Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic

In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.

Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so, though we shall have to wait to see.

“In 1968,” says Nathaniel L. Moir in National Interest, “the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the U.S. than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.”

I was 5 years old and have no memory of this at all. My mother vaguely remembers being careful and washing surfaces, and encouraging her mom and dad to be careful. Otherwise, it’s mostly forgotten today. Why is that?

Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked six months later.

Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.

As Bojan Pancevski in the Wall Street Journal points out, “In 1968-70, news outlets devoted cursory attention to the virus while training their lenses on other events such as the moon landing and the Vietnam War, and the cultural upheaval of the civil-rights movements, student protests and the sexual revolution.”

The only actions governments took was to collect data, watch and wait, encourage testing and vaccines, and so on. The medical community took the primary responsibility for disease mitigation, as one might expect. It was widely assumed that diseases require medical not political responses.

It’s not as if we had governments unwilling to intervene in other matters. We had the Vietnam War, social welfare, public housing, urban renewal, and the rise of Medicare and Medicaid. We had a president swearing to cure all poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Government was as intrusive as it had ever been in history. But for some reason, there was no thought given to shutdowns.

Which raises the question: why was this different? We will be trying to figure this one out for decades.

Was the difference that we have mass media invading our lives with endless notifications blowing up in our pockets? Was there some change in philosophy such that we now think politics is responsible for all existing aspects of life? Was there a political element here in that the media blew this wildly out of proportion as revenge against Trump and his deplorables? Or did our excessive adoration of predictive modelling get out of control to the point that we let a physicist with ridiculous models frighten the world’s governments into violating the human rights of billions of people?

Maybe all of these were factors. Or maybe there is something darker and nefarious at work, as the conspiracy theorists would have it.

By way of personal recollection, my own mother and father were part of a generation that believed they had developed sophisticated views of viruses. They understood that less vulnerable people getting them not only strengthened immune systems but contributed to disease mitigation by reaching “herd immunity.” They had a whole protocol to make a child feel better about being sick. I got a “sick toy,” unlimited ice cream, Vicks rub on my chest, a humidifier in my room, and so on.

They would constantly congratulate me on building immunity. They did their very best to be happy about my viruses, while doing their best to get me through them.

If we used government lockdowns then like we use them now, Woodstock (which changed music forever and still resonates today) would never have occurred. How much prosperity, culture, tech, etc. are losing in this calamity?

What happened between then and now? Was there some kind of lost knowledge, as happened with scurvy, when we once had sophistication and then the knowledge was lost and had to be re-found? For COVID-19, we reverted to medieval-style understandings and policies, even in the 21st century. It’s all very strange.

The contrast between 1968 and 2020 couldn’t be more striking. They were smart. We are idiots. Or at least our governments are.

You are right, but it took me a second... at first I thought it was a swipe at gun ownership which is more typically associated with murder by people in our society.

Actually, in 2017, statistics show that 486 people died after accidentally being shot with a gun which is #59 out of a list of 61 leading causes of death by CBS, yet which lists it on the first page: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/death-index-top-50-ways-americans-die/2/

My wife sets up displays at museums and special events and gives talks about military history and veterans. She likes to use military abbreviations like OD for olive drab which was army green during World War II, or HBTs for herringbone twill which refers to the working cotton uniforms worn by servicemen and women in early WWII. I have told her on multiple occasions that a large percentage of her audience doesn't know what she is talking about and tones her out when she does this.

That is understandably, but many today under 25 do not know who fought in WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu

[The last sentences are the key. It was spread over 3+ years, from 1968-70.]

History
The recorded instance of the outbreak appeared on 13 July 1968 in Hong Kong. (There is a possibility that this outbreak actually began in mainland China before spreading to Hong Kong, but this is unconfirmed.[5]) By the end of July 1968, extensive outbreaks were reported in Vietnam and Singapore. Despite the lethality of the 1957 Asian Flu in China, little improvement had been made regarding the handling of such epidemics. The Times newspaper was the first source to sound alarm regarding this new possible pandemic.

By September 1968, the flu had reached India, the Philippines, northern Australia, and Europe. That same month, the virus entered California, carried by returning troops from the Vietnam War, but did not become widespread in the United States until December 1968. It reached Japan, Africa, and South America by 1969.[6]

In Berlin, the excessive number of deaths led to corpses being stored in subway tunnels, and in West Germany, garbage collectors had to bury the dead due to insufficient undertakers. In total, East and West Germany registered 60,000 estimated deaths. In some areas of France, half the workforce was bedridden, and manufacturing suffered large disruptions due to absenteeism. The British postal and train services were also severely disrupted.[7]

The outbreak in Hong Kong, where population density was greater than 6,000 people per square kilometre, reached maximum intensity in two weeks; it lasted six months in total from July to December 1968. Worldwide deaths from this virus peaked in December 1968 and January 1969. By that time, public health warnings[8] and virus descriptions[9] were widely issued in the scientific and medical journals.

In comparison to other pandemics of the 20th century, the Hong Kong flu yielded a low death rate.[6]

The H3N2 virus returned during the following 1969/1970 flu season, resulting in a second, deadlier wave of deaths.[10] It remains in circulation today as a strain of the seasonal flu.[10]

Clinical data
Flu symptoms typically lasted four to five days but some persisted for up to two weeks.[6]

Virology
The Hong Kong flu was the first known outbreak of the H3N2 strain, though there is serologic evidence of H3N1 infections in the late 19th century. The virus was isolated in Queen Mary Hospital.

Both the H2N2 and H3N2 pandemic flu strains contained genes from avian influenza viruses. The new subtypes arose in pigs coinfected with avian and human viruses and were soon transferred to humans. Swine were considered the original “intermediate host” for influenza because they supported reassortment of divergent subtypes. However, other hosts appear capable of similar coinfection (for example, many poultry species), and direct transmission of avian viruses to humans is possible. H1N1, associated with the 1918 flu pandemic, may have been transmitted directly from birds to humans.[11]

The Hong Kong flu strain shared internal genes and the neuraminidase with the 1957 Asian Flu (H2N2). Accumulated antibodies to the neuraminidase or internal proteins may have resulted in many fewer casualties than most pandemics. However, cross-immunity within and between subtypes of influenza is poorly understood.

Mortality
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that in total, the virus killed one million people worldwide,[12] from its beginning in July 1968 until the outbreak faded during the winter of 1969-70.[13] The CDC estimated fewer than 100,000 people died in the U.S; most excess deaths were in those 65 and older.[12] However, fewer people died during this pandemic than in previous pandemics for several reasons:[12]

Some immunity against the N2 flu virus may have been retained in populations struck by the Asian Flu strains which had been circulating since 1957;
The pandemic did not gain momentum until near the winter school holidays, thus limiting the infection spreading;
Improved medical care gave vital support to the very ill;
The availability of antibiotics that were more effective against secondary bacterial infections.

For this pandemic, there were two geographically distinct mortality patterns. In North America (the United States and Canada), the first pandemic season (1968/69) was more severe than the second (1969/70). In the “smoldering” pattern seen in Europe and Asia (England, France, Japan, and Australia), the second pandemic season was two to five times more severe than the first.[14]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.