Transcripts For CSPAN3 1918 Flu Pandemic 20240711

Test. Test. Test. As you see over there on the left, the salon versus the church, the way the two parties were arguing which areas should get close first or reopened first, saloons, gambling houses versus churches. In some communities that mapped on to ljous sentiment or antisemitism or anticatholicism. Because remember this is an era of rising prohibition coming out of this. So it mapped on to different areas of politics to different regions related to what got privileged to the virus but not reaction to the virus itself. We will talk about that too. And a suf rujette handing out bonbons. And Warren Harding ran on the platform of world war i pushing the return to normalcy and return to society as we know it. As we take a step back, we saw pushback, protest and reemergence in that era. You may have heard about the antimask league. It was an organized league in San Francisco in early 1990s that pushed back against mask requirements that were mandatory. Antimask league is the only really large organized one in the u. S. Thousands in that piece. We see 4,500 listed. You see the mayor of San Francisco say no, were not taking off the mask ordinance. Were convinced its working. If you look at the data, death and disease go down after the mask ordinances were put on. But its unclear whether and how much the masks actually mattered. The key for the antimaskers were, this is a abridgement of civil liberty, forced to wear anything or not, and questioned whether they were essential, that they were really doing the kind of sanitary work they supposedly did. And there was pushback. And pushback to the pushback. If you have an ordinance, there were fines. Some places significant jail time, significant weeks. Significant dollar amounts. And there were a number of counts i can talk more about of mask flakers who were accused of disturbing the peace because they refused to wear masks. There were several times weapons were discharged in attempted apprehensions of those who wouldnt wear masks. And riding public transits, going into businesses or Court Facilities was another thing people did. And the mask slacker language is worth noting because its the same as wartime concept of draft slackers. Those who didnt go to war time duty or didnt go into the draft to the military were thought of as to their patriotic duty. And the press took that same language and Many Americans talked about it in terms of mask slacking. Your duty was to wear that mask to keep your community safe, not just yourself. This was similarly seen in a lot of great cartoons of the era. Trying to normalize that era. This is a great one. Even the horses are wearing them, says that kid, as theyre walking with their masks. This is from ft. Wayne, indiana and trying to teach people and regularize and normalize, even kissing through masks even. Owe behaviors in the masks. Or trying to teach your father or grandparents is another similar thing we used to see a lot in the cartoons of this era. We all are probably fairly familiar with this, phenomenon of people who wont take precautions. Mask is just one example of these. Again, very similar in the 1918 19 moment. Bosh, you wont catch me wearing one and then theres an urgency to wear masks. Another element if you think about going through the christmas season, holiday season, december, you see all of the shoppers wearing masks. Again, this is from indiana. What you also see are these germs, microbes. I thought the Holiday Shopping would be our chance to get them but those internalfernal masks it out. And you see this being manifested in this moment. And economic and political effects. There isnt that much data but as i mentioned before, merchants in other cities suggested their businesses declined 40 to 70 . Big increases in mine output, big increases of steel, 50 or more. And you saw a significant u. S. Recession. Significant one of the largest recessions in history in 20 to 21 with rampant inflation and more than that. So the roaring 20s of the economy is a little bit of an illusion and there was episodic downturns in this period. Historians offer argue theres some relationship between the pandemic and election of 1920 return to normalcy, immigration restriction, wanting fewer people coming to the u. S. , more xenophobia, more an isolationist term in american politics and society, and in 1919, a rise of strikes and social item ult. People who bought into the war era, the pols and nationals and irish, they wanted what they were promised after the war and more hours. You see the biggest strike in history, the Boston Police go on strike and get fired by calvin coolidge, all of them. Riots, street riots, africanamerican strikers called in to beat out white strikers in places like syracuse, turning into racial violence, up through 1921, the tulsa massacre. Historians speculate theres a relationship between the social tumult of influenza that killed 6 of the population, 1675,000 americans, and the war experience that came after. We often warn people and wonder, how similar this this moment, how can we get past this if possible without succumbing to worse . Final bit of data, were thinking global this moment 1919, midaugust 2020 data. Youre looking at the total deaths, total population of whats going on. Much lower percentage of the population has been killed lately,. 05 in the u. S. , thankfully, we havent suffered that much. But yet we suffered terribly. Were moving towards 200,000 u. S. Deaths in the u. S. If you look at the world population, call it the spanish flu with quotes because we dont want to succumb to using that language uncritically, you see the kind of global fatalities in the 2. 7 range. We have. 01 globally now. Roughly speaking again, this comes from my colleague with whom i worked and wrote an article. One thing that stands out is this one here and i want to leave it for a second and think about this as we microscope and telescope the u. S. Cases in 1918 to 2020. If you look at influenza deaths roughly, 1918 19 and u. S. Percent of rural population versus covid and that is striking and founding, frankly, when you look at the comparison, the u. S. Percentage of population is 4. 2 and yet were at 21. 9 of world deaths from covid versus influenza, which is Something Like 1. 4 . Its a staggering, striking change. I have more takeaways. I want to talk more. Youve heard a lot from me. Its a sweeping set of comparison to the presence and i think its important for us to take account of that social history, human suffering and political and social Public Health questions that are entailed in that. Not least the fact this disproportionately tends to fall on people with lower socioeconomic status, viral outbreaks, death and disease. Even those viruses transcend all borders and peoples, groups, races and Everything Else. Main insights, one is that where there were cancellations, postponements of large events and gatherings, school closures, anticrowding measures, et cetera, they worked well and slowed the spread, as weve seen today. Most western nations were involved in the war. They attempted to control information. Woodrow wilson never spoke about the war. We had censorship. His committee on Public Information really sought to minimize and hide infections and risk in the service of the war effort. Of course, the war was won and that was a positive benefit but it came with a cost of more infection and death. This meant, too, citizens were ill informed. It meant those examples i gave about people being fearful dominated their social interactions and lives in ways were seeing in some ways today. It also led to distrust of government in state, federal and other officials. Though there was more trust in other Officials Say Public Health officials like mayors in st. Louis, for example, who did a good job against that of Public Health officials and say mayors in philadelphia. And rapid is honestly important. These layered closures dont seem to work as well. Close the door abruptly does. Whereas reopening more gradually, tracking data and disease, being ready to close at any moment is most important. And the final takeaway that i have that you all have probably experienced and thought yourselves, in the u. S. The main actions were local, mayors and governors and health officials. They werent on the federal government, just like 2020. Local government has been where the action has been. Finally, heres a set of recommended resources, lots of great stuff. I have articles in there. But there are amazing books and arms, free influenza archive from the university of michigan is amazing. Lie brar i why library of congress has a bunch of exhibit. So without further ado, lets see if jeff and i could have a good conversation. Hey, great. I cannot only talk but i can see myself. Great, awesome. That was good and depressing and distressing. So weve got a ton of questions. I know ive got a ton of questions myself but im going to ask you to start off, sir, big picture, one historian to another, why dont we talk about this . Im about to lecture on world war i in my presence at workhorse. I think the word flu may come out of my mouth once, mostly a sentence. This year i will talk about it more. If more people died in this flu in the United States than the United States lost both world war i and world war ii, why arent we talking about this more . Thats a great question. Historians up and through the 1960s often talked about this as the forgotten virus. Crosby has a book about this forgotten moment in u. S. History. First of all, theyre wrong. You can look at literature. An article that i put together shows how literature is full literature in the 20s, 30s, 40s, is full of references to influenza. Just need to look for it. People have trouble walking upstairs. People have particular memories of being locked inside home. A lot of these kinds of references to long issues or family members who are departed too soon. Theyre not necessarily lost generation references to the war but rath irtheyre about the flu. We of on import into the perspective it must be the war. I succumb to that to myself sometimes. Its there, and its not totally forgotten. But unlike the war, there are not memorials built. In 20s, you see sports i bet like dallas, a memorial that probably had origins in world war i for playing football or sports. We see a lot of that coming out of the flu in the closure policies, memorializing the war but actually doing that was lost because of the pandemic, not the war. Those warm memorials sometimes have a direct reference to the pandemic, and we just need to look for it. Why else didnt we talk about it . Some of the things you said there, you heard my historiantohistorian qualified lapg. Are they more attributable to the pandemic or conflict it skfl . How do you aggregate the two . The answer is you cant so the simple, easier answer is its always the war. But it may not be the right one. Its the reason you have to say flu even when you say readjustment, demobilization or the question of labor activism coming out of the war, along the same lines. The other thing thats interesting, the reason i wound up writing about this a few times is my fellow historians of this era, first half of the 20th century, all say what you just heard, why dont i talk more about the flu . One of the things is they didnt have the resources, frankly. We didnt have the resources. Now so much has been scanned in the last decade or so, all of the images i gave, a gave a lot in part because its so amazing to look at this and track it over time. Now you have the resources and ill send you my slides. You can do 20 minutes on the flu. Forget it, i will just send them this video so i dont have to teach that day. There you go. Did let me drive down about moralization, and im not going to judge the answer to this particular question, which is whether or not youve been watching the democratic and then republican convention. But Vice President pence said several times in his speech something that i thought was patently obviously false. And it wasnt what anybody else was worried about except a historian. He said several times speaking to the relief workers, speaking to the First Responders of our day, 2020, we will not forget you. And i said, oh, yeah, we will. Theres no historical evidence that we will remember these people at all. And im just curious if the fact that we have our inter connected world, you think theres any reason to think thats going to change from how weve prioritized war vesdeaths over pandemic deaths . Thats a really good insight, thats sharp. I wonder, theres this thing thats happening in a lot of cities at 7 00 p. M. People applaud and thank medical workers. And that is an international phenomenon, in a way that we didnt see that related to medical workers, certainly in 1918 and 19. I wonder if any of those kinds of practices will have a kind of long echo because weve been doing them collectively in the way you didnt in the past. The other piece of it is, you know, the incredible suffering and death is almost always localized. Thats why i started with those examples, searing examples that are so sad. And because one thing thats interesting about the 1918 moment and today is tragic, ever since i started giving talks on this, epidemiologists have been in touch with me and talked a good bit about viral load and how that the amount of virus youre exposed to generally speaking can mean that you get a worse case. So medical folks tend to get it worse or more likely to. And that seems very true in 1918 data. We dont have enough to make that conclusion definitively. But i wonder if memorializing medical deaths, im pivoting to as wartime, marshal language, rather than the suffering of the individuals there dyeing at home or one of the worst cases in 1918 that i sometimes refer to as indian islanders, eskimos in alaska were horribly hit. There was a village of 80 people and 72 were dead. When the red cross workers got there, they found so many bodies decomposing, they werent sure who was alive or who was dead. And many of the red cross workers then got terrible viruses coming out of this, and they were also sick. But thats a terrible story thats only sort of in red cross histories. Its not even in your typical history of the flu pandemic to some extent. Anyway, so all of this is probably a longwinded way of affirming your point, which is to say i cant imagine we will be memorializing the frontline workers in this for very long. However, i think a very interesting narrative about this moment is the most rapid global march to a vaccine in science and development, Research Science and development and then its the production and, could very well be the story of this moment, something we dont anticipate. You get billions of doses as fast as ever in Human History and the heroes may be whoever invent that and whoever can do production stuff. Maybe its individuals, maybe its individuals or institutions or universities. I can imagine those people being celebrated, like salk. I can imagine the next jonah salk saying to himself, this is my moment. We have a bunch of questions. One of the themes that emerged from the questions is actually something youve been alluding to is that disparate death and mortality in the 1918 compared to ours. As an historian im confused i say, okay, what if they antibiotics and ventilators, how many people would have died . Can i really say covid19 is less lethal than the influenza of 1918, or simply we are betting at dealing with it than them . My honest answer, i cant say and 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, or attempt to talk about those for that deadly second wave, which was so much worse. The first wave all of the british soldiers and sailors are sick but very few day. Americans got sick but very few die. The second wave that comes back across the atlantic, call it an atlantic rebound, boom, much worse. And you think at first this year i thought to myself were using the same medical treatment strategies and whats interesting in this comparison 1918 is like 1920 both in the medicine and Public Health measures, closure policies, nonpharmaceutical interventions and no good treatment strategies. First, remember, they were throwing everything at covid and nothing seemed to work and in fact some things seemed to be skajer baiti sk skajer exacerbating death and disease. My sense from the data of 1918 is the disproportionate death of Healthy People versus our ability today to cordon off our most at had much ririsk people difference. Should a Large Society today not be able cordon off, you may see much higher results. And thats also part of the flattening the curve. The philadelphia story, if all of your hospitals are full, youre going to have more death, and shouldve enough, they did. Interesting. One of the other things that emerged from our discussion has to do not surprisingly with the politics of this. Two questions in effect. As you like. The first is this does not become a partisan issue in 1918 in the same way it does today. Explain. But secondly, i want you to say more about trying to interpret the 1918 election in this context, because obviously, the way i tell the story, the way all of us form relations guy tell sto tells the story of Woodrow Wilson, vote for me on my policies and loses. Judging from our other experience now, people are not happy right now and when people are not happy, they take it out on the incumbent period. Right. Absent the flu, is there a chance wilson is able to do Different Things with at least the numbers in the senate . Oh, thats interesting. First well do the partisan thing. One of the things that surprised me the most in this moment, although it shouldnt as a historian of politics and Foreign Policy is how partisan this Public Health moment has become. In part because of the history of Public Health asterisks have not been particularly participate destine. You can think of some agencies like fema or political aopponentees not up to the task. Thats one thing. But the response would map on to party politics. And my decision to socially distance or deny that would have any close correlation to my Party Affiliation or my voting patterns seems to me to be not necessarily logical. Lets just talk about it that way, being diplomat about it. And the 1918 moment is indicative to something i said, perhaps buried a bit, the Public Health expectations of citizens were much lower than. So they werent thinking the Wilson Administration would be the leader on this. People worried, as my account suggests, uncertain about how to respond because they got so much different information and, of course, they were suffering particularly in the places where it was worst before the election. But the main piece of the puzzle is what you said, the war, right . So famously wilson campaigned in 1960, he kept us out of war. World war i was not popular in the u. S. In roughly 11 states, the National Guard was called out because there was that much draft dodging going on, which is why you get that draft slacker kind of concept, which then maps on to the mask slacker concept doing the patriotic good. The lack of the popularity of the war, the war was not over by the election. November 11th is armistice, 3 and 4th we finished the election cycle. So its that piece. Absence the pandemic i wonder perhaps, certainly, it depresses turnout depending on which Political Science analysis you look at. You see depressed turpout between 10 and 40 in fall 1918. Very significant. But not not that remarkable because its a midterm election. By 1920 youre back to pretty normal turnout, despite the fact theres still lingering flu in that season. Thats not usually thought of thats usually thought of as the first continual wave of this version of the flu as opposed to another wave in and of itself. Its the first season, if you will. So thats interesting. And then what was the second part . How do i pivot from partisan mapping on . So complete its not even counter factual, its so ridiculous to postulate. If the American People are not suffering through a flu, and theyre about to win a war, the war was in its final days, or at least it seemed like it, closer to the end than the beginning, lets put it that way, that sounds like a recipe for voting for the party in power. And, of course, the party in power gets voted off for all intents and purposes. So is it just the misery of the American People that makes that critical delta . Its interesting because its close. Its not that many seats that the republicans win but theyre on their way back to taking over with harding in 1920. For me, the big part im primarily deal with u. S. Ideas and Foreign Policy. One of the reasons i got interested in this topic is i was writing on dissent politics in the south in particular. The interesting overlap between socialists in the south who were rejecting the war effort and antiwar southern democrats, firebreathing, segregationists, usually democrats. There are some republicans in these ranks, who also are against the war and they think its against American Interest and they dont want to send their offspring or constituents out, and they have a hard time reconciling that with the kind of marshal sensibility the sort of southern honor culture that also certainly comes out as we think of like the civil war. So its very it was very odd for me to see one problem was you couldnt hold as many rallies late into the fall. So kinds of campaigning at least at the Grassroots Level that you need, president s didnt campaign much back then, as we know. But lower level politicians went out a lot, and you couldnt do as much of that because of influenza pandemic. So you wound up being, you see republicans win, in my opinion, win more and be more appealing and democrats be less appealing because of kind of of disillusionment with the war and a broader set of believes that also doesnt tend to make it into our lectures, for instance, our survey classes at least. Which not only is the war really unpopular but americans really question the role of the u. S. As a world leader. From my perspective, a study and that helps explain why the Senate Rejects the treaty of versailles, doesnt want the u. S. To be in the league of nations. Theres some reason to think americans like the abstract idea of the league. This is what triggered it and they rejected it. For me the flu is a piece of that, but the war and not taking a leadership role in the world and being a foreign conflict is the bigger piece of that story. Lets talk about wilson for a few minutes more. Sure. It is amazing hes not remembered in any way for the flu, but as you pointed out, maybe we shouldnt be surprised by that because its a, something he doesnt mention. And b, something apparently nobody expected him to mention. So the fact we expect federal response today, and the fact we expect the imperial president to have an opinion on everything that goes on in every locality today, no matter what the state constitutions say, is that just simply a growth to only tell us the federal government and president has become more powerful over time and federalism itself has changed in american conception . Great question. What perplexed me about this moment when i first started researching it, this is the most powerful the u. S. Federal government arguably maybe have ever been. You can say maybe the union in the civil war. Union administration has price controls, troops mobilized. The federal structures that we think of in the imperial presidency are much more present in the Wilson Administration than they were under Teddy Roosevelt or mckinley, as they expand in the spanishamerican, cubanphilippine war, et cetera. That they dont exercise that power, that wilson doesnt exercise that power is fascinating, that there wasnt an empowered Surgeon General and General Health structure at the federal law is interesting and useful. Coming out of the pandemic, heres a good comparison nationally, canada develops a Public Health infrastructure and a head of Public Health. U. S. Does not. Coming out of world war i, u. S. Demobilizes so fast, the classic anecdote as youre calling the Agriculture Services in nebraska and nobody picks up the phone because thats how fast the u. S. Demobilizes. The small federal government aegis continued in Public Health disasters and in wars right after and is indicative of the moment in general. It still shocks me just to say it out loud, Woodrow Wilson did not ever issue a public speech about the pandemic. Its killing hundreds of thousands of americans. Hes just laserfocused on world war i. First president to travel abroad during his term. Goes into paris. Millions of people come out. All he cares about is really the war at that point. And Everything Else falls to the wayside. So i think he deserves a lot of scorn, frankly, if you want to judge harshly, you absolutely can for not handling this better. In fact, heres a really telling detail, when u. S. Troop ships arrive in france in late summer and fall, theyre 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, partly out of patriotism. You can understand why that would happen. But thats how tragic it is. Same is true when theyre coming back from france. Theyre coming back even being decommissioned or getting leave and being met by ambulances or being quarantined like outside of the port of philadelphia. Then you see it come in. Somebody gets leave, right, a couple mps come in for the night, suddenly virus is everywhere. Again, thats a place where you can really judge harshly, the Wilson Administration. And thats all for the war effort. But one thing that is surprising and one reason i emfa iz so the war on marshal language so much, it does eventually get imported into the Public Health response but its surprise the Wilson Administration doesnt rapidly more pivot saying its your patriotic duty to close your business, pay your employees as much as you can. The other thing that amazes me is the contract and its devastating sometimes, in six to eight weeks, a lot of the virus burned out in the u. S. Either because it just ravished the population or because they took pretty good proing active preemptive measures. That we havent been able to accomplish that in this viral pandemic is just as really disheartening to me. Thats why youre depressed about hearing this history. Its way worse in terms of total deaths per capita and per suffering but we should know better. We have access to this history, that we havent acted on it in a more appropriate way disappoints me as a historian, regardless of politics. I absolutely agree. And reconsider how i understand time itself. You and i could have a conversation and say oh, yeah, pandemic 1918, 19, its 14 months. And here we are in month six, all tired of it and done. Living through much history is much less pleasant i have to say sometimes. So bigpicture question then, its been 100 years. Is there anything that we have learned that is actually being usefully applied in the ways that were dealing with this today . It seems were doing the same sorts of things but i dont see necessary wlier doing the same sorts of things, social distancing, es, wearing masks, because of the experience of the flu. It seems like were doing those things because thats how we think disease works. Is there anything florida to 1918 pandemic that left its mark in terms of how were doing things today . One thing that was speculated about in 1918 and i think about a lot and i encourage everybody watching to go the same, what practices we had before the pandemic will endure after or return and which ones will go away or be harder to accomplish . Personally just because of fear or new patterns or because of new behaviors based on what we think is possible, right . So handshaking or masks. You look to the recent past, stars immersed, mostly Asian Countries hard hit and developed culture patterns of mask wearing have done better in this current pandemic. So thats what then the u. S. Or broadern western society is likely to do now . And you look back to 1918, one thing alluded to but didnt mention and im a sports fan so i add good sports in there and thats fun to see, but partly because it reflects partly culture patterns or behaviors that are international or transnational. The king of spain alfonzo xiii, 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 missed collective, large gatherings and they wanted to create space for that. Partly those memorials to world war i that have become large coliseums for football teams, baseball teams, are a product of that experience of sheltering and worrying about crowds, and then thinking what are the leisure pattern behaviors we want to have, including being outside. So i different kind of appreciation in 1921 being outside from 1918 19. And also that is the war, having to sacrifice for the war effort, what other things . In some way as everything in my talk is the foundation for every federal governments response around the world. We know that nonpharmaceutical interventions work. If you clamp them on fast, if you trace and track. This goes way back in pandemic history. The term quarantine literally comes from the 40 days you were supposed to sit off coast of ports, from latin and italian. Venice famously was big on its quarantine policies to keep out the plague, for instance. These are longstanding behaviors in combating germs and infections. Youre right to say whats new from 1918 . Hard to say for sure. But in some ways everything weve done is part of that matrix. And the reason i said historians at this moment are so kind of shocked is that its so eerily similar and the responses in 2020 mirror 1918 19, especially in the u. S. The pushback, luck of leadership for a variety of reasons that we discussed, nonpharmaceutical interventions, gradual nature of this, the lobby groups that pushed for things. One of the things i was studying in my progress was religious groups and the way they advocated for exemption saying this was essential First Amendment civil liberty question, we need to worship. And the Public Health conundrum, yes, but we also want to make sure you live. And we also want to make sure that people who dont maybe worship where you do or in the way that you do arent exposed to what you then perhaps transmit. And that was something that they debated quite a bit back then. One thing thats interesting as a comparison between then and now is that there was more reverence for and trust in experts to some except and hierarchy. And so whats striking is that the city there were pushback in a lot of cities and states that had ordinances of various types or closures but at the end of the day people tended to behave. They tended to follow. They said okay, hes m. D. S, these politicians have said we need to do this for the public good, we will do it. What weve seen in the u. S. Has been sometimes a much more scattered sense and in some ways if you compare the two, a kind of emancipation of individual rights by politicians saying its up to you. We free you to take your individual concerns into your own account. Maybe you do wear that mask with a loved one who is immune compromised but maybe you dont wear it out when you go to a grocery store. Where as 1918 19 you say this is it and see star fewering thes of people not doing that. As i showed you, by no means is that universal. Plenty of people pushed back. But that strikes me as Something Different there would be a referendum on fauci and theres distrust of him in some ways not just because of partisanship questions but because as kind of an expert who might have his own agenda, the 1918 19 moment was not one where Public Health officials were dismissed because of their own agendas. I think this is why the comparison is addressed doubly painful for we historians. Yes. On the one hand we like to think expertise should be respected at some level. The other thing we always talk about ourselves as historians looking towards the goddess of history as cleo. Sometimes i think we should look towards cassandra and say, you know, the real lesson for historians is nobodys going to listen to you. So why bother . One last question, because i have to be cognizant of the time even though were video, you showed a remarkable picture from love field in dallas, antiseptic being sprayed into the mouths and noses and so on. I have to ask, was that bleach . It was not bleach, sir, no. This antiseptic, they were often saline based or had alcohol in them. Yeah, i did a little of the Dallas Research to make sure we got our texas in. And i can highly recommend different resources on that. But one thing thats interesting that moment, the army tried really hard to make sure they were calming effect. You can just guess this 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. But they produced several million doses of vaccine. They rushed them across the country to try to get them to bases where there were outbreaks or they thought outbreaks were going to happen. They used gargling and saline solution and sanitizing procedures, which also seemed to have very little effect, obviously knowing what we now know about viruses. But they had a Pioneer Medical military Public Health policy that then were the kinds of things you could see, like the cdc much later using as lessons for what they would try to do to vaccinate troops before they go to certain places. We think about this in terms of malaria and other diseases where theyre deployed in the field but its also true that the army needs to take account of the fact or the u. S. Military more broadly, u. S. Troops can be vectors of disease in the u. S. Which is a weird way to sort of think about this. When i came to this research, i never thought about that, the military would be concerned about its own transmission in the country in a way they do wiped of worrying. And thats why we have incredible records of this. U. S. Doctors are copious note takers, like other bureaucrats. But also they care very much about the people suffering and as i started this talk, so many troops were coming down and dyeing. The healthiest people were having their lungs fill up with fluid, immune systems were going nuts, turning blue, affixiating fast. It was really terrible. And another piece of that puzzle thats really interesting it was what was going on at love field and other places because they tried to quarantine them but they had imperfect quarantines. So a lesson thats been learned, and theres recent reports by other folks talking about whether or not quarantines really work is that you have to be so certain that youve got 100 . And anything short of that doesnt work out. We can look at that, even 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 of the quotes i showed you of Public Health Officials Saying, we can keep it away from the civilians. Nope, we couldnt do that. But dallas took proactive action. The cities and mayors and Public Health officials took proactive action and kept those strictures on longer did better bottom line. Thats one of my main lessons from this moment. Thinking about the in fact the quarantines for the army didnt work, its almost as though 18 to 22yearolds dont do what we tell them to do. Right. Just leave it out there. Chris, this has been wonderful. This is amazing and enlightening and could not have kicked off our season better. I wish we didnt have to talk about this topic but im glad we had you to listen to. Oh, thank you. I dont know how we get people to applaud you if they cant hear or see, but i will. So well done, sir. Week nights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. In the 2000 president ial election, Texas Governor george w. Bush defeated Vice President al gore in one of the most highly contested races in u. S. History. The outcome was not decided until five weeks after voters went to the polls when the u. S. Supreme court stopped a florida recount. This ultimately awarded the states electoral votes and presidency to governor bush. Tonight, we begin with al gores concession speech from december 13th, 2000. Followed by george w. Bushs victory remarks later the same evening. Watch beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and enjoy American History tv, every weekend on cspan 3. With joe biden as president elect, stay with cspan3 for live coverage of the process and transition of power. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging in to class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, which we will get to later, i should just mention madison called it freedom of the use of the press and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. Its not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast 6789 find it where you listen to podcasts. Up next, author and National Public radio correspondent pam fessler discusses her book car villes cure leprosy, treatment and fight for justice. It looks at the history of americas hospitals for leprosy in louisiana which began operation in 1894 and closed in 1999. The Kansas City Library hosted the video. Joining us is steven wolf from kansas city. Im the director of programming and marketing at the Kansas City Public Library and my job is to take care of a couple housekeeping items before i hand things off to two women who are far smarter and far more entertaining than i am. If at any point you have questions for the author, you can put them in our chat box and we will get to as many as we can. If you would like to purchase the book, and we hope you will, its available through most retailers but we at the Kansas City Library like to point