The Spanish Flu (a misnomer that stuck) first appeared here in Kansas. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 presents a veritable library of lessons for us to consider while dealing with our current pandemic. Initially the influenza was taken seriously. Schools were closed and public grounds were converted to makeshift hospitals. Quackery abounded as a wide range of bogus treatments and cures were tried. The final days of the Great War overshadowed the pandemic and tremendous patriotic gatherings served to spread the disease like wildfire. The doughboys in France were laid low by the tens of thousands and President Wilson contemplated slowing or eliminating the shipping of more troops to the western front until the pandemic resolved. Church services were curtailed, ships were placed in quarantine, theaters were closed, houses of the infected were quarantined, with prominent warning signs placed on such places. Whole communities were quarantined (like Gallup New Mexico today). Hotels were put to the public use as quarantine facilities.
As the influenza slowed with the coming of warmer weather, there was a great crush to get back to business as normal. Theater owners pressed to reopen. The tourist industry pressed for the end to travel restrictions. When the influenza resurged in the cooler months it was far more devastating, added to by the millions of soldiers who returned home by ship and rail, both prime habitats for spreading the disease. As the resurgence the deaths soared, the tried-and-true epidemic- slowing measures of the previous year were renewed and added to.
The Spanish Flu was a puzzle to modern medicine. Our forefathers assumed it was spread as a respiratory ailment but it actually was spread through the mouth. Coughs of the infected released tiny droplets. Even more deadly were liquids (such as sweat, blood, saliva, and tears) shed by the infected. An infected food preparer was a genuine danger to others. The doctors constantly struggled to determine which deaths were influenza and which were pneumonia, The link between the two was not universally recognized.
Our ancestors had the same tricky decisions to make about when to quarantine and when to lift restrictions. They made decisions in 1918 when the death toll was in the tens of thousands that resulted in the deaths of millions in the 1919 and 1920 resurgences. It is little wonder that the current crop of medical practitioners are sounding a clarion call about the dangers of a retreat of social distancing. Below I have included a pair of articles from the Whitehorse Daily Star written during the influenza pandemic. Even in the calmer reaches of Yukon Territory, there was heated debate of when to end the quarantine. As you peruse the articles, you'll note that the local Native American populations were hit exceptionally hard, a situation repeating itself among our Navajo friends and families. Entire Indian communities came down with the disease. The medical community was torn over the issue. While one doctor claims that there are no serious cases of the disease in one part of the paper, another article on the same page announced the death of a young Native American lad, killed by the disease. A year after the 1918 article the paper regularly notes the passing of more Canadian citizens due tot he pandemic. There is a truism related to vampire movies which has applicability here... "If you don't drive the stake deep enough the vampire always comes back for a sequel." It is a bit of magical thinking that somehow the opening of the beaches, restaurants, parks, and retail stores here in Florida will not result in our vampire rising from the grave to plague us even more.