Transcripts For CSPAN3 1918 Flu Pandemic 20240711

The 1918 flu pandemic altered American Life in ways that are familiar to those living through the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Conflicting information left people wary and fearful. College classes were held outside, sports were canceled, asks or challenged as unamerican, and fines imposed on those who refuse to wear them. Next, Christopher Mcknight nichols recounts how the country experienced the events of a century ago and the lessons we might learn. He directs the Oregon University center for humanities. Since the pandemic has begun, for our purposes, since we shut down in march, they thing that has been driving our analysis here as historians is what is the historical precedent . Obviously, 1918 is the one that comes to mind and we have nobody better to tell us about 1918 that my friend christopher nichols. Hes an associate professor of history at oregon state. Hes the director of the Oregon State Center for humanities and the founder of their citizenship and crisis initiative. He also studied at harvard and wesley in and got his ma and phd from a good friend of ours at the university of virginia. He is an expert on i would say the early parts of the 20th century. He is expanding out and he and i, before we came on, we were chatting about new work on ideologies in u. S. Foreign policy, which that book itself was a seminal book in the field in 1987 and im glad someone has decided to go in and update it. Theres no better person to do it than chris. Hes going to be talking to us about the 1918 pandemic. I would encourage you as you look at your zoom creek zoom screen, youll see a q and a button. Hit that button and submit your questions. You can see other peoples questions as they come in, and if you like their question or if you were going to ask a similar question, hit the thumbs up button. That will be helpful because that will move it up the queue. The more people who like something, the higher it gets, just like anything else on the web. I will remind you there is no chat function here. We want people to focus on the q a. One of the great benefits to doing this on the web is it is much easier to kick out anyone who is unruly, so keep it civil, people. Without further ado, im going to ask Brian Franklin to turn on chriscamera. There he is. How are you doing him a buddy . I just gave you the intro. Looks like a sunny day in corvallis, so im going to turn things over to you. Chris is going to show us some images and walk us through and then he and i will come back and have this discussion when hes done with the presentation. Thank you so much. First of all, i want to say thank you to everyone who is here with us. We had record turnout for registration. I hope i can keep you interested. This topic is inherently interesting, so you dont need too much. A special thank you to Brian Franklin who helped organize this and is behind the scenes running the webinar and zoom web functions. And also, of course, most important, many thank yous to professor jeffrey angle. We worked on a project that will be out next year, look for rethinking america, grand strategy. Jeff wrote a great chapter in that book. What i want to do things is im going to give you a march through what happened in the pandemic of 1918. This is something i started studying years ago when i was studying world war i and international and domestic politics. When i taught it to my survey students, they were much more interested in world war i. But now, with no such thing. We are attuned to the historical lessons we can learn from the most significant Global Pandemic comparable to our current one in 2020. I will give you a brief and hopefully compelling talk about that history. Then, im going to telescope out and make comparisons to 2020 and think more globally. I will give you the u. S. Story with International Dimensions and we will pause to reflect on questions and historical comparisons. Recently, there was a roundtable working on this subject. We dont always agree, but im surprised at how much consensus there is about the lessons you can learn from this. Im going to give you this brief rundown of what happened in the pandemic of 1918 and then we will telescope in and out, so please keep your questions coming. One of the things i think is most important to consider when we go back to the 1918 moment, and heres where we need to look at social history the human suffering and human cost. I will talk a little bit about the numbers but one of the crucial things to understand is the story of people like victor von. He was a fascinating figure, a distinguished leader of american medicine, the dean of the university of medicine, in charge of the army medical services, Founding Editor of the journal of laboratory and medicine, served as a colonel in the army, led the division of Communicable Diseases. Heres a guy who has seen a lot of disease and death and he gets involved leading that division when the worst deadly second wave of the pandemic began in the fall of 1918. He traveled to massachusetts as part of a team appointed by the army Surgeon General. He got there and was devastated by what he saw. This was a little outside of boston. It was far worse than any other Communicable Disease he had been involved with. They are placed on the cots until every bed is, yet others crowd in. A distressing cough brings up the blood. In the morning, the dead bodies are stacked at the morgue like cordwood. This is the sort of thing medical doctors were seeing at barracks throughout the fall of 1918. Because the barracks were so integrally connected to nearby committees, it almost medially got to the civilian population, despite what Public Health officials and army medical fissions often said. In terms of the human costs and suffering, the numbers are somewhat staggering. This is one of the things we need to think about when we think about the u. S. Case. If we think about 1918, 1919 and the pandemic, the u. S. Lost 675,000 people. On the order of 50 million around the world died, although there are some differences in terms of the estimates between 20 and 100 million. In the u. S. , 20 to 30 of the population was infected. The u. S. Lost more soldiers to flu and pneumonia and other diseases than in combat in world war i. All of this was integrally connected to the war effort. Thats the other piece to understand and think about. How did it begin . What happened . It all began in the u. S. Context in winter, 1918. In march of 1918 in kansas. You began to see widespread illness of a seemingly new type. In american troops mustering there, newly drafted or enlisted. A soldier recalled 12 men who slept in my squadron, seven were ill at one time. Something like 24 of the 30 army bases were overwhelmed in the spring of 1918. There are a couple of different origin stories about the influenza virus and i will talk a little later about the spanish flu as it is sometimes called and what that meant. In the u. S. Context, a lot of scholars now believe the viral version we think of as a pandemic version originated in kansas in february and march of 1918. There is an epidemiologist and others who track the virus to vietnam, china and france. But the version we think of when it spreads around the world comes out of kansas. And you can watch that move. For those of us who study president ial and u. S. History, you can watch this move through army records in particular. Weve got amazing data on who got sick, when and why, and thats largely because of army data. If anyone says we dont have good information about how the flu spread, they are not looking the right places because we historians know exactly where to look. You can get very finegrained analysis. One of the things i note when we get on the flu of 1918 and why it is so comparable to today is it went around the world. A lot of historians have made different arguments related to this that the world was effectively globalized before world war i. You see that playing out in terms of how this virus spreads. U. S. Troops in particular arriving in france are conduits of transmission. They are vectors of disease. U. S. Soldiers first begin arriving well before the pandemic in june of 1917, but the u. S. Does not get its mobilization ramped up until 1918 and that roughly coincides with the spread of the flu. U. S. Troops on railroads crisscross the nation, they brought the flu with them. You can see it in local newspapers and i will show you a few as a we go. You can see the flu arrive in cities like portland here or philadelphia or dallas because it almost arrives with u. S. Soldiers, troop transmissions, civilian workers and that sort of thing. So i globalized world spread the pandemic in a way that previous ones did not. Transmission of people and goods across borders, including for war, even in neutral countries spread the disease as well. Looking around the world, what happened . It starts in march in kansas, 1918. By may, it is in shanghai. It is in algeria in june. Australia issued strict quarantine policies but by 1919, australia has it as well. Sydney was particularly hardhit. It goes around the world within a year which is an amazing fact. It used to be very striking to those of us who studied the pandemic but as we look at our current moment, it is remarkably similar to think about what happened from the disease outbreak in china to a worldwide pandemic declaration from the who in march of this year. So the great war helps to explain the way the virus was transmitted. It also helps us understand a bit more about why the disease was discussed and how what was discussed and recorded. What some of the Major Concerns were about talking about the virus or treating it or thinking more fully about the possibilities for taking informed Public Health measures. The u. S. Enters the war in april, 1917. You can look at French Forces near the western front. One thing that should stand out is this is the opposite of social distancing being impressed upon all of us today as an essential way to stop the virus spread. The camps, trenches on the western front, if you can conjure images like that up, they absolutely were prone to spreader and a super spreader events. One thing that should stand out is that between the 1918 epidemic and today, one real significant contract is the overwhelming majority of those who died in 1918 through 1920, the overwhelming majority, Something Like one half or one third were in the eight teen to 45 age bracket. That flew, the influence of that era, disproportionately hit young and Healthy People. We can talk about that. Their immune systems over respond, damaging their lungs and having them drown with fluid in their lungs. Its a really horrific way. The sort of thing that doctor vaughan, that opening quote, embodies so well, people were just dropping that ultimately fast. Thats unlike our current pandemic, which does not target the most healthy, at least in terms of case fatality rates. We can talk about that more. Remember, im a historian and not an epidemiologist. A lot of the information here is based off of others, its not just nine. Another thing that is important to think about, the wartime consequences and the shaping of the flu responses in lots of countries, but especially in the u. S. , was patriotism. This might strike you as a contrast today or a continuity, and i welcome talking about this in the queue and a. What you see here are these red cross women volunteers and workers making masks. The sign behind them is if i fail, he dies. Its a sign supporting the cause and also a martial language to defeat the virus. Weve heard some of that from President Trump in terms of his invocation of the invisible enemy. That is very much the kind of martial language we heard operationalize in 1919 and 1918. Trying to make visible the invisible of the virus so that people would take it more seriously. Practice hand hygiene, accept closure policies and even wear masks. But there is another piece, perhaps a more insidious piece this story, that is nations like the United Kingdom had passed legislation, in this case the defense of the realm act of 1914, that censored the mail. It censored with the press could say and its censored what was distributed in terms of information about a wide array of topics that might pertain to the war. One of the key elements here, communication in this case, is about limiting access to anything that might undermine the war effort. In the u. S. Context, there were the espionage and sedition acts. Those are very famous. 1917 and 1918. This is from the u. S. National archives. I think its a New York Times headline. This edition bill has been signed, one of the most drastic measures ever enacted to catch and punish enemy agents. Another piece of that was to limit free speech and Civil Liberties by talking about anything that might undermine the war effort. This sounds like social history or political history. Well, it also meant that journalists could not talk about these outbreaks at the base is very much. Or, they had to minimize what was going on. If you think about 24 of the 36 largest bases having largescale outbreaks of the virus, that meant the troops were not combat effective, they could not move across the country and then across the atlantic, you understand better how this possible communication of the waves of the virus and its infectiousness and its fatalities, that might undermine the war effort. You saw in this moment the u. S. , the uk and other combatant nations like germany and france, they are censoring the press and limiting speech and information about the outbreaks themselves. Thats a take away for us to take about. Historians are very clear about this. One of the huge problems of 1918 was a lack of rapid, honest and continually updated information and leadership from nation states. Not just the u. S. , the uk, but combat nations as well. You think about this. You can think about it in this context as well. Dont talk, the web spun for you with invisible threads. That includes not just talking about elements of the war effort itself, or for instance the draft, another thing that Many American dissenters related to the war. They talked about whether or not the drafters constitutional. That had never been fully tested in a civil war era. And world war i, mobilizing millions of people for the war. Many folks including fivetime candidate for president eugene debs, a socialist, he spoke out against the draft. He said not everyone should serve. It could unconstitutional that to force them to serve. He was thrown in jail for a speech he gave in canton, ohio. Thats another example in the ways the more limited speech about Public Health issues and dissent in a time of war. Another limitation that is worth thinking about, we hear this again today and weve heard it and a lot of countries, its ways of minimizing the virus. This was more true in march or april than it is today. As the virus spread, even into the middle of october, when that deadly second wave, and the plurality of american deaths happen in the u. S. , you saw documents like this. The spanish influenza is a threeday fever. Its a flu. Its a new name for an old disease. There had been previously a big outbreak. The previous big pandemic in the u. S. Had been in 1889 to 1890. Here you see these widely distributed information coming from u. S. Department of Public Health and the Surgeon General. He says its simply the same old thing that swept over the world. Modern nursing and modern medical care will help handle this. That creates a lot of problems in the u. S. Because americans do not know what to do. They do not know which policies to adopt at the local, state and federal level. They also dont know what information to trust. So i will show you some more images from the air about that. Another piece of the puzzle is about where it came from. One thing that lots of us historians ive had to talk about lately has been should we call lose by their nation of origin or by their city abortion . What does that even mean since viruses are global and not limited to nation states . So why was it called the spanish flu . Some of you may know this, but the main reason, as ive said, is that the wartime nations were censoring their press. Would that mean for other countries . Spain was neutral in the war. King alfonso the 13th kept the nation out of the war effort, though they had some direct ties through blood to the haves birds and castro angry aristocracy. Although, many nations in europe did as well. So they kept out of the war effort. In may 1918, the king and a number of other major figures in the elite circles of spain, came down with the flu. The Spanish Press started treating this with lots of coverage. There are accounts where a man walking down the street suddenly felt congested and is dead with it a day. Though it sounds sensational, a very similar accounts we have in the u. S. Have incredibly strong people, all american football players, one of the strongest lumberjacks in the Pacific Northwest division of the u. S. Army cutting down trees for the war effort, they would also sometimes just fall down dead. So the Spanish Press covering this, when it came out, you saw first the British Press cover this. They used terms like the hygiene and environment in spain were giving rise to this flu. Or that the spanish werent able to deal with it because of their society. These kind of subtle, heavily racialized terms. You can find this yourself if you google it. It was then adopted more widely in the ankle american press. So you wind up seeing the u. S. And the british spending a lot more time calling it the spanish flu. Before long, throughout the summer of 1918, it has become the spanish flu. Of course, by the fall of 1918, Public Health officials in the u. S. In the uk, much less around the world, understood the origins of the flu were not in spain. They no longer said that. But the term had caught on. This kind of weaponized, racialized, nationalist version of the few caught on. Another thing that is worth noting is the spanish called it the french flu because they blame french workers coming for the war effort for that. The germans called it the russian past. Russians ultimately called it by several other names including a chinese flu. In this moment, you see something that weve seen today. This urge to weaponize and nationalized a flu or a virus. Perhaps to diminish it or perhaps to better operationalize a weight forward to fight that virus. As we are thinking about this moment. As we are thinking through the conflict, you also find a number of places, french posts for instance, british posts, do have significant flu outbreaks throughout the spring into the summer of 1918. Whats most of them note is that, for instance in the british navy, some 10,000 troops go down with the flu. Only Something Like four or five die. There are a few posts of the french where everyone is sick, but very few die. All of a sudden, in late summer something seems to change. It changes in the reporting. It changes in the intelligence that we get from u. S. And british sources. The changes, most importantly, in the virulence of the virus. By late summer 1918, in places that were known to the u. S. And the british of having good medical care, you found widespread disease. It was knocking out more people, not just from combat effectiveness, but also from life itself. If they were covered and could not breathe well enough, they had such lung damage that they could not live very well. Where they actually work fatalities to the disease. Heres an example of influenza patients in switzerland. So what you see in this moment was really interesting to look back on. British and american Intelligence Officers are reporting back in documents that remark secret and confidential. They are saying things like the disease that is now epidemic threat switzerland is what is commonly known as the black play, or influenza. Although it is designated a spanish sickness or grippe. We must deal with this now. It has resurfaced and significant farm. But they are worried about is the combat effectiveness of u. S. And british troops. They take the virus very seriously. But of course, as any of you who knows anything about this and its history, the wartime imperative is imperatives triumphed over that. So you saw in the u. S. , as troops bring back from france that virulent form, to east coast port cities involved in the war like new york, philadelphia and boston. You see the u. S. Taking advice of Public Health officials. They are going ahead with major events. Going ahead with business as usual as we call it. September 28th, 1918 is this famous moment where philadelphia liberty bell braid. It was the largest parade to date in philadelphia history. This was a moment to sell liberally loan bonds to help support the war. This is an era when the u. S. Attempted to finance its conflicts on the backs of its citizens through things like bonds. We no longer do that. Thats an interesting topic to think about as well. So heres the image of an aircraft hall traveling down parade route philly. Of course, what you all may know about what comes next is how horrific that superspreader event was. Doctors urged the Public Health officials and the mayor to cancel the parade. They were very fearful that hundreds of thousands of people jammed on the road would be a problem. And of course, it was a huge one. Two days after the parade, the head of Public Health said something as follows. I will paraphrase. Now present in the civilian population is some type of flu. But let us not be, quote, panic stricken over exaggerated reports. On the other hand, you look at details like this. The philadelphia evening bulletin a little later reported, in some families there are none left to take care of burying the dead. Others are unable to bury them or cannot yet find undertakers. Husband and in fifth dead in a few hours. Really horrific. After the parade, it got much worse. The hospitals quickly philip. They build supplemental hospitals and they also philip. At one point, you are getting 700 plus people dying in one day at its worst. Priests who drove horse drawn carriages to pick up the bodies could not keep up. That is how bad it got. When you think about what historians have been hollering about since march, and Public Health officials have been as well, there is a great report on the cdc website about the history of the pandemic. This is what we talk about when we think about Football Games and parades and largescale activities. We worry a lot about this kind of moment. Philadelphia could not keep up. In modern parlance, the curb could not be flattened and the city was utterly devastated because of that. So across the country, Public Health officials continued along those lines. That is one thing that we learned. Heres more from philly and also about the ambiguity of that moment. The Surgeon General said there is no cause for alarm if precautions are observed. As i have it up here, president of the West Philadelphia medical Association Began in antiscare campaign. He argued the public should be educated to the fact that the disease is not as deadly as many believe. On the other hand, just think that last image of the young girl with the mortally ill sister in that case actually. The editors of the philly inquiry wrote the strict closure orders to far. This is eerily reminiscent of our current moment shutting down schools largely promoting an unreasonable amount of fear. Here you see an antispitting campaign. On the lower part, later in the pandemic, someone being brought into the hospital by police who are police who are masked toward you saw conflicting information and people worrying about similar things to today. The question of whether the measures to stop the virus where worst than the virus itself. Philadelphia seemingly was proven that the virus was terrible and even within philadelphia, you see this kind of information. I am often asked, what about the economy . October, 1918, the height of the deadliest wave of the pandemic, several hundred thousand died in six weeks, as bad as it gets. Here is the wall street journal. Some parts of the country, a decrease in production of 50 and almost everywhere is falling off. Loss of trade in which retail merchants have met with very large. Impairment has been noticeable. The war does not end until november 11th. There has never been such domination by an epidemic as has been the case with this one. At this point, most cities had closure orders, but not all and essential activity was still war work. Industrial plans were open making munitions, tanks, all sorts of things. In those industries, you saw reported 40 even 60 of folks not showing up to work. They were making a risk calculation about whether it was worth it to go into work in those essential industries. You can imagine how other industries that were less essential where having significant problems. One of the lessons historians take from this moment you can see this in other countries, not just the u. S. There is no such thing as business as usual during a pandemic. Almost regardless of what Public Health measures are undertaken, whether they are voluntary or mandatory, people make choices about their lives, loved ones who may be prone to being sick, people who are fearful. Some people needed to work and that is another reason why in this moment, the pandemic fell disproportionately on people of lower socioeconomic status, often people of color and indigenous communities. We will talk about that as well. These are the folks that you saw showing up, here is the st. Louis red cross motor core, ambulance teams getting ready for their work. Another piece of the puzzle was that most male doctors had been drafted during the war effort and there were lots of nurses as well overseas, so there was a nursing shortage and a medical staff shortage that was part of that moment, there were lots of calls for more nurses and medical care in that era. Another thing to think about, you see so many images of the red cross and voluntary organizations, although the red cross emerges as a publicprivate hybrid. American expectations of Public Health were different in this era. Citizens around the world did not think the government would necessarily provide for their medical care, they fell back on community resources, church groups, other organizations in state and local ones like the red cross to help out in times like this. In cities like philadelphia, those were overwhelmed in many of these groups if you look here, you can surmise these are probably women 1845, a demographic likely to be hit hardest by this virus. You had a lot of medical professionals and volunteers getting sick, further exacerbating the problem that was there. And historians have documented, this led to a loneliness, alienation, and fear by other people. As the pandemic goes on, the beginning of 1919, you have relatively Healthy People no longer being willing to help their older relatives or neighbors because they have seen how many young people have been killed very fast. There was less volunteering. One story that comes out is a common one, from the midwest, southwest, east coast, west coast, people being so fearful and challenged by this moment that they say things like here is an account we were almost afraid to breathe, we were afraid to go out. People were actually afraid to leave their homes, afraid to talk to one another. Another example, if i kept people apart, you had no school life, no church life, you have nothing, it destroyed all family and community life. When each day dawned, you did not know whether you would be there when the sunset that day. Internal reports from organizations amplify this. The American Red Cross concluded that fear and panic of the influenza akin to terror of the middle ages regarding the black plague has been prevalent in virtually every community in the u. S. And that is another element that is interesting and i think global and human. I have talked with psychologists and one thing people are seeing in other countries is this fear of the virus has effected itself in social relations around the world and it is a kind of unique thing that we rarely see, everyone around the world would be experiencing something pretty much in real time and that is something we have not paused to reflect on much and there may be longer consequences. Lets talk about nonpharmaceutical intervention. This is a term for social distancing and all that sort of stuff. On the left, the Philadelphia Inquirer after that parade, virtually nothing there about the disease. A few days later, two weeks later, scientific nursing halts during the epidemic, deaths now on decreasing scale. An enormous number. What happened . You have probably thought about this. In cities like philadelphia where you had that parade, you can see the first case arrives 11 days before the parade in the port of philadelphia and then you see that a spreader event, it tracks pretty neatly, how horrific the case is, versus other cities that did better. St. Louis, their chief medical officer was upset with Infectious Diseases and had been following what had been going on in the east coast, empowered by the mayor, and puts on significant closure policies rapidly and keep that on for a while. The rapid, complete closure policies that happen in st. Louis and the longduration help explain the difference in these two curves. Here is another way of looking at it. September 28, when that parade happens, the enormous uptick that comes after that. St. Louis has a prolonged duration but it is so much lower and considered a success. One of the things to think about, the way this will operate for us all in the fall when there is likely to be a second wave, which is just around the corner, or perhaps in the winter or spring. There is usually three waves to the influenza pandemic and we are looking at going into a second wave now, you might argue, assuming we have ended the first. What happened in other cities . What can we learn . There is st. Louis. Denver, pittsburgh, similar phenomenons. New york, big events, not as big as the philadelphia one, but a comparable moments. What happens in denver, we will talk about in a moment. Another piece of the puzzle is what happened in pittsburgh with its peak in one element to that which is useful to think about is that they closed in a layered strategy. There was a powerful catholic lobby in the city and they wanted to keep the parochial schools open, so Public Schools closed but not parochial schools. They had more exemptions for masses and other activities, sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. The argument by Public Health scholars is that is partly why you saw the first peak at a second in october, the layered strategy of closing was not a good one. The lesson historians note is if you are going to close, close completely and keep that on. If you are going to open, open in a phased strategy, dont open completely. These are clear lessons, a piece on this, you can see comparative cities. Lets talk about denver. What happened in denver . This is what we are seeing in the u. S. Today. As of august 2020, there was a premature reopening, instead of lobby groups, we now call them the amusement lobby like billiard halls, theaters, restaurants. They pushed hard to reopen. As they saw some disease going down, as demonstrated in the hospitalizations and what doctors are reporting, they thought they could, so they start to reopen. As they reopen at the end of october, what you find is they have not done enough to get rid of they are not fully following data. What they are operating on is market logic, hoping to get businesses back up and running. That is what we have seen in the u. S. And other parts of the world, that combined with one other factor that no one knew was coming, armistice day, lots of people went out into the streets, whether or not they were allowed, and when the war ended, they had parties and they met with other people in places where they were Wearing Masks, they threw them off, and in lots of cities, but especially places like denver that had begun reopening, you see a second peak. This is part and parcel of the lessons Public Health scholars take from this moment. Dont prematurely reopen. You are never going to know for sure but this data suggests you need to get to lower numbers and as you have probably been following, there are recommended thresholds for reopening in cities like denver in 1918 did not follow them in part because they did not know them but in part because they were led by folks who hoped to get back to business as usual. It did not work out. Another thing to think about, think about what happened over these different periods. The 10 week. The 10 week period, the first 10 weeks from september 8 through november 23, adopted nonpharmaceutical interventions, closing schools, businesses, limiting people on Public Transit, practicing hand hygiene, using ventilation tactics, opening windows, cleaning spaces, then eventually, into the fall, you begin to see the mask mandates. What you see our cities that have second peaks or are particularly hard hit like philadelphia, pittsburgh, and what you will not see is dallas. I will tell you about that shortly. Let me lead into that story for you. Here, on the left, a machine you disinfect nasal passages. These were used in military camps. There is a picture of that happening there. These are some of the bits of information that were suggested by the Surgeon General presented on the front page in october of 1918. We know what happened in dallas in texas, we know september 24, the National Press was covering escalating influenza on the east coast, dallasmain Health Official warned his community to expect that it was coming. He was not wrong because closer to home, 700 cases were reported among soldiers at camp logan near houston, you saw outbreaks in san antonio which was slow to react. In an attempt to contain these epidemics, medical officials try to quarantine camps. Another thing we saw was quarantining camps did not work well. Troops regularly left or got unlucky with you they encountered and that went into civilian populations. If you think about sports, bubbles work, but anything short of that, even a 99 quarantine does not work and that is what happened in a lot of these camps. The case in dallas was that by september 27th, so three days later, there were 15 cases in dallas, five of which were in the emergency hospital. As we go on and by october 3rd dallas had 119 cases, including some young folks like a 15 year old by the name of peter who died at st. Pauls hospital. We had hospitals beginning to isolate their cases in physicians, adopting the strategies that you stop in the east coast. Things like ventilation and air. Trying to keep people apart. They look to close schools. Public Health Officials in dallas, liken lots of other places, were divided on how rapidly to close things down. As things mounted in dallas schools and hospitals and social settings, that is when they start that. We could talk a little more about it, but the point is that ultimately, historians who started this closely in the case of texas and dallas, suggest that despite variations and figures, it is hard to know with the cases were. The flu was not a reportable disease in this moment. Some people will go to the hospital and die of something called a heavy cold. They could have it reported as the grippe and not influenza. However you slice them, its clear that dallas fared a lot better than most American Cities at the time. Remember, september 24th is when they Start Talking about this. Thats right in philadelphia is september 28. Dallas officials were on the scene thinking about this more rapidly than others in some other cities. So the epidemic death rates in dallas were somewhere in the range of 250 to 511 per 100,000. Dallas weathered its epidemic new orleans, better than st. Louis, better than most communities. Some people asked questions like who got the flu. They both got the flu among others. Actually, the world series and a bit early in fall of 1918 because of the flu. The red sox win and then theres a curse after that as you may have heard of. He caught it, came back from it pretty rapidly. Fdr got the flu. He got it on a ship its up timber. Again, at the time these are two help the individuals. The press suggests its not that much. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson got it. Theres an argument that part of the problem is that his peacemaking in paris to world war i were related to having gotten the flu. Some people from historians also think he might have gotten a minor stroke and that it was perhaps directly related to the flu. We now know some of the cardiovascular problems related to coronavirus can lead to strikes and boycotts and things like that. Youre probably wondering more about sports. Heres an Oregon University of oregon football star. So many of the football stars of that era had been drafted and went off to fighting the war. There was no professional football at that time. College football is the main thing. Lots of people wanted to see Football Games. Unlike now, it could not go. There is an example. There was a fair number of colleges that played. Games were canceled in cities that have big outbreaks like philadelphia and boston. You had lots of teams that did not have full records. Many conferences also canceled, but they did in fact play. They often played without fans, although in some cases they played with fans Wearing Masks, which is an interesting dimension to the. The stanley cup is another example. Until i did my research, i did not know. The stanley cup ended in a draw. That is because most of the canadians were in the midst of it were to seek to play. So on the stand club stanley cup, its written series not completed because of the flu. This is one of the things we worry about when we think about Major League Soccer and baseball, you know, all the sports out there. What would happen if a number of players get the virus. Can they continue . Baseball famously played some games in masks. Spring training of january of 1919, im a big baseball fan as you can see behind me, they played in masks. There was one totally masked game. These were in california in spring training in 1919. By the time the season started officially, they were not playing masks the. I will give you a few more images and some global takeaways as we get to some q a. I see a bunch of questions coming in. As we think about some of the other comparisons to our current moment, flu causes and cures, you saw how to make your own masks. Again, this is very similar to our current ways in which we have tried to personalize and individualize how this is done. How the press talks about what we can do to take agency in a moment of uncertainty. Heres another example of the sort of ways in which things work then. One thing we have not seen in the u. S. , that you did see in china for instance, was largescale facilities full of people who are sick. New york must rented out the sport center as a medical facility. On the lower left to use that nurse on the porch, that is walter reed medical hospital in d. C. Im pulling us back around to this war marshal line which. Weaponization of the flu. Spanish influenza has engaged the prosecution of the war in europe. Do not spit, do not spread it. That sort of thing. This kind of injunction against that. I didnt mention what are some of those techniques happening at that moment. We can talk more about it later if you want. Tense and patients in emergency hospitals were taken outside. Some of that was because of overflow, but it was also thought as an effective strategy. If you think of how we are encouraged today to go outside socially distance to see our friends, have barbecues, or watch our kids play. This is a piece of the puzzle that they knew about then, going outdoors. You see masked medical officials and people staying outside. Here you see other sets of ways to grapple with it. In the lower right, you see world war i era tenement. One thing that happened across many cities in the u. S. , when schools were closed, teachers were sent out to teach home economics. To teach ventilation strategies and hand hygiene. They knew about the germ theory. They knew the disease could be spread on door handles and all services. They want people to clean their services out. They did not want to have high tech surfaces. We want to open windows and ventilates bases to try to get less sort of high dosage in the way that we would think about it. Viral loads operating in small spaces. There were staffing crisis. This was a big problem for world war i. Here you see epidemic specialists influenza hampering operations of the depot. Another example we cant even call out groups of people, agricultural workers, and folks to talk about what is going on because theres so much disease in the community from oklahoma. So from philadelphia, oklahoma, you saw similar phenomena relating to the government and the role of the flu. You saw these sorts of training. The police in the military providing the optics of mask wearing. A kind of patriotic push forward. You also saw this another walks of life. Civil servants and other workers. You saw something similar to what we see today, mask mandates and other kinds of mandates. On the left you can see a conductor telling someone who is not right amount that they cannot ride on Public Transit. Thats a piece of the story from that era that very much resonates with us today. Lots of what happened that is comparable happened on the west coast. Its very well documented. San francisco in particular is a great case study. They had courts outside. When we look at that, we think social distancing and possible spread. They thought at least we are outside. They did not know about viral transmission the way we knew today. Court cases, open barbershops, it is masks inside for barbershops and cincinnati as you get farther into the fall. People dont want to be outside in the cold. Again, that is part of why we worry so much about wet this second wave will look like. But masks and other kinds of distance and can help and that was something they were pursuing in 1918. Classes were being held outside as well. Classes were held outside in 1919. That is a physics class being held in adjacent to either a football stadium or an Outdoor Sports facility. I cant imagine that we professors really want to do adore classes, but anything is possible to minimize spread. Thats the sort of thing you saw in trying to get back to some level of normalcy in 1918 in 1919. Here, you see troops on a ship watching a staged boxing match. They are also all in masks. Again, this was a really important moment. There was a lot of bayern from the armed forces and other agents of the government. There was of course a lot of bad information. Im trying to give you a quick walk for all of this one of my favorites is this one. The flu travel through the mouthpiece of the telephone, so quick talking so much. Related, that constant and continue smoking ought to stall the flu. Again, this gets in a more serious point. A big takeaway for historians. The Surgeon General argued there are no cause for alarm if precautions are preserved. From americans, but we can tell in their later memoirs and their personal writings, they did not know which advice to follow. You should not talk on the phone. They say that you should smoke constantly. You see the Surgeon General telling you to follow precautions. Which ones . Is it because they were rub on the left . Is it dragging salt water in the middle . Is it getting a vaccine, which did not work . Which one is it. Is it all of the above. Proactive policies were obviously the keys to thinking about that moment. That is when historians say its so similar to today. Not pharmaceutical interventions. Closing schools, churches, theaters. Have commissioners getting out in front of this and making sure the communities practice social distancing. Those sorts of operations. Trying to communicate honestly and rapidly with the risks were. That came too late for a lot of the u. S. But it is sort of never too late as one lesson of the 1918 and 1919 occurrences. I will give you one terrible example. You can watch the first soldiers from seattle bring the disease down to oregon through the camps. On the coast, 120 cases at fort stevens. We got down to other coastal towns. The one and a taker in a town got sick and was unable to take care of the bodies. A spot is melted up, it seemed to hit children disproportionately hard. In particular, the city cried out that they were unable to find or build an f child sized coffins. When historians and Public Health officials look at this moment and medical facilities that were overwhelmed and people in distress, this is what we think of. Civilians are coming to spread the disease in numbers that meant it was impossible to carry on. In buildings, montana, and order of one third to one half of the county came down with a flu in fall 1919 alone. How do you carry on . That is what we see in account after account of this moment. One of my favorite things that they said in that moment that came out of it was its easier to prevent them to cure. So if you follow the non pharmaceutical interventions. If you have closure policies. If you are distanced. If you do hand hygiene. You can even prevent it, but its so much harder to cure once it is in your community. A little bit more on phased reopenings as they reopen, lifting closure orders. The embargoes come off. Lots of cities were eager to do this as we have all this is how we contract fee data to that slow reopening. Following data and disease and not our desire to go out to restaurants and balls bars. Cities like philadelphia come out okay in 1919 after suffering through some terrible stuff and finally closing fully. Here are some more examples of the flu and the phase reopenings. Blue coming off gradual reopenings. Taking place in chicago for instance. Including sports. Here are some other examples since we go through how to avoid it. There is no reason to believe it originated in spain. I want to pick that up because some people think that it is true. Its coming from the primary sources of that era from the u. S. Surgeon general itself. I will conclude with some takeaway remarks that you are probably all thinking about. November is coming fast, what happens if you have an election in a pandemic . Is that even possible . Sure it is. Weve done it before. There were in fact midterm elections in 1918. Woodrow wilson never once mentioned the pandemic. No public addresses or speeches of about the pandemic at all. He made the war the key to wet he hoped the Democratic Party would do in that election cycle. His prosecution of the war and bringing it almost to conclusion at that point. It wound up being a lost referendum. Republicans get a bunch of seats. There is a very low turnout. As i say, theres pictures depicting polling places as the quietest in living memory. Some places did not open up at all. Most did. Very relatively few turnout is one key. And the election didnt map on as neatly to partisan perspective on the virus as we see today. What you see is the saloon versus the church and the ways in which the two parties were arguing which areas should get closed first or reopen first. Some religious sentiment or antisemitism or anticatholic sentiment, you are about to get prohibition coming out of this. Politics of parties in different regions, what got provigil with the virus asked what got privileged with the virus. Handing out bonbons in a polling place in new york. Warren harding ran on an America First platform coming out of the pandemic and out of world war i, pushing a kind of restriction to immigration, return to normalcy, return to normalcy, returned to society. We also saw pushback, protest and reemergence in that area. You may have heard about the antimask league, and organized league in San Francisco in 1919 that pushback against mask requirements that were mandatory. The antimask league was the only real organized one in the u. S. We see 4500 listed. You see the mayor of San Francisco saying no, we are convinced it is working and we are not taking off the mask ordinance. If you look at the dataof death and disease go down after the mask ordinances were put on. But it is unclear whether and how much the masks matter. The key argument for the antimasters much like today was that their liberty was at stake that this was a liberty and abridgment of liberty to be forced to wear anything at any time, and they questioned whether they were really doing the sanitary work that they supposedly did. And there was pushback and there was pushback to the pushback. If you have an ordinance as a requirement there were fines and in some cases there were fines of significant jail time, several weeks, a significant dollar amount. And there were a number of accounts which i can talk about of mask slackers being held on charges of disturbing the peace because they refused to wear masks. There was at least one shooting, there were several times weapons were discharged in attempted apprehension of the people who would not wear masks and insisted on writing Public Transit or going into businesses, going into Court Facilities was another thing people dead. The mask slacker language is something worth noting. The same as the wartime concept of draft slackers. Those who do not do their wartime duty who do not go into the draft or join the military were thought of as slackers, to their patriotic duty. And the press took that same language. And Many Americans talked about it in terms of mask slacking, that your duty was to wear your mask and keep your community safe, not just yourself. This was similarly seen in lots of great cartoons of the era, trying to normalize that behavior. Theres a great one and we can come back to this. Even the horses are wearing them, says the kid as theyre walking with her mask and this is from fort wayne indiana. Trying to teach people and regular and normalize even kissing through masks, other behaviors to best. Or trying to teach your father or grandparents, another similar thing we see a lot in the cartoons of the era. Youre probably familiar with this. The phenomenon of people who will not take precautions. The mask is one example. Again, very similar in that 1918 moment. Bosch, you will not catch me wearing one. And then the urgency to go ahead and wear masks. Another element if you think about going ahead through the christmas season, in december you see all the shoppers out Wearing Masks and again this is from indiana and you also see the germs, the microbes. I threat this Holiday Shopping will be our chance to get them, but these infernal masks spoil at all. You see germ theory. See mask concepts. To some extent martial language being manifested in this moment. Finally, economic and political effects. There is not that much data but as i mentioned before, merchants and the city suggested that their businesses declined 40 to 70 . Theres a big decrease in mind of mine and steel output, 50 or more. We saw significant recession. There was a readjustment after the war, 1919. One of the largest recessions in history where there was rampant inflation, 19191921. The roaring 20s this an allusion and there are episodic downturns. There was some reference to the pandemic and the election of 1920, a return to normalcy, immigration restriction, xenophobia, more isolationist turn in american politics and society. And in 1919, arise of social tumult. People who had bought into the war effort, africanamerican soldiers, white laborers, poles, irish and italians, they wanted what they were promised when they took lower wages and works more hours. You get the biggest steel strikes in u. S. History. In this area you see the Boston Police go on strike, and get fired by calvin coolidge, all of them. Race riots. You see African American strike breakers called in to beat up white strikers in places like syracuse, turning into racial lines. Up through 1921, the tulsa massacre. Historians expect there is a relationship between the social tumult of influenza which killed. 6 of u. S. Population, 675,000 americans, and the wartime experience with things that came after. So we wonder how similar is this moment . How can we get past that . Without succumbing towards. A final bit of data, thinking global and thinking this moment. This was midaugust, 2020 data. If you look at total deaths and total population. A much lower percentage of the population has been killed lately, 05 in the u. S. , thankfully we have not suffered that much. Yet we have suffered terribly. We are moving toward 200,000 deaths in the u. S. If you look to the World Population. You saw a kind of global fatalities in the 2. 7 range, and we have. 01 globally now, and this comfort my colleague thomas ewing. One thing that stands out is this one here. I want us to think about this. Microscope and telescope the u. S. In 1918 and 2020. If you look at influenza deaths in the world and the u. S. In the u. S. Percent of World Population versus covid. That is really striking, and astounding frankly. When you look at the comparison. The u. S. Percentage of World Population is 4. 2 , yet we were out 21. 9 of world deaths and yet we are at 21. 9 of world deaths from covid. It is a staggering, striking change. I have more things and you have heard a lot for me. It is a sweeping set of comparisons to the present. And i think it is important for us to take account of the social history, the human suffering and the political and social Public Health questions that are entailed in that. This falls disproportionately on people of lower socioeconomic status, viral outbreaks, death and disease, even though viruses transcend all borders and peoples, groups, races and every thing else. Main insights. Whether cancellations and postponements of large gatherings, school closures, anticrowded, they worked well. They slow the spread. As we see today. Nations that entered the war attempted to control information. Woodrow wilson did not speak about the war and Public Information saw to minimize and hide infection and risk. In service of the war effort and the war was won, and that was a positive benefit but it came at the cost of more infection and death. It meant that citizens were illinformed, right . The examples i gave about people being fearful dominated their social interactions and lives in ways we are seeing in some ways todays. But also left to destruction government and messaging from federal and other officials. There was more trust in local officials, Public Health officials and mayors in st. Louis who did a good job against that of Public Health officials in philadelphia. Lessons we can learn, honest information. Rapid is important. Layered closures do not work well. Closing the door abruptly does. Tracking did disease. Being ready to close at any moment is most important. The final takeaway that i have that you have all probably experienced and thought yourselves is that in the u. S. , the main actions were local. They were by governors, mayors, Health Officials, and where the federal government. Just like 2020. Local government is where the action has been. Finally, here is a set of recommended resources. Theres lots of great stuff. I have some articles in their. They there are amazing books and articles. The free influence archive from the university of michigan is amazing. Without further ado, lets see if jeff and i can have a good conversation. Great, i can not only talk, but i can see myself. Awesome. That was great and depressing and distressing. So weve got a ton of questions. I know i have a ton of questions myself. I will first ask you sort of big picture, one historian to another, why dont we talk about this . Im about to lecture on world war i. I think maybe half the time the word flu might come out of my mouth. At most, it might be a sentence though. Obviously, this year im going to talk about it a lot more. If more people died from this flu and United States that the United States lost both in world war i and world war ii, why dont we talk about this more . Thats a great question. Historians through the 1960s often talked about this as the forgotten virus. The forgotten moment in u. S. History. First of all, they are wrong. You can look at literature. An article that i put together shows how literature is full. Literature is full of references to influenza. You just need to look for it. People who have trouble walking upstairs. People who have particular memories of being locked inside homes. A lot of references to lung issues or to family members who are departed too soon. They are not necessarily lost generation references to the war. But rather, they are about the flu. We often import into that this perspective that it must be the war. I admit that i succumb to that to as well sometimes. One, its their. It is not totally forgotten. Unlike the war, there are no memorials built. In the 20s, you see a lot of a Memorial Coliseum of some type that has probably origins in world war i for playing sports. We see a lot of that coming out of the flu and the closure policies. Memorializing the war, but actually doing something that was lost because of the pandemic and not the war. Those warm memorials sometimes have a direct reference to the pandemic. You just need to look for it. Why else dont we talk about it . Because some of the things that i said there, youve heard my historian destroying unqualified language. Through those rights and tumults coming out of the war, are they more attributable to the dislocation of the pandemic or to the conflict itself . How do you separated to . I think the answer is you cant. So the easier answer is always the war. It might not be the right one. Its the reason you have to say flew even when you say readjustment demobilization or the question of labor activism coming out of the war along the same lines. Another thing that is interesting, a reason that i wound up writing about this a few times, was my fellow historians of the first half of the 20th century all say what you just said. Why dont i talk more about the flu . One of the things is they did not have the resources. We did not have the resources. Now so much in the last decade or so, you know, all the images that i use. Its so interesting to track in overtime. I will send you my slide and you can do 20 minutes on the flu. Forget it, i just want to show them this video and i will have to teach. That may drill down into that point of mobilization. I will not judge the answer to this particular question, which is whether or not youve been watching the democratic and republican convention. Vice president pence said several times in his speech something that i thought was patently obviously false. It wasnt wet everybody else in the country was worried about except historians. He said several times while speaking to the relief workers and first responders, we will not forget you. I said oh yes we will. There is no historical evidence that we are going to remember these people at all. Im just curious if the fact that we have our interconnected world, if you think theres any reason that things are going to change from how we prioritized war debts over pandemic thats . Thats a really good insight. I wonder. Theres this thing that has happened in a lot of cities where people applaud and that medical workers at 7 pm. Its an international phenomenon. We did not see that related to medical workers in 1918. I wonder if any of those kinds of practices will have a kind of long echo because weve been doing them collectively in a way that you did not in the past . The other piece of it is an incredible suffering in death is almost always localized. Thats why i started with those searing examples that are so said. One thing that is interesting about the 1918 moment and today, its tragic, ever since i started giving talks on this, epidemiologists have been in touch with me. Weve talked a good bit about viral load. The amount of virus that you are exposed to can be a worstcase. Medical folks tend to get worse or are more likely to. That seems very true in 1918. We do not have enough to make that conclusion definitively, but i wonder if memorializing medical deaths on pivoting to wartime, that martial language, rather than the suffering of the individuals who are dying at home. One of the worst cases in 1918 i sometimes refer to were islanders and estimates of alaska were horribly hit. Theres a village of 80 people and 72 were dead. They found so many bodies decomposing when they got there that they were not sure who was 11 was dead. Many of the red cross workers then got terrible viruses coming out of this. They were also sick. Its a terrible story that are only in red cross histories. Its not history of the flu to a certain extent. All of this is probably a long winded way of affirming your point. Thats to say that i cant imagine that we will be memorializing the frontline workers for very long. On the other hand, i think a really interesting narrative about this moment is the most rapid global march to a vaccine in science and development, Research Sites and development. Its the production could very well be the story of this moment. Something we dont anticipate. That you get a billion doses as fast as ever in human history. The heroes may be whoever invented that or the businesses that take care of distribution. I could imagine those people being celebrated like polio. I could imagine. We have a whole bunch of questions. One of the things that has emerged from the questions is something you have been alluding to, the desperate lethality of the 1918 pandemic compared to ours. How should we understand that . As a historian, im confused because i say to myself, okay, what if they had antibiotics and ventilators . How many people would have died . Can i really say covid19 is less lethal than the influenza of 1918 . Or is it simply that we are better at dealing with them . Yeah. I think my honest answer as a historian is i cant say. I dont think our medical establishment can come up with a clear answer to that. Probably not until we see this out farther. There are really good history of medicine accounts that explain the viral changes and mutations of that deadly second wave. The first wave, all the sailors and soldiers are sick, but very few die. The americans get sick, but very few die. When the second wave comes back across the atlantic, boom. It is much worse. At first this year, i thought to myself we are using the same medical treatment strategies. Whats interesting in this comparison is 1918 is like 19 point 2020, both in the medicine and Public Health i just. Closure policies, non pharmaceutical interventions and no good treatment strategies. At first, you will remember they were throwing everything at covid and nothing seem to work. In fact, some things seem to be exacerbating death and disease. My sense of the data for 1918 is the disproportionate deaths of Healthy People versus our ability today to cordon off are most at risk people, is the biggest difference. Should a Large Society and the world today not be able to cordon off its most direct people, you might see much higher fertility rates than we are, since we do not yet much higher fatality rates, since we do not yet have treatment or vaccine. If all your hospitals are full youre going to have more deaths, and they did. Interesting, what are the other questions has to do with politics of this. Two questions. It does not become a partisan issue in 1918 in the same way it does today. Explain. Secondly, i wanted to say more about trying to interpret the 1918 election in this context. The way i tell the story and i think almost all of the Foreign Relations guys tell the story is Woodrow Wilson says vote for me the Congressional Election to ratify my views on foreign policy, and he loses. I am thinking, judging on my own experiences people are not happy now. And when not happy they take it out on incumbents. What was wilson able to do, at least in the senate . One of the things that surprised me the most though it should not as a student of foreign politics and policy is how partisan this Public Health moment has become, in part because the history of Public Health is not been particularly partisan. Some agencies are, we can be about fema or political appointees being not up to the task. That is one thing. That the response would map on to Party Politics at the individual level and my decision to socially distance or deny, that it would have any close correlation to my Party Affiliation or voting patterns . It seems to me it is not necessarily logical. Being diplomatic about it. The 1918 moment is indicative. Publichealth expectations of citizens were lower than. They were not taking the Wilson Administration thinking it would be the leader on this. People worried, they were uncertain about how to respond since i got different information. And they were suffering in places where it was worse before the election. The main piece of the puzzle is what you said, the war. Famously, wilson campaigned in 1916, and world war i was not popular in the u. S. In roughly 11 states the National Guard was called out because was that much draft dodging going on, which is why you get that draft slacker concept which maps onto that mask slacker concept of doing your patriotic good. The war was not over by the election, november 11 is armistice. We finished the election cycle. Absence the pandemic, i wonder. Certainly it depressed turnout, depending on which Political Science outlook you look at it is the depressed turnout between 10 and 40 , very significant. Not that remarkable because it is a midterm election. By 1920 youre back to pretty normal turnout despite the fact that there is still lingering flu and that season. That is usually thought of as the first continual wave of this version of the flu, as opposed to another wave in another itself, the first season if you will. What was the second part . How do i pivot from partisan mapping on . Its not even a counterfactual, it is so ridiculous to postulate. If the American People are not suffering through a flu and they are about to win a war, the war was in its final days or it seemed like it was going closer to the end than the beginning. That sounds like a recipe for voting for the party in power . And of course the party in power gets voted out for all intent and purposes. Is it just the misery of the American People that makes that critical delta . It is interesting. It is close. Is not that many seats the republicans win, but there on their way back to taking over with harding in 1920. For me big part deals with ideas and u. S. Foreign policy. One reason i got interested in this topic was because i was writing on dissent politics in the south. And the interesting overlap between socialists in the south who were rejecting the war effort, and antiwork southern democrats, who are firebreathing segregationist, usually democrats, some republicans, who are also against the war. They think it is against american interests and they dont want to send their offspring, their constituents out. They have a hard time reconciling that with the kind of martial sensibility that is there southern honor culture, that also comes out with the civil war. So it was very odd to me to see one problem was you could not hold as many rallies, late into the fall. The kinds of campaigning at the Grassroots Level that you needed, president s do not campaign much back then, but lowerlevel politicians went out a lot, and you cannot do as much because of the influenza pandemic. It wound up being, easy republicans win, in my opinion when more and be less and more appealing end democrat be less appealing because of disillusionment with the war, and a broader set of beliefs that does not tend to make it into our lectures. That, not only is the war really unpopular, but americans really question the role of the u. S. Is a world leader. From my perspective, that helps explain why the u. S. Or the Senate Rejects the treaty of versailles, doesnt want the u. S. To be in the league of nations, there is reason to think americans like the abstract idea of the league, as written about in victory without power. But as americans hear more about that, and wilson cannot campaign on that, they rejected. For me the flu is a piece of that but the war and american reluctance to take leadership role in the world and be embroiled in foreign conflict is a bigger piece of that story. It is amazing he is not remembered for the flu. As you point out maybe we should not be surprised by that. It is something he does not mention. And something nobody expected him to mention. The fact that we expect fellow response today and we expect an opinion on every locality today no matter what state constitutions say, is that a growth of our, will only tell us of the federal government and president has become more powerful over time . And that federalism has changed in the american perception . Great question. What perplexed me about this moment is this is the most powerful u. S. Federal government has argued really ever been. You can say maybe the union in the civil war. The Wilson Administration has price controls, troops mobilized. The federal structures we think of of the imperial presidency are much more present in the Wilson Administration than Teddy Roosevelt or mckinley, expand in the spanishamerican war, etc. That they dont exercise that power, that wilson does not exercise the power is fascinating. That there was not an empowered Surgeon General and publichealth infrastructure at the federal level is also interesting. Coming out of the pandemic, internationally, canada developed Public Health infrastructure. And publichealth. The u. S. Has not. The u. S. Developed so fast the classic anecdote is your calling the Agricultural Services sector in d. C. From nebraska, nobody picks up the phone because it has been disconnected, that is how fast the u. S. Mobilizes. That small federal government eat those continues in Public Health is asters and wars after and is indicative Public Health disasters and wars after and it is indicative of that moment. Wilson did not issue a public speech about the pandemic. It is killing hundreds of thousands of americans. He is laser focused on world war i. Hes the first president to travel abroad during his term. He goes into paris and millions of people come out. All he cares about is really the war at that point. Everything else falls to the wayside. So i think he deserves a lot of scorn brinkley. If you want to judge harshly, you absolutely can for not handling this better. In fact, here is a really telling detail. When u. S. Troop ships arrive in france in late summer and fall, they are met by ambulances and hearses because of the number of american troops who suffered and died on the course of going across the atlantic. That was never publicly reported in that period. Partly out of censorship and partly out of patriotism. You can understand why that would happen. Thats how tragic it is. The same is true when they are coming back from france. They are coming back after being decommissioned or going on leave. They are being met by ambulances or they are being quarantined outside of the port of philadelphia. You see it come in, someone gets leave, a couple of mps come in for the night and suddenly the virus is everywhere. Again, that is a place where you can really judge harshly in the Wilson Administration. That is all for the war effort. One thing that is surprising, one reason that i emphasize the war and marshall languages so much, it does eventually get imported into the Public Health response. But its surprising that the Wilson Administration doesnt more rapidly pivot to saying its your patriotic duty to socially distance, to close her business, to put your place as much as you can. The amazing thing is that in six to eight weeks, a lot of the virus burned out in the u. S. Either because it just ravaged the population or because they took pretty good proactive preemptive measures. We have not been able to accomplish that in this viral epidemic, thats really disheartening to me. That is why you are depressed about hearing this history. It is way worse in terms of total deaths per capita and total suffering, but we should know better. We have access to this history, that we have not acted on it in a more proactive way just disappoints me as a historian and citizen, regardless of politics. I am completely with you. Its actually made me reconsider how i understand time itself in the sense that you and i can have a conversation about the pandemic of 1918, 1919, lasted about 14 months. Not that long, no big deal, where we are in months six and we are all tired of it. Living through history is much less pleasant sometimes i have to say. So big big trigger big picture question then. It has been 100 years. Is there anything that we have learned that is actually been usually applied in the ways that we are dealing with this today . It seems we are doing the same sorts of things. I dont see necessarily that we are doing the same sorts of things, social distancing, Wearing Masks, because of the experience of the flu. It seems like we are doing those things because that is how we think disease works. Is there anything particular to the 1918 pandemic that left its mark on how we are affecting things today . Yeah, so. One thing that was speculated about in 1918 that i reflect on a lot, and i would encourage everyone who is watching to think about this. What practices that we had before the pandemic will endure after our return . And which ones will go away or be harder to accomplish . Just because a fear or new patterns or because of new behaviors based on what we think is possible. Handshaking are masks. If you look to the recent past, sars and mers, mostly Asian Countries that were hard hit and developed cultural patterns with mask wearing have done better in this current pandemic. Lets say in the u. S. Abroad or western society, what is likely to endure now having come through this . If you look back to 1918 and 1919, one thing i alluded to but did not really mention, partly its because im a sports fan, so i add some good sports and there, but partly because it reflects kind of cultural patterns and behaviors that are international or transnational. The king of spain, how fans of the 13th, one of the things he missed most was soccer. So he commissioned in 1920 a new Football Club that becomes real madrid. You see coming out of the pandemic a lot of people miss collective large gatherings and they want to create space for that. Partly those memorials to world war i that become large coliseums four football teams are a product of that experience of sheltering and worrying about crowds. And then thinking about what are the leisure patterns and behaviors that we want to have, including being outside . A different kind of appreciation in 1921 about being outside from 1919. It also maps on to the war, having to sacrifice for the war effort in those things. Everything in my top is the foundation for every federal governments response around the world. We know that not from a suitable interventions work if you clamp them on fast and really trace and track. This goes way back in pandemic history. The term quarantine literally comes from the 40 days that you were supposed to sit off coast of ports. Its from latin and italian. Venice famously was begun its quarantine policies to keep out the played, for instance. These are longstanding behaviors in combatting germs and Infectious Diseases. So you are right to say whats new and, definitely from 1918, hard to say for sure. In some ways, everything that we have done is part of that matrix. As i said, the reason historians at this moment are so kind of shocked is that it is so eerily similar and the responses in 2020 near 1918 and 1919. Especially in the u. S. That pushback. That lack of full federal leadership for a variety of reasons that weve discussed. The non pharmaceutical interventions. The gradual nature of this. The lobby groups that push for things. One of the things i was studying in my project was religious groups and the ways that they advocated exemptions, saying this was an essential First Amendment civil liberty question. We need to worship. Then the Public Health conundrum of, yes, but we want to make sure you live. And we also want to make sure the people who maybe dont worship where you do or in the way that you do arent exposed to what you then perhaps transmit. That was something that they debated quite a bit back then. One thing that is interesting as a comparison between then and now is that there was more reverence and trust in experts to some extent and hierarchies. What is striking is that there was less pushback in lots of cities and states who had ordinances a different types for closures. At the end of the day though, people tended to behave. They tended to follow. They said these politicians, these doctors, they said we have to do it for the public good and we will do it. What we have seen in the u. S. Is sometimes a much more scattered sense, and in some ways, if you compared the two, a kind of emancipation of individual rights by politicians. Theyre saying its up to you. We preyou to take your individual concerns into your own accounts. Maybe you do wear that mask with a loved one who is immunocompromised, but maybe you dont wear that when you go to a grocery store. In 1918 and 1919, they said this is it and we saw far fewer accounts of people not doing that. Again, as ive showed you, by no means is that universal. Plenty of people have pushed back. That just rijksmuseum thing different. That there would be a referendum saying on fauci, and there is distrust of him, not just because of partisanship questions, but as a kind of expert who might have his own agenda. The 1918 1919 moment was not a moment where our Public Health officials were dismissed for their own agendas. I think this is why the comparison is perhaps doubly painful for we historians. On the one hand, we do like to think that expertise should be respected on some level. The other thing is we always talk about ourselves as looking toward the goddess of history as cleo. I think we should sometimes look towards sandra and say the real lesson for historians is no one is going to listen to you. Why bother . One last question, because i have to be cognizant of the time in our video. You showed a remarkable picture and dallas. Antiseptic being sprayed into the mouths and noses and someone. I have to ask, was that bleach . It was not bleach, sir. No. Those antiseptics were often sailing based or had alcohol in them. I did a bit of Dallas Research to make sure we have our texas in. I can highly recommend some different resources on that. One thing that is interesting about that moment was the army tried really hard to make sure they were combat effective. We know this. You can just guess that that is true. They tried a lot of different treatment strategies including throwing everything at the wall in terms of different vaccines. None of which worked. They produced several million doses of vaccine. They rushed them across the country to try to get them to bases where they thought outbreaks were going to happen. They used this gargling and Saline Solutions and sanitizing procedures, which also seemed to have very little effect, obviously knowing what we now know about viruses. They kind of pioneered medical military Public Health policies that then work the kinds of things that you could see at the cdc much later, using is lessons for what they would tried to do to vaccinate troops before they go to certain places. We think about this in terms of malaria or other diseases when they are deployed in the field, but its also true that the army needs to take account of the fact that or the u. S. Military more broadly, u. S. Troops can be vectors of disease in the u. S. Its a weird sort of way to think about this. When i came to this research, i never thought about that. That the military would be concerned about its own transmission within the country in the way that they do wind up worrying. Thats why we have these incredible records of this. U. S. Military doctors are copious no takers, like other bureaucrats. But also because they care so much about the people who are suffering. And, as i started this top, because so many troops were coming down and dying. Really the healthiest people were having these immune response storms. Their lungs were filling up with fluids. They were turning blue in his fixating fast. It was really terrible. Another piece of that puzzle that is very interesting is what was going on and awesome other places. They try to quarantine them, but they had imperfect quarantines. Thats a lesson that has been learned and theres some recent reports by other folks talking about whether or not quarantines really work. Its that you have to be so certain that you have 100 . Anything short of that does not work out. We can look at that in the records of 1918 to show how u. S. Military quarantines almost never worked. They almost never kept the flu from civilian populations, despite all those quotes i showed you a Public Health official saying we can keep it away from the civilians. Nope, they could not do that. Dallas took proactive action. The cities, the mayors, the Public Health officials who took proactive actions who did better. Thats one of the main lessons from this moment. Im thinking about the fact that the quarantine for the army did not work. It is almost as though 18 to 22yearold dont do what we tell them to do. Right. Just leaving that out there. Yes. Listen, chris, this has been wonderful. This has been amazing and really enlightening. You could not have kicked off our season better. I wish we did not have to talk about this topic, but im glad we had you to listen to. Thank you. I dont know how we get people to applaud do if they cant hear or see, but i will. Well denser. Up next, plan fester discusses her book leprosy, stigma and the fight for justice. It looks at the history of the residential hospitals for americans with leprosy in carville louisiana, which began operation in 1894 and closed in 1999. The Kansas City Public Library hosted the program and provided to video. Interviewing miss fessler is on the director of programming and marketing at the public library. My job tonight is to take care of a quick items beforehand things off to two women who are far smarter and far more entertaining than i am. If at any point tonight you have questions, you can put those in the comments or chat box on our youtube page and we will get to as many of those as we can. If you would like to purchase the book, and i hope that you will, its available through most major retailers. Id like to point people toward bookshop. Org. You can find about just any