BYU researchers have linked the poor efforts of the 1918 pandemic intervention to higher mortality.Why it’s important now

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series that reviews the history of Utah and the United States. Historical section of KSL.com..

PROVO — A new dataset published by BYU researchers this week and a matching research treatise to be published soon will give you a better understanding of the impact of public health interventions during the 1918 influenza pandemic. It was an inadequate mitigation effort.

This is a review of what happened more than a century ago, but given the many similarities between the 1918-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the coronavirus, it provides insight into what to do with today’s COVID-19 pandemic. May provide.

BYU researchers collaborated with FamilySearch, a non-profit genealogy organization, to “A 1918 pandemic family.“This website now provides a list of people who died in the 1918 pandemic in nearly 12 states, including Utah. In 1918 alone, 2,408 influenza-related deaths were listed across Beehive. I will.

The database also contains the names and genealogy of people who died in a pandemic over a century ago.

The exact number is unknown, 1918-19 influenza pandemic It is believed to have killed more than 50 million people worldwide.Many epidemiologists and infectious disease experts Looking back on the answer Most of 2020 was true of how to deal with pandemics without viable treatments and vaccines. At best, until we reach herd immunity, which is thought to be months away.

“That’s what we liked about the website we set up. We want you to see it as a real person and see if you have a personal connection, so go directly to each person’s family search profile. “Link.” Said Dr. Joseph Price, a professor of economics at the university and co-author of a research paper on the dataset and this issue.

However, one problem that has plagued the understanding of pandemics is that the data at that time was not easily retained. Today, the Utah Department of Health provides daily information of all kinds showing where new COVID-19 cases are and trends of various viruses. On the other hand, most of the documented data a century ago comes from fragments found in newspapers and correspondents at the time.

Price and BYU’s graduate student in computer science, Stanley Fujimoto, began working on a similar project before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Together with researchers at the University of Michigan, they received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a project that originally started in Ohio.

When the biggest pandemic since the 1918 flu struck the United States last year, BYU researchers’ studies had a different meaning, and they took a different angle using what they knew. Focused.

“I think we were motivated by a better understanding of which interventions would help during a pandemic,” Price said. “The city had to make the same decision in 1918, whether it should close schools, churches, or other public facilities,” there is much debate.

With the help of another student on the project, the group began sifting cause of death data from the 1918 death certificate available in FamilySearch. By classifying the data by detailed location, we were able to cross-reference records, including the exact location and date of death, with the dates of mitigation efforts based on newspaper records at the time.

Price, BYU student Carver Coleman, and researchers at the University of Notldam also used to compare death certificate data from several cities in Ohio and Massachusetts with the mortality rates in the cities surveyed. We used a known timing of public health intervention efforts. According to their early research, the worst wave of the pandemic, the fall of 1918, had a mortality rate that was almost twice that of cities that did not intervene compared to those that did.

The treatise will be published shortly after being delayed due to problems with how to fill out death certificates in Massachusetts, according to Price.

Prior to the study, there were some almost anecdotal examples from 1918 that showed what could happen from a poor pandemic reaction. The most notable flab of the time was the Philadelphia Free Loan Parade. City officials ignored calls from health officials to cancel the parade, and the event was quickly associated with thousands of infectious diseases. Smithsonian magazine About 200,000 participants gathered at the parade. The city overrun the hospital within a few days and reported about 4,500 flu deaths about two weeks after the parade.

There was also a documented story of success. Parades and other rallies were banned in Milwaukee, with less than 500 deaths from pandemics. According to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel..

The BYU dataset goes beyond these known stories. For example, 2,408 Utah influenza deaths come from data collected from all 29 counties in the state. There were at least three influenza deaths in all counties in 1918, with Salt Lake County (where about 160,000 people lived at the time) being the most dead: 928. The disease accounted for nearly 0.6% of the county’s population that year.

Salt Lake County had a mixture of loose and strong restrictions in 1918. In 1918 there was the largest limit in the county. I came to the holiday season After reports of increased influenza cases and deaths following celebrations until the end of World War I. To provide some kind of comparison between the story of Salt Lake County and the story of Milwaukee, census records show that Milwaukee’s population was in the 2.5 range at the time, twice as large as Salt Lake County. However, according to data from BYU and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the death toll from influenza has nearly doubled in Salt Lake County.

The BYU project is not over. Currently, a group of about 12 researchers say their goal is to create the first ever dataset that includes all individuals who have died in pandemics around the world. This includes millions of records. Thanks to the automated system they created, over 100,000 death records can be posted within two hours.

When completed, it may only provide the most comprehensive review of how public health measures affected mortality during the 1918 pandemic. It not only continues the fight against COVID-19, but also better understands the relationship between the two, perhaps for future pandemics, as well as where it can be finalized until the exact link between death and mitigation efforts ends. Helps to.

“I wonder what will happen when the (COVID-19) pandemic is over. Would you like to know what the long-term results were? And that’s where historical data really helps,” Price said. .. “We are not going to know the results of the COVID-19 pandemic for a long time, so we can look into the past and get a better idea of ​​what we can learn. The more we can compare pandemics, the more. I think there is a debate.

“But I think we still have a lot to learn from the 1918 pandemic.”

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