches when they returned to their units, passing the illness on to their comrades. Before long a few of the sick French soldiers were captured by the Germans, in the process passing the disease on to them. Soldiers on both sides who were given leave then took the infection back to the cities and towns of their countries spreading the disease ever further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the United States the first recognized case of the flu was Albert Gitchell, an Army cook at Ft. Riley, Kansas. As a cook Gitchell’s job was to feed the recruits and as he did so he unknowingly passed the disease on to hundreds. Those recruits who completed their training were shipped to Queens New York to wait for a ship to transport them to the battlefields in France. City officials in New York were slow to recognize the danger of so many sick soldiers in their midst and soon the infection was spreading throughout the city and on to the other cities of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some of the sick soldiers at Fort Riley in Kansas. All of this started with one infected man! (Credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In\nfact politicians and civil servants throughout the world were slow to react to\nthe pandemic. Partly this was due to their preoccupation with the requirements\nof conducting the war, especially the need for secrecy. In addition however\ngovernments throughout history just never seem to be able to recognize the\ndangers of a health or environmental crisis until they have grown into a huge\ndisaster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The politicians in 1918 treated this new flu as if it were hardly different from the flu of other years. They considered it to be no more than a temporary nuisance and felt little urgency in either treating the victims or stopping the spread of the disease. More than anything else governments are concerned about a panic starting amongst their people so they always tend to try to hide really bad news. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually however the growing number of the sick and dead became so large that even the politicians had to take action. In many cities activities that involved large crowds were limited in size or even called off. For a short time church services were held in the outdoors in an attempt to reduce the spread of the virus but it wasn\u2019t long before such gatherings were being cancelled entirely. As the crisis worsened Police began to wear surgical masks in an effort to protect themselves, schools were closed and cities like New York and Boston began to resemble ghost towns as people remained in their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eventually the public health services in many cities did react, as here in Evanston Illinois. (Credit: Evanston Now)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A public service announce of the time. Much as today our public leaders considered the flu to be an interference to the issues they considered important! (Credit: History of Vaccines)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Philadelphia\nwas one city that seemed to have escaped the worse of the epidemic. In the\nearly part of September 1918 there had been a small number of cases of the flu\nat local hospitals but few deaths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\na part of the Victory Loan Program to benefit the war effort the city fathers\nof Philadelphia were planning what they knew would be the biggest parade in the\ncity’s history. The city’s health commissioner had been advised by the health\ncommissioners of New York and Washington to cancel the parade but he owed his\njob to the local party bosses and so under pressure from the politicians he\nallowed the parade to go on as scheduled on the 28th of September 1918.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On that day the citizens of Philadelphia lined Broad Street in the thousands, creating an enormous crowd that pressed against each other, the perfect breeding ground for any infectious disease. Within days the flu had spread throughout the city and the death rate soon rose beyond that other the those of Boston or New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Philadelphia’s Liberty Bond Victory parade in 1918. What you can’t see here is the Spanish Flu virus spreading from one person to another! (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In contrast the city officials in St. Louis listened to the warnings of their health officials and cancelled their Victory Bond parade. Thanks to the wisdom of their leaders the city of St. Louis escaped the worst of the plague. The chart below dramatically illustrates the consequences of each city’s leaders response to the threat posed by the flu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Comparison of the Death Rates caused by the Spanish Flu in Philadelphia (Solid Line) and St. Louis (Dotted Line). The benefit of St. Louis canceling its parade is easy to see. (Credit: Quartz)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\ninfluenza pandemic of 1918 affected every corner of the world and remained a\ndeadly problem until it finally died out around December of 1920. The precise\ndeath toll caused by the Spanish Flu will never be known for certain but many\nscientists believe that it was greater than the number of those who perished in\nthe actual war. In many cities throughout the world the dead were so numerous\nthat they were buried in mass graves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe hundred years since 1918 the United States has not witnessed a health\nemergency anywhere near the scale of the Spanish flu, until now. If we are to\nfight the Covid-19 pandemic then we are going to have to learn the lessons of\nthe past, a task that so far we are not accomplishing very well. The policies\nof our governments must be solidly based on medical science, not on hunches or\nwishful thinking. We must demand that our leaders act with the sole goal of\nsaving as many lives as possible, ignoring all considerations of winning\nelections or protecting the economy. Covid-19 is going to be a test of not only\nof how much we’ve learned about fighting infectious diseases, but also about\nwhether or not we have the wisdom to act on the lessons we’ve learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Covid-19 virus spreading around the world it’s critical that we study the lessons learned from past pandemics if we are to have any hope of minimizing the loss of life than now threatens our society. Since this is as much history as medical science I decided that for this post I would ask … Continue reading “The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and its Lessons for Covid-19.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1058,1059,1057],"class_list":["post-3097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-1918-flu-in-philadelphia","tag-covid-19-and-the-1918-flu-epidemic","tag-lessons-of-the-spanish-flu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3107,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3097\/revisions\/3107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}