The chief message from 1918, uttered through anguish and broken-heartedness, teaches a simple yet perilous if forgotten lesson: Tell the truth.
Do that — and you just might live.
In the spring of 1918, a strange illness began claiming the lives of healthy people in their prime. The world held just 1.7 billion people back then. No less than 675 thousand Americans and 50 million people worldwide perished, as a virus prowled its way through one-third of the entire human population.
Outbreaks often catch humanity unaware, bringing societies to their knees. They require us to respond with a multi-pronged offense and defense that must happen at breakneck speed.
Not preparing is gambling with your continued existence. If you get lucky and make it through, you will probably lose many more people than if you had planned. Perhaps that made mass death so shocking; history had told us to expect an outbreak with war. We had prepared for that.
That was the case in 1918. It was not their lack of preparation that damned their response so much as it was the complete absence of truth, by any definition of the word. The utterly broken relationship between the public and its leadership fractured entirely under the strain of war and outbreak.
The press and health officials addressed the issue with “either reassurance or silence.” President Woodrow Wilson never issued a statement on influenza throughout the pandemic.
When word of it reached Americans, long after their President knew of it, they called it the “Spanish flu.” Contrary to what the name suggests — and it created confusion back then as well — the virus originated somewhere closer to home. Spain had the distinction of remaining neutral in the First World War.
Unlike the US and other countries, the Spanish press remained free and so honestly reported about a bewildering epidemic that some mistook for bubonic plague. The victims often developed blue skin before they died.
Spain’s horrifying coverage, juxtaposed against silence about it elsewhere, led Americans to believe that Spain had been ground zero. Still, the Spanish press called it the “French flu,” suspecting it had come from France.
The misleading monikers show precisely why we avoid locations when naming unknown diseases today. We later learned the actual origin was likely the United States. It is just as well; we probably would not have admitted it back then.
The index patient, sometimes called patient zero in popular culture and cinema, Private Albert Gitchell of the US Army, fell ill on the morning of March 4, 1918. By day’s end, over one hundred soldiers came down with the same sickness.
American President, Woodrow Wilson, had a tight lid on the media, so the public would not be privy to this information. He believed in the necessity of keeping morale high for the war effort. This belief led him to exert authoritarian control over the press. The outbreak inconvenienced his focus on the war, and the federal response reflected that.
No national or centralized response ever arrived to help people struggling all around the US — unless intentionally misinforming the public counts as help.
The state-level government received no guidance. The media echoed his response because they faced legal reprisal for printing the truth.
Wilson’s go-to strategy, silence or minimizing the crisis, killed tens, more likely hundreds, of thousands. Our nation’s future itself seemed in jeopardy because, although societies overcome catastrophes frequently, the absence of trust is terminal.
When the virus rolled through the country, it struck unprepared cities that expected little more than the seasonal flu. Entire families died in their homes, only to be found later, but that was not the only misfortune suffered.
Eleanora Berns was thirteen years old when she caught the pandemic flu. She left school and slipped into a weeklong coma with high fevers. Her family packed her with ice and opened her bedroom window to let in the freezing December air.
The nurse caring for her needed a fur coat just to be in the same bedroom with Eleanora. Somehow, Eleanora recovered, but not overnight.
She missed school for the rest of the year. Her hair fell out, leaving bald patches, and she remained weak for months. For the rest of her life, the nightmare pandemic — that everyone said was no cause for alarm — haunted her.
She lived until just before her 102nd birthday, seeing decades that 50 million others would not. Eleanora is one story among a tragic sea of millions.
Cities argued over what to do and when to do it. The Surgeon General tried to secure senior medical students for the sick. An unclear pathway to approval meant no medical students would fill the dwindling healthcare workers’ shoes.
Medical doctors and nurses were dying and falling ill in high numbers. One Minnesota hospital reported a full half of its nursing staff had influenza over three weeks. Health officials disagreed over the merits of isolation for controlling the outbreak.
The Secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Health argued for leaving schools open so children could access a school nurse. A city health commissioner objected, highlighting that thirty nurses could not care for 50,000 children stricken with flu.
The Secretary opposed. “If you begin to close, where are you going to stop? When are you going to re-open, and what do you accomplish by opening?”
Still, those in favor of remaining open were overruled on the city level. Schools closed, and streetcars reduced their passengers by 40% and required a specific number of open windows — an unpopular mandate given that this all transpired in the winter of 1918.
After ten days of closures, the cases declined from 218 the day of the shutdown to 24 new cases, the day officials forced the city to re-open. The public protested new regulations and changes imposed, many of which burdened daily life.
Bars and nightclubs created secret back entries for patrons to avoid detection. Open defiance happened commonly, requiring enforcement.
Police dispersed crowds and sporting events that ignored that ban on large gatherings, further upsetting citizens. Our complaints are remarkably consistent across time.
Some venues stayed open for the public that wanted things to remain open. Quickly, they realized that people stay home until a location controlled the threat. It meant their economy also depended on successful mitigation.
A historical review found precisely what this suggests. Cities that controlled the spread had a better economy long term and lost far fewer people. How an area responded affected them for decades.
Most American cities learned about the critical need to protect health care workers and the problem of mask shortages. Healthcare workers’ deaths mean more deaths down the road from all causes because no one can care for the sick. In the 2015 Ebola outbreak, healthcare workers died at a rate 11 to 32 times higher than that of the public.
A 2007 study, the Lessons Learned from the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota (Ott et al., 2007), found: “prior planning, clear order, as well as consistent and transparent advice and information to the public may have made a significant difference in the number of cases and deaths due to influenza.”
“I personally prefer to take my chances.” That was the response of one state health official on masks. Here one official had sown doubt about the need for masks.
At the same time, the Surgeon General was trying to secure medical students as replacements for the thinning health care worker population, which would dwindle faster thanks to the doubt cast by public debate.
We can reasonably pardon leaders of the past, long before the time of evidence-based practice and policy. All relevant commenters should share their reasoning, and all must reach a consensus, even if everyone does not feel satisfied.
It is their job to do this, not an optional nicety. That will take maturity, something far more scarce than imagined, visible even in recent modern political discourse. In a crisis, the public deserves leaders who take action that bolsters them like a rock foundation, not a detritus-filled pit of quicksand.
In 1918, people swayed toward masks on their own, but it easily might have gone the other way. Hence, people sought masks despite the lack of mandate and contrarian opinion, and not because of it.
Political consensus could have eased so much stress, confusion, and fear that gripped people. In fairness, politicians of the past did not know that uncertainty and mixed messages hurt the public worse than the actual bad news. Even so, other failings garner less excuse.
The federal government left the national supply chain unmanaged and did not consider how many masks the public might wear. Doctors and nurses died as a result.
The US devolved into a place of sheer terror-filled people who had no idea what to believe and a President who failed to acknowledge the problem with clear, concise, honest commentary.
Locations like military training camps supplied the ideal breeding ground where the virus could easily travel from person to person. The military canceled the draft in September 1918 because sick soldiers filled the camps, and they could not take or place anyone.
Still, denial reigned supreme. The President failed to see the country’s need for a visible, strong leader. High-ranking officials, like the Surgeon General and Public Health Director of Chicago, continued to reassure Americans that all was well. People dug mass graves while officials assured them all was well.
Chicago saw mortality reach 40% at one hospital. Simultaneously, the city’s public health commissioner dismissed concerns, saying, “Worry kills more people than the epidemic.”
Paternalistic decision-makers saw the public as unable to handle the truth — the view justified their dishonesty and misrepresentation. Leaders repeated that fear and worry were worse than the sickness itself.
In their minds, it was a leader’s job to protect people from the truth they could not handle.
Well-intentioned though it may be, the intent had little bearing on the effect. The campaign to assuage worry included action on the part of the media, which played an essential role in the state-sponsored misinformation.
Reports framed the sickness as something like that of seasonal influenza by another name. Press said it was mostly those who neglected their sleep that died. They dismissed all fear.
The government under President Wilson ensured people heard the message that people had “no occasion for panic” because this had a lower fatality rate. The Sedition Act gave him control over the messages the media published.
Those in power said this new disease was not deadly; the fundamental problem is that it was. Diseases with a low fatality rate can kill millions and millions of people.
There are two ways to assess deadliness: fatality rate or death toll. Ebola can break out and infect a small group, infecting 50 people and killing 29 of those. Seasonal flu may have a death rate of 0.1% and kill tens or hundreds of thousands each year in the US.
While Ebola kills nowhere near as many people as viruses like measles or influenza, many fear Ebola far more. Each virus qualifies as deadly differently. Measles and influenza are also far more likely to kill the average person.
It is also the case that a low-fatality rate is a feature of a pandemic, not a comfort. High-fatality rate diseases may be less likely to cause a global epidemic because of visible, severe symptoms that help with containment.
People may be less likely to travel if they feel unwell, or they may simply die, rendering them immobile. These elements can all make it harder for an infectious disease to launch into pandemic status.
Suffice to say that officials took an inadvisable stance by reassuring the public, no matter how one examines it. Even if they had been correct, it gambles credibility because no one knows what will happen for sure.
One old newspaper reads, “A new name for an old familiar disease,” repeating the idea that no cause for alarm existed.
Paid advertisements like those from Vicks VapoRub read, “Simply the Old-Fashioned grip masquerading under A New Name,” with grip referring to the nickname “La Grippe,” for the disease.
The Sedition Act gave Wilson broad powers to make the press say whatever he deemed best. People were every bit as observant as people today, and it terrified them. People saw with their eyes the surrounding devastation.
Only recently have we gained insight into precisely how people died in the 1918 pandemic. No one understood why this one was so much worse than others or why it killed seemingly healthy, young adults.
When the virus infected a person’s lungs, the body rallied its defenses. Something about this influenza strain provoked a response that was far more aggressive than the seasonal flu. It might have been that younger people had more robust immune systems, so the self-destruction was worse than for the elderly.
The “friendly fire” from the body’s attack on the virus destroyed the delicate tissue that formed tiny sacs in the lungs called alveoli. Oxygen enters the bloodstream through skin so thin that it reminds one of a butterfly’s wing.
Victims of the 1918 pandemic lost their ability to breathe; they drowned with no way to stop it. The surface meant for releasing carbon dioxide and taking in oxygen became a battleground, often leaving it unrecognizable. Cases of the pandemic flu were sometimes mistaken for bubonic plague because of the deep blue color they took on as they struggled to get oxygen into the blood through their remaining healthy lung tissue.
People lined the hallways of overflowing hospitals because there were too many in need of care. Some would die and slump over where they sat. A bloody froth drained from the nose and mouth, pooling on the floor. The scene was visible to onlookers awaiting the same fate.
If the others did not drown in their blood—bacteria could take root in the injured lung tissue and grow uncontrollably. Tuberculosis may have driven up death rates too.
The outcome was a body utterly in peril with no way to stop it. Medical doctors traveled east in search of instruction on how to treat this new illness. They hoped those who had battled it before would have insight.
Instead, they received simple advice.“When you get back home, hunt up your wood-workers and cabinet-makers and set them to making coffins. Then take your street laborers and set them to digging graves. If you do this, you will not have your dead accumulating faster than you can dispose of them.”
President Wilson abdicated his duties to the American people and intentionally blinded the public by controlling the press in a time of both pandemic and war.He failed to lead, strategize, plan, or be honest with the public who had a right to know the truth. While US doctors who had been to war said, the pandemic “beats any sights they had in France after a battle,” this silence persisted.
The US government’s official line may well have gaslit some portion of the 675,000 Americans into their graves, persisted: “Don’t catch the Spanish Hysteria.”Present-day public health experts faced similar accusations of drumming up coronavirus fear in the media, but that wasn’t what happened.Government officials downplayed the crisis they knew to be critical without question, breaking every list on the “do not do” column from the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Handbook.
Then, having led some to misunderstand the nature of the crisis, the public heard that the cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease — speaking about distancing, shutdowns, and masks — an argument seen in 1918. It’s the exact same argument.
Nolonger “Spanish Hysteria,” now we call it “panic porn’ and the “Chinese Virus.” Starting July 21, 2020, it’s now the “China Virus” according to the White House Press Briefing. Just as the 1918 public’s complaints seem frozen in time, I’m not sure politicians have changed much either.
So far, we’ve repeated every mistake made in 1918, even when it makes little sense. American decision-makers and media outlets compared the coronavirus to the flu — I’m assuming seasonal, though they never say — as they did in 1918 as a part of the state-sponsored propaganda.
They made this comparison, despite circulating cold viruses that share the family Coronaviridae and the subfamily Coronavirinae, with the new coronavirus. The comparison itself doesn’t suggest a person has an over familiarity with phylogenetic distance, but maybe that explains it.
Either comparison would have been inadvisable.
Eventually, America escaped the darkness. Citizens who dared to publish the truth about the pandemic ended up in jail, but the threat failed to deter everyone from speaking.
Curious scientists from a place called, “The Hopkins,” defied the President’s code of silence around the pandemic. The school had abandoned the medical practices of old, in favor of evidence-based treatments.
Johns Hopkins University accepted both female and minority students into its schools of nursing and medicine and refused to hire clergymen as professors as was the practice.
Mark Twain warned this new breed of scientists that none could “have full confidence in a college that didn’t know how to spell ‘John.’” It would appear the beloved author was wrong because it was precisely these unlikely researchers who stepped into the American leadership void.
Perhaps they felt some boldness since President Wilson finished his Ph.D. there — Wilson hated there if you’re curious. In a letter to his fiancée, the future president wrote, “I need not bore you about all this; I am sufficiently bored for both of us.”
He had strong feelings about his professors, calling one an “ignorant specialist” who spent too much time “burrowing into his own research, not enough in preparing pithy lectures.”
“Specializing mania” was how he described scholars there. One cannot help but wonder if he had spent a bit less time bemoaning his lack of interest in the material if we might have had a very different pandemic.
The medical doctors and research scientists led with honesty, evidence, and spoke the truth, even when those in power did not want people to hear it. The Dean of the School of Public Health, William Henry Welch, was a military doctor who recognized it was “some new kind of infection or plague.”
The pandemic taught costly lessons that we paid for dearly with human life. We owe it to those who suffered needlessly tragic ends to learn something from their deaths, knowing that there would come a day when a new virus appeared.
That day has come. So many lessons from 1918 appear forgotten, as we repeat every last one. It comes as no surprise then that America has begun to look bleak once more, shattered beneath ill-conceived pandemic response and economic decline.
It may come as a surprise that I’m not at all worried the world will soon end. In fact, I have a great deal of hope. The scientists from “The Hopkins” devoted to finding and speaking the truth still exist.
Ralph and I are fine, and have not gotten the “flue” [sic] yet altho [sic] it is pretty bad down here at present. It seems to be among the older folks and children. The graded schools and High School is closed here but only a few students of K.U. have it, they thought it was not necessary to close college until they see that it must be done.
