Rebecca Grant: Coronavirus lessons from 1918 Spanish flu – here's what worked to save lives

Fox News ^ | Mar 22, 2020 | Rebecca Grant

[DannyTN]

... Our nation has been through this before. In 1918, Americans fought a similar battle against the Spanish flu epidemic, which claimed 675,000 Americans and between 50 and 100 million lives around the world. ... Spanish flu, like coronavirus, wasn’t really a single national crisis. It was a set of hundreds of crises that played out differently in major cities, towns, states and Army and Navy World War I training camps. ... Worst off was Pittsburgh, where wartime steel and munitions production made officials reluctant to shut down and isolate. Pittsburgh didn’t confront the epidemic in time, found Brian O’Neill of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. As a result, Pittsburgh recorded one of America’s highest mortality rates at 1,243 deaths per 100,000 in 1918, according to a 2007 study from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. ...

[DannyTN]

There's a lot of people who seem to think that government response is making the economic crisis worst than it would be other wise.

This article makes a case that communities that responded quickly and strongly to the Spanish Flu fared much better than communities that tried to ignore it.

[Captain Walker]

I didn't see anything in the article about accusations of xenophobia over the term, "Spanish Flu".

Was nobody "enlightened" back then?

[SoCal Pubbie]

The country also went into a huge deflationary depression right afterward. Harding avoided the stimulus route and actually cut federal spending. The Roaring Twenties ensued.

[ZinGirl]

Maybe I am incorrect, but full on “shelter in place” was very localized. While it is “localized” now, it is still full STATES which are shutting down to some extent. Also, while not technically shutdown, most all of America is quarantining themselves...no school, no playgrounds, no get togethers, etc.

I certainly don’t have the answers but I’m not going to write/publish an article saying “we have done this before”. Too soon, man...too soon.

[shanover]

WTF would we call Spanish Flu if the same asinine society we have now?

[DannyTN]

If everyone gets on the same page and we all social distance at once, the spread stops.

If we do it piecemeal, then it keeps circulating.

[ZinGirl]

Ok.....What happens when we *stop* social distancing all at once, though?

[DannyTN]

We probably won’t stop all at once, but we will gradually go back to normal.

For a while, we’ll still be eyeing each other warily at the grocery store.

One thing that might help is if masks become available. If everyone wears a mask, it becomes a lot safer for everyone to be out and about.

Those of us who can work from home, will probably stay working from home for a couple of extra weeks.

Testing will be more available.

Known cases and their households will remain quarantined for a little bit longer.

The economy will resume. The market will start going up again. Might take it a while to retrace it’s steps, but then again a lot of money has been pumped into the system. It has to flow somewhere.

Once the economy is on stable footing, the monetary policies can be gradually reversed.

The fiscal policies are presumably being financed at super low rates. The faster we go back, the less has to be spent through fiscal policy.

By then the food stores should all be fully restocked.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

There’s no comparison.

[canuck_conservative]

The origin of “Spanish Flu” is apparently -

in the years right after WWI (when it started), the Allies wouldn’t publish reports about the disease for fear of further eroding war-weary morale ... Spain wasn’t part of the War, so it had full reporting of the disease and its effects, which made it SEEM like Spain was the hardest-hit country - thus the name

Then, as now - media games cost lives

[Jack023]

Absolutely correct. We need a 100% lockdown. For NYC, they should: (a) scrape the homeless bums out of the gutter and quarantine them and (b) put troops in the streets. No one leaves their home.

Desperate times call for drastic measures.

[ZinGirl]

But...If it doesn’t stop all at once, then it was all pointless. Otherwise it starts all over. And no way to make everyone make a mask 100% of the time. Time will tell.

[vpintheak]

We’d give it some lame name like COVID-18.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

You may be right; but, at what cost? How many times can you put troops in the streets, and still maintain innate human rights? I’m taking this thing very seriously (wrong demographic); but, I’m also aware of the tradeoffs.

An economic collapse actually scares me more than the pandemic (with regards to the effects on our civilization). For instance, if the power goes out and stays out because there’s no way to fix it, that would be apocalyptic.

[IAGeezer912]

My grandfather was in WW1 when his mother died in the 1918 flu epidemic. His troop train went through his home town on the way to Europe but they were not allowed to tell anyone. That was his last opportunity to wave to his mother. He lived with remorse the rest of his life.

[daniel1212]

Astonishingly, the economic impact of the Spanish flu closures was sharp but didn’t last. From looking at the Dow you’d never know anyone was sick. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from (don’t laugh) 74 in January 1918 to stay above 80 all during 1918 with only routine volatility.

Because the lock-down was not as extensive in scope and degree and time as exhorted with this far less deadly infection, which unlike 1918, does not see much of a percentage of deaths among children and the young.

If as the NYT states is correct, that "The number of undetected cases is 11 times more than has been officially reported, researchers at Columbia University estimate," then the death rate is even lower.

Meanwhile what is being ignored from the past is,

Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff.[1] There is scientific support for this. Research shows that ou

During the great pandemic, two of the worst places to be were military barracks and troop-ships. Overcrowding and bad ventilation put soldiers and sailors at high risk of catching influenza and the other infections that often followed it.[2,3] As with the current Covid-19 outbreak, most of the victims of so-called `Spanish flu’ did not die from influenza: they died of pneumonia and other complications. tdoor air is a natural disinfectant.

When the influenza pandemic reached the East coast of the United States in 1918, the city of Boston was particularly badly hit. So the State Guard set up an emergency hospital. They took in the worst cases among sailors on ships in Boston harbour. The hospital’s medical officer had noticed the most seriously ill sailors had been in badly-ventilated spaces. So he gave them as much fresh air as possible by putting them in tents. And in good weather they were taken out of their tents and put in the sun.

Doctors who had first-hand experience of open-air therapy at the hospital in Boston were convinced the regimen was effective. It was adopted elsewhere. If one report is correct, it reduced deaths among hospital patients from 40 per cent to about 13 per cent.[4] According to the Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard: `The efficacy of open air treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it to discover its value.’ https://medium.com/@ra.hobday/coronavirus-and-the-sun-a-lesson-from-the-1918-influenza-pandemic-509151dc8065