Historian: 1918 influenza pandemic lessons we should apply today

Portland, Oregon (KOIN) —Knowing how our social response to the new coronavirus pandemic resembles another pandemic human race faced 100 years ago, the flu outbreak of 1918-1919. You may be surprised.

“ We are not treating, so we are not getting a vaccine, despite all medical advances, because of the lack of treatment, ” said the director of the Oregon State University Center for Humanities. I’m stuck. ” Christopher McKnight Nichols Associate Professor.

As with today, many large cities around the world are helping to mitigate the 1918 flu epidemic, including social distances, quarantine measures, theaters, schools, restaurant closures and limited numbers of people. “Pharmaceutical Intervention” established by public transport.

For example, in Portland, the city requires four feet of distance between the public, forced by police and firefighters, Sunday, November 3, 1918 Oregon.. The city council once sought to mandate a flu mask, but the urgent clause did not pass. The Oregon version of the morning of January 16, 1919,..

Unlike today, these non-pharmaceutical interventions were only massively enacted in the fall of 1918, in the midst of the second and deadliest wave of the virus. The virus has become three waves. Year 1919 and spring 1919. Eventually, an estimated 500 million people will be infected worldwide 20 to 60 million Man.

In contrast, at the time of writing, the new coronavirus infected approximately 3.9 million people worldwide and killed 265,862 people, May 9 World Health Organization Report..

The biggest take-away from 1918 to 1919: Large cities that were closed at one time, remained closed for a longer time, and were restarted not at once but in a gradual or hierarchical approach, avoiding infection and death. Tended to improve.

Nichols said the data are pretty definitive. “It was in the middle of a war and the data was collected like crazy. I know this well. From the 1920s to the present day, doctors, PHDs, and people of all kinds have been able to Granularity analysis is underway. ”

Research paper Comparing different U.S. cities that underwent different levels of non-pharmaceutical interventions in 1918: “The early, sustained, and stratified application of non-pharmaceutical interventions and the influenza pandemics of 1918-1919. A strong link between mitigation of the impact of America. “

The scientific knowledge of microorganisms was ample in 1918, people knew, for example, to clean surfaces with soap and water, and the disease could be spread by sneezing and splashing in the air, Nichols said. It was But they also have many ideas, such as the idea that the flu can be transmitted over the phone, and so-called “treatments”, such as the use of Vick’s Vaporub, hard alcohol, or gargle saline to act as a remedy. It also contained incorrect information.

The 1918 flu case report was based on doctors’ observations, not tests. In fact, they didn’t even know they were viruses because they weren’t discovered until a powerful microscope was made in the 1930s. Web MD..

As with today, many government agencies have even proposed or even forced people to wear cloth masks in public places. And, as it is today, there were protests against government orders to the general public. In San Francisco this was in the form of the so-called “anti-mask league”. Nichols said it was an organization of about 4,000 to 5,000 people who protested the city’s compulsory mask order.

Second wave?

Nichols revealed that he was not an epidemiologist or medical doctor, but the potential of the new coronavirus to re-emerge as a second wave is his “greatest concern as a historian.”

Scientists are also afraid that the second wave may lead to unknown devastation If a state or country chooses to restart too soon.

Back in 1918, “the majority of the dead occurred in the second wave, which came in the fall of 1918 and is getting colder,” Nichols said.

Nichols’ point: If a city or state could hopefully open up, track it and look for tests.

“The second is that things are evolving. The lessons from history will soon end. It helps prevent the spread, at least until there is a better cure.”

Contact Trace: Sometimes

Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced her Criteria for counties to apply for resumption this monthalike Washington Governor Jay Insley.. Both include a test plan and something called “contact tracking”.

by Disease Control Center, Tracking contacts involved with public health staff dealing with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients, and helping them remember everyone in close contact. Healthcare professionals then provide those individuals with education and guidelines to isolate them from others and mitigate the spread of the infection.

According to Nichols, civil servants established contact tracking in urban areas in 1918. In Portland, public school teachers outside the workplace visited apartments and homes for known flu patients to educate them on so-called “ventilation and hygiene.” Often, they were communicating from the street through open windows. Next, try to figure out who the patient was in contact with.

The contact tracking process wasn’t as rigorous as it is today, but it is still “well-known in medical history and public health. You need to look up the contact of the sick person to understand how to “To limit the set of network connections,” says Nichols.

Election year during a pandemic

You may be surprised to find that 1918 was actually the year of national elections. But unlike the upcoming 2020 presidential election, it was a mid-term election at parliamentary and state levels.

As a result of the November elections hit in the midst of the second wave of the 1918 flu, voting reduced voter turnout, increasing the likelihood of transmission of the disease, followed by death. The Red Cross nurse had to do some of the voting.

The proposal to vote by mail at the national level is a proposal defended by Nichols, and if such measures could be achieved in 1918, “guarantee the safety and use of others and an alternative to voting.”

He said it’s in sharp contrast to where the idea is sparking today Fierce Partisan Controversy in Washington..

Oregon has been voting by election since then Voting bill passed in 1998.. Oregon US Senator Ron Weiden Introducing the bill Returning to March, allow all states the option of mail voting.

Alien phobia and scape-gotting

1918-19 The influenza pandemic is colloquially known as the “Spanish flu”, but most public health professionals and historians say that the most virulent form of the virus is “almost certainly” You may be surprised to agree with Born in an ambiguous county in Kansas.. Nichols said it was then taken to a major military barracks, from where it traveled around the world for a World War I troop journey.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, typhoons and virus politics have caused some misnomers, in part. Nichols said Spain was a war-neutral country and “we thought Britain and the United States were sympathetic to the Germans and the Austrian-Hungarians.”

The Spanish press also strongly recorded the fall of Spanish Alfonso XIII in May 1918 due to the disease. In the United States and Britain, anti-spy laws have banned the media from publishing anything that could undermine the outcome of the war.

Nichols said it was a fascinating moment in history that would reveal what is happening today.

“The virus as Trump’s” invisible enemy “is hard to imagine and fight. But turning it into a “Chinese virus” can racially differentiate and politicize, arming the terms and concepts of the flu or the virus itself. “

President Donald Trump used the term “Chinese virus” Explain COVID-19 and deny the risk of Asian American hatred crimes.

Nichols points out that some of the most’harsh ‘and widespread immigration laws in American history passed immediately after the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in 1919, 1921, and 1924. Did.

Lessons for the future

With many similarities from 1918 to the present day, one of the notable features of our time in the government’s response to COVID-19 is the existence of coastal states agreements.

On the west coast, Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon, and California Coordinate decisions to resume each state with each other.. It followed from similar agreements in the East Coast states, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Nichols said such an agreement could not have been considered in 1918-19, as people did not demand public health solutions as well.

“If these regional blocks are effective as conduits to public health policy, what do they say about the role of the federal government in the future? In these types of situations, non-stop or coalition is better than the United States. Is it? ”