In some cases, more concerned about the spread of panic than the flu itself, public health authorities downplayed the risks. “There is no cause for alarm if precautions are observed,” proclaimed U.S. Surgeon General Rupert Blue. Not wanting to run afoul of censorship laws that called for up to 20 years in prison for printing anything the government deemed detrimental to the war effort, newspapers under-reported the rapid spread of the pandemic. (Source Christopher Klein, National Archives, Why October 1918 Was Americas Deadliest Month Ever May, 15, 2020)
Political leaders preferred to focus on the end of the First World War and the troops returning home rather than incite fears about a flu that was killing many more thousands in the United States than the war had. As a result, the death toll was much higher than it could have been. Similarly, at this writing, January 2022, the U.S. death toll from Covid-19 is approaching 865,000. In contrast, the total U.S. death toll from the Great War was 116,000. This includes combat and all other related deaths. (Source Wikipedia) The Spanish Flu as it was called was responsible for 675,000 deaths in the U.S. Similar to 1918, the death toll from Covid-19 could be much lower if government had acted sooner. In 2020, the main reason for a lack of action was an extreme aversion to undermining the American economy in an election year.
There are differences in how the government responded to the 1918 pandemic compared with the 2020 government response. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson rarely, if ever mentioned the pandemic at all instead focusing on the War in Europe. States received no assistance from Washington, not even from the Food and Drug Administration. In the current pandemic, the White House initially downplayed the outbreak. Then, when it rapidly became worse, the government’s response was to allow each individual state respond in whatever way they saw fit. The scattershot approach of leaving the response up to each state made the situation on the ground much worse than it needed to be.
During the 1918 influenza pandemic, Philadelphia allowed a massive parade to proceed and its death toll surpassed 10,000, while St. Louis banned mass gatherings and kept its death toll below 700. There were no recommendations at the national level partly because the CDC did not come into existence until 1946. And as mentioned, President Woodrow Wilson never made a public statement about the virus. Some things to consider here: The population in 1918 was about 103,000,000, people did not travel nearly as much and international travel was a tiny fraction of what it is today. The traveling that was taking place involved soldiers returning home from Europe. They would arrive home by ship into a large port city like New York and once there take trains all across the country to their hometowns. This would seem to at least partly explain the rapid spread of the virus. With regard to Covid-19; it did elicit a government response but it was too late and full of conflicting recommendations.
Eventually, in 2020, the government did respond by forming a “task force” with daily briefings from disease experts but it quickly became politicized. It was an election year and as the pandemic worsened, the president himself interjected himself into the equation with moronic suggestions he had received from quacks and business leaders who were more concerned with the economy tanking than dealing with the pandemic. The most egregious suggestion was the president telling Americans to try drinking bleach to kill the virus. Similar to 1918, the media was complicit. Only this time, instead of underreporting or not reporting pandemic news, the media reported every scrap of news they could find whether it was factual or hearsay.
In 1918, newspapers were the only source of information. There was no radio or television. Big-city newspapers, the dominant news sources at the time, sugarcoated the truth. Out of a fear of violating espionage and sedition acts and appearing unpatriotic, they practiced an alarming level of self-censorship. Any article or headline suggesting more than casual concern about the disease would be open to attack for undermining morale on the home front during the Great War. As a result, an alarming amount of disinformation in the form of hearsay and rumors made the situation worse. Here we can make a direct comparison to Fox News and the QAnon conspiracy pushers of today. As this was occurring on a national level, local small town newspapers were arguably slightly better in their coverage.
In the December 20th, 1918 edition of The Lockport Union Sun & Journal an article with the headline “Spanish Influenza More Deadly than War” The first paragraph began with the statement that more people died in a little over a month than the country’s entire 18 month participation in WWI.
Similar to what is going on now with Covid-19, a decline during warmer months was followed by a warning. “Our greatest danger now is the great American tendency to forget easily and believe the peril is over.” Also mentioned was the fact that influenza is a crowd disease and avoiding large gatherings was advised along with covering your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing. There was no mention of mask wearing, although in some parts of the country it was a common practice.
The October 22nd, 1918 edition of The Lockport Union Sun & Journal contained an article with the heading, “Two More Die from the Flu” This brought the city total to fourteen at the time. Total cases in Lockport at the time were approximately 98. The same article contained a handful of recent local deaths that were blamed on the flu pandemic.
October 1918 was the most deadly month in the U.S. for the Spanish Flu with an estimated 195,000 deaths. Life expectancy fell on average from 51 years to 39 years. However, similar to Covid-19 today, the pandemic was not as deadly in Niagara County as in other areas of the country. There were no doubt some deaths caused by the flu that were not reported but overall, the area was not as badly affected as other parts of the country. Still, everyday life and activities were sharply affected much like today.
In October, 1943, in a “looking back 25 years” section to October 1918, The Holley Standard mentioned, “There were no services in any of the local churches and Holley High School and many of the rural schools were closed on account of the epidemic of influenza, and that clerks in the stores were wearing face masks.”
Approximately one year later the pandemic appears to have subsided but reminders of what transpired a year earlier were stark and warnings to not let one’s guard down appeared in The Sunday, October 22nd, 1919 edition of The Buffalo Courier. The health commissioner at the time reminds readers that while Buffalo is currently free of influenza, other eastern states still have hundreds of cases and to not forget that one year earlier 2600 people in Buffalo died from the flu. Tips for avoiding the flu included; “Don’t eat without washing your hands, clean your teeth, sleep in the open air or in a well ventilated room, get sufficient rest and sleep, play in the open air or at least take a walk in the open air, eat nutritious food but do not overeat, cover your mouth when coughing or sneezing, refrain from and avoid promiscuous spitting.” Similar to today, handshaking was also discouraged.
Newspapers of the day sometimes reported snippets of news from other New York counties. The October 19th edition of The Ithaca Dailey News reported that saloons, soda fountains and pool halls were under a ban in Lockport. Also it was mentioned that Niagara Falls had 900 cases of influenza. For perspective, the population of Niagara Falls in 1918 was about 50,000. It would seem percentage wise, and proportionately, that in its worst month of October 1918, the pandemic’s statistical data was similar to today’s Covid-9 numbers from Niagara Falls.
By December 2018 some newspapers were reporting the epidemic was waning. The December 18th edition of The Ithaca Dailey News reported the influenza epidemic was gradually subsiding in Lockport and a marked decrease in cases was also observed in Niagara Falls.
In conclusion, certain aspects are different when one looks at what happened in 1918 and compares it to the current Covid-19 outbreak. For one, global population numbers are much higher now which means the Spanish Flu was far more deadly than Covid-19. It infected 500 million people equal to about one third of the world’s population at the time and was responsible for between 20-50 million deaths although estimates range from 17 million to 100 million. So far, the world-wide death toll for Covid-19 stands at just under 3,000,000. The number of confirmed cases is just over 130 million.
The lack of variants of the virus which may or may not prolong the current pandemic is another difference. Scientific expertise and methods that did not exist in 1918 that could identify variants might also explain this discrepancy as well far less global travel taking place at the time. Another difference is that in 1918 vaccine development was nonexistent. This allowed the virus to run its course until a certain amount of herd immunity took hold. Finally, the Spanish Flu was much more deadly to young adults rather than older adults and those with compromised immune systems like the present pandemic. There are other differences as well as similarities but are beyond the scope of this article. What is certain is that in the future, the world will experience more of these types of global pandemics but we will hopefully have a much better scientific understanding of how to alleviate the worst outcomes.
Submitted by
Francis Gallagher
Wilson, NY History 