Misleading claims: Woodstock was in the midst of a pandemic

Fix 2: The Reuters Fact Check team first evaluated this claim as True and later partially modified it to True. After carefully listening to reader feedback and reviewing the timeline of the Hong Kong flu epidemic that began in 1968, we have amended this verdict to be misleading.

(Note-This fact check is not intended to compare Hong Kong’s flu response to the current COVID-19 outbreak response. Key statement shared in a social media post: Woodstock is in the middle of a pandemic It has not been attempted to verify or disprove the entire content of the article under that heading published on the American Institute of Economic Research website. here )

This is an updated fact check, including a reply from one of the Woodstock Festival organizers that replaces the previous version.

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Social media users are sharing images online claiming that the popular music festival Woodstock in August 1969 was in the midst of a pandemic. This claim is misleading.

You can see an example here And here ..

These claims refer to an article on the American Economic Research Institute website called “Woodstock during the Pandemic” ( here ).

The claim states: Nothing changes economically, there is no closure, no social distance, no mask. At that time, no one was considered selfish. ”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed on its website that the numbers were first discovered in the United States in September 1968.here)

The pandemic lasted until 1970 ( here And here ).

It’s true that the Woodstock Festival fit in between these dates. It was held in a dairy farm in northern New York in August 1969. But a closer look at the illness timeline reveals why it’s misleading to suggest that Woodstock happened “in the midst of a pandemic.” The peaks of most US states were December 1968 and January 1969 (December 28, 1968, New York). View article here .. As can be seen in Figure 1, the first pandemic season ended in the United States by early March 1969 and did not recur until November of that year, months after Woodstock. here .. This figure shows the pattern of Hong Kong flu in 6 countries. Of these, only Australia had an epidemic in August 1969.

In other words, Woodstock occurred between the first and second waves of H3N2 Hong Kong flu in the United States in 1968, but at the peak of the infection and the first season of the flu ended in the United States. It wasn’t in the months that followed.

Woodstock co-producer Joel Rosenman told Reuters by email.

“In the Woodstock era, Woodstock was not joining the party, ignoring the pandemic’s containment measures. In the months following the December-January peak of the pandemic, the flu almost disappeared. By the mid-’69s, viral interest had spread, and concerns had spread: media coverage had fallen to virtually zero.As far as the country was concerned, the pandemic was in the rearview mirror. Producers John Roberts, Artcorn Feld, Mike Lang, and I created Woodstock during this period, not the previous winter pandemic month, and didn’t really think much about “pandemics.” From Woodstock to the next flu season a few months later, we all had the dreaded Deja Flu. ”

According to an article in the New York Times on August 17, 1969, another woodstock producer, Michael Lang, said, “not because of the epidemic of the disease” but because of the “potential threat of a viral cold or pneumonia epidemic.” , 12 doctors came to this festival. ” Large gathering. “( here He didn’t mention the flu in Hong Kong.

Rosenman told Reuters that given the size of the crowd, doctors were there to deal with everyday medical problems. “The reality was that these additional doctors were needed to address the unexpected increase in medical problems with the unexpected occurrence of 500,000 children.”

Woodstock has become one of the most iconic symbols of counterculture in the 1960s and performed with performances by Joan Baez, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin, Santana, The Who and Jimi Hendrix. Organizers expected 30,000, but hundreds of thousands attended. ( here )

Influenza deaths in Hong Kong were comparable to the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957, which killed 1.1 million people worldwide (here). As of May 12, 2020, at least 286,669 people were killed worldwide during the current COVID-19 outbreak ( coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html ). The worst pandemic in modern history, the Spanish flu of 1918, is estimated to have killed at least 50 million people ( here ).

Verdict

Misleading. The Woodstock Music Festival took place months after the first flu season in Hong Kong ended in the United States. There should have been a second wave in the US next winter, but it’s misleading to say that it happened “in the middle of a pandemic.”

This article was written by the Reuters Fact Check Team. Read more about the fact-finding of social media postshere..