“Influenza 1918” (video) – Notes

  • A quick hit. The Influenza hit quickly. A respiratory disease, filled up the lungs with fluid, killing patients. It began with soldiers, at Fort Riley, Kansas, spreading with soldiers to Europe, then back to U.S. at Camp Devens, MA, then across the U.S. It hit employees and children.
  • Reluctance to act. Authorities didn’t know what to do. Many denied the existence of the epidemic.
  • Focus on the War. US involvement in World War I was at right angles (ran counter to) with the public health crisis. There was tunnel vision on the war, ignoring the public health crisis.
  • Widespread, carried by the healthy. The disease spread from big cities to smallest towns and most remote rural areas. Often the mailman spread the disease. Healthy people spread the respiratory disease.
  • Public health system overwhelmed. Hospitals overflowed with the sick. Relief centers were set up in parks. Most doctors and nurses were in Europe, in the War. Remaining medical staff was simply overwhelmed.
  • Public health finally acts but is failed by insufficient medical science. Officials rushed through laws – such as requiring masks in public – which did not help. The D.C. public health commissioner quarantined the sick. $1 million was quickly put into research for a cure. A vaccine was developed, but for a bacterial cause, not a virus, which the flu was. Science knew very little about viruses. Victor Vaughn, head of US Public Health Service: “Science can’t stop it.”
  • Do something, even if we have no idea what to do. An American characteristic is that we have to do something (such as folk remedies) even if it doesn’t work.
  • Peak deadliness: Autumn 1918. Death toll rose from 12,000 dead in September to 195,000 in October, the deadliest month in U.S. history. Philadelphia in Oct. 1918 saw 11,000 die from the flu, 700 times the normal death rate.
  • The most vulnerable. Public Health Service director Vaughn’s discovery: Those in life’s prime (ages 21-29) were the most vulnerable. In particular, soldiers, where society’s most robust. Some military units suffered 80% fatality rates from the flu.
  • Pres. Wilson’s agonizing decision. Wilson sent soldiers packed into tight ships to Europe to the War, knowing that the tight quarters in the ship would doom many of them death from flu.
  • Destroying the intimacy among people. By going on too long, the flu epidemic drove people apart. Social morality started to break down (many cases of murder, murder/suicide). Victor Vaughn: “If the epidemic continues, civilization could diseappear.”
  • Finally, the epidemic subsides by running out of fuel. The influenza ran through susceptible people. Like a firestorm, it ran out of fuel. Survivors had developed immunity.
  • A devastating final toll. The influenza epidemic killed 550,000 in 10 months in the U.S., more than all the 20th century wars. 40-50 million people died worldwide. Everyone was infected.
  • A collective forgetting. Soon after the epidemic, the vast majority of Americans suppressed the frightful memories of the event. Why? It was so awful, you had to forget in order to move on.