Read two articles about the changes brought by the Great Influenza of 1918 and the probable changes brought by COVID-19:

1. Joe Pinsker’s “How the Pandemic Has Changed Us Already

2.  David Tarrant’s “

Lessons from the past: How the deadly second wave of the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ caught Dallas and the U.S. by surprise

.

Contribute a thorough response , supported with embedded quotations, to the discussion board that considers:

What similarities exist between the influenza epidemic of 100 years ago and the COVID-19 pandemic of today?

 

How

the Pandemic Has Changed Us Already

The Great Depression permanently altered many people’s behavior

.

Could

COVID

–

1

9 do the same?

JOE PINSKER

AUGUST 15

,

2

020

f

rom

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/08/pandemic

–

habits

–

behaviors

–

great

–

depression

–

wash

–

hands/615283/

During the past five months, many prognosticators have prognosticated about how the

coronavirus pandemic will transform

 

politics

, 

work

, 

travel

, 

education

, and other

domains. Less sweepingly, but jus

t as powerfully, it will also transform the people

who are living through it, rearranging the furniture of their inner life. When this is all

over

—

and perhaps even long after that

—

how will we be different?

For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands. When I

interviewed roughly 20 people from across the country about their pandemic

–

era

habits, most of them planned to keep aspects of their new hygiene regimen long into

the future

, even after the threat of the coronavirus passes. “I will more regularly wash

my hands throughout my life and I will never be anywhere without hand sanitizer and

a mask,” Leah Burbach, a 27

–

year

–

old

high

–

school teacher in Omaha, Nebraska, told

me.

Those I interviewed said they imagine they’ll continue to be conscientious about how

viruses

spread and what they can do to protect themselves and others. “I think I’ll

wear a mask if I’ve got a cold, now that I understand it’s most effective in keeping me

from spreading germs,” said Josh Jackson, a 48

-year-

old in Decatur, Georgia, and the

editor

in chief of the culture magazine

 

Paste

.

Others foresaw themselves avoiding many activities that are currently risky, possibly

for the rest of their life. “I’ve heard wonderful things about Alaskan cruises and had

always hoped to go on one someday. No more,” said Jaclyn Reiswig, a 39

-year-old

hom

emaker in Aurora, Colorado. “Packing so many strangers together just gives me

the germ creeps now.” Also on the list of destinations that made people wary were

gyms, indoor concerts, public pools, and restaurant buffets.

Though people may feel as if their

habits have been changed forever, these careful

behaviors may not persist once they’re less urgently necessary. Katy Milkman, a

behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told me that

habits are more likely to stick if they are accompanied by “repeated rewards.” If the threat of the virus is neutralized, she said, “the reward for scrubbing your hands won’t endure, and I think the average person will go back to a simpler routine.”

The pandemic “looms large right now because it’s our everything,” Milkman said. “Certainly there will be some stickiness [in people’s behaviors], and no one’s ever going to forget going through this, but I think people are overestimating the degree to which their future actions will be shaped by the current circumstances.”

But even if our behaviors do fade, perhaps our mental landscapes will remain changed. Some people I reached out to said that the pandemic had infiltrated their dreams, possibly lastingly. “These days I have ordinary dream problems, only they happen in an environment where doing ordinary things will kill me,” said Jane Brooks, who’s 54 and works at a software company in Seattle. “I touch a dream hand railing and know the clock is now ticking on my death.” She fears that these scenarios will populate her dreams even after the pandemic is over: Growing up during the Cold War in a small town in Alabama, she was haunted by nightmares that blended apocalypses both nuclear and Christian. The dreams started when she was about 5 and didn’t recede until well into adulthood.

The pandemic may also alter the way we think about social interactions. Alyssa, a 17-year-old high-school senior in northern Indiana, said that it “was a rather extreme wake-up call to the fact … that the things you hold on to dearly can be taken away nearly instantly.” She expects that this lesson will give her heightened FOMO—fear of missing out—and make her more likely to say yes to social invitations well into the future. (I’ve identified her by only her first name to protect her privacy.)

The flip side of this renewed appetite for socializing is that more than one person told me that they expect to be less trusting of strangers. “I’m generally more fearful of people,” Burbach said. “Men on the street have demanded that I take my mask off. People get too close to me.”

The seriousness with which someone treated the pandemic might become one more trait that Americans use to size up new acquaintances. Marge Smith, a 53-year-old clinical psychologist in New Orleans, said that while she’s usually “willing to befriend people who are diametrically opposed in terms of their beliefs or attitudes,” she won’t want to spend time with people who were more preoccupied with, say, being able to dine out or go on vacation than with doing all they could to keep the virus from spreading. “It’s likely to be a question going forward when I meet people,” she told me.

A clear historical precedent for a traumatic, drawn-out collective experience that scars the American populace is the Great Depression. The roughly decade-long crisis led many people, later in life, to fear discarding anything that might turn out to be useful. “That’s definitely part of [what came out] of adapting to the hardships of the ’30s and then moving into a period that’s really quite well-to-do,” said Glen H. Elder, Jr., a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of the book Children of the Great Depression, first published in 1974.

One reason he thinks the Depression affected so many people permanently was simply its duration. For an extended period, it “called upon people to do a lot of things that they would not [otherwise] have been called upon to do.” For instance, in some of the hundreds of families he studied, children were expected to cook family dinners, deliver packages, or mow the grass; this shaped how many went on to think about the appropriate amount of responsibilities to assign to their own children.

But Elder said that the long-term effects of living through a global crisis are “idiosyncratic” and vary from person to person: “Everyone has their own experiences.”

Duration is perhaps the key to understanding why another global tragedy, the 1918–19 influenza pandemic, didn’t seem to shape people’s habits much in the long term. “The whole thing was very swift,” John Barry, the author of 

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

, told

me.

During the pandemic’s second and third waves, when daily life was affected most, Americans typically endured no more than a few months of disruption. And unlike today, “the stress was not continuous,” Barry noted—in many places there were “several months of relative normalcy in between” the two waves. (The first wave was 

far milder

, and didn’t interrupt daily rhythms.)

Children at a nursery school in England gargle as a precaution against the flu in 1938. (Reg Speller / Fox Photos / Getty)

In 2020, five months—and counting—of deviating from our previously normal routines have given us an opportunity to reevaluate old habits. “Normally we go about our daily lives and … tend not to change our” behaviors, Milkman said. “We need some sort of triggering event that leads us to step back and think bigger-picture.”

This trigger can come in the form of a “temporal landmark”—Milkman has 

studied

 the importance of recurring ones, such as new years, new weeks, and birthdays, in prompting behavior adjustments—or a change, big or small, that interrupts well-trodden patterns. “We’ve got both things going on with the pandemic,” she said. “There’s a mental time boundary—everyone’s like, ‘Whoa, in March of 2020, I opened a new chapter’—and we have this constraint [of social distancing] that forces us to explore new things. So it’s a double whammy.”

In this way, the pandemic has led to welcome discoveries for some. “After being locked indoors for months I realized my skin and hair look great without any products, expensive creams, serums, conditioners, or treatments,” said Lizzette Arroyo, a 34-year-old in Ontario, California, who teaches community-college economics classes. She anticipates that, after the pandemic, she’ll greatly reduce her previously $100-a-month skin-care budget, and buy less new clothing and wear less makeup as well.

Naomi Thyden, a 31-year-old doctoral student in Minnesota, said that she’s been happily wearing a bra less often during the pandemic, including out of the house. “The only reason a lot of people wear bras is because our breasts, as they exist naturally, are deemed inappropriate by society,” she told me. “For some people bras provide needed support, but for a lot of us they serve no other purpose and are uncomfortable.”

And Caitlin Kunkel, a 36-year-old writer and humorist living in Brooklyn, has stopped carrying a big bag when she leaves the house, because she’s no longer out and about for extended periods. She expects she’ll be less likely to bring it with her even after the pandemic. “I’ve gotten used to not having shooting pain up my left shoulder,” she said. “That big shoulder bag full of 12 hours’ [worth] of stuff is a relic of 2019 and before.”

The constraints of the present moment have even helped some break established, unhealthy habits. Smith, the New Orleanian, has been smoking for most of the past 40 years, but she quit six weeks ago. “The pandemic was a time when I really couldn’t go anywhere or do much of anything and I felt this was a good time to start, since any crabbiness wouldn’t impact anyone else,” she told me. Likewise, Zach Millard, a 28-year-old in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, used to have about 15 to 20 drinks a week, in part because it soothed his social anxiety. But when the pandemic kept him at home, he started drinking less and reflecting on his habit. “If COVID-19 never happened … I would have barreled right into alcoholism,” he told me. He’s now down to two or three drinks a week.

Of course, the pandemic can just as easily promote unwelcome behaviors. “In general, the more out of control [peoples’] life circumstances, the more stressed they feel by what is going on around them, and the less social support people experience, the more vulnerable they are to using maladaptive coping,” Bethany Brand, a clinical-psychology professor at Towson University, told me. That can manifest as excessive sleeping or drinking, among other things. Further, Brand said, the threats of the pandemic can fuel anxiety, including after they’re gone.

“I struggle with anxiety so it’s basically hit me in the face during this,” said Alex Tanguay, who’s 30 and works in TV-news production in Tempe, Arizona. “Anything that comes into the apartment, I’m disinfecting.” She told me she feels as if she might be paranoid, but at the same time she wants to keep her roommate and co-workers safe. (She’s been going to work in person.)

One thing that’s given Tanguay some comfort, though, is doing puzzles, and I heard of many stress-relieving activities that people had recently adopted, beyond the pandemic clichés of watching more Netflix and baking sourdough bread. People have been spending more time meditating, birding, gardening, cooking, and sewing. Alexander Aquino, a TV and film editor in Los Angeles, said the pandemic has led him to check in more regularly with friends and family, something he hopes to maintain well into the future. Zeeshan Butt, a health psychologist in Oak Park, Illinois, has started riding 50 to 75 miles a week on his bike. “Before the pandemic, I rode next to never,” he said.

The most unusual stress reliever I heard about was from Millard. Each morning, he puts on some soft music and works his way through the pile of dirty dishes and kitchenware deposited the previous night by him and his three roommates, scrubbing away in the early light. “The hot water washing over my hands and the steam hitting my face brings this unique sense of calmness to me as I’m still waking up for the day,” he said. “It’s similar to a hot shower.”

Although Millard thinks the dishwashing habit may taper off after the pandemic—he’d have to wake up early to do it and still get to work on time—many of these new routines, hobbies, and preferences may remain after the pandemic subsides. Milkman pointed me to 

a 2017 paper

, titled “The Benefits of Forced Experimentation,” that studied the commuting paths of Londoners before and after a public-transit strike that shut down some Tube stations for two days. The service interruption led many people to come up with new routes to work—and some of them, an estimated 5 percent, found that their new route was better than their old one. They stuck with it even after the strike ended.

This is how Milkman thinks about which behaviors might outlast this era, and which will fade. “If what they discovered is overall actually better [than what they used to do], then it’ll stick,” she said. In contrast, behaviors like hand-washing and mask wearing would be more likely to abate if the threat of the virus—and thus the reward of keeping up those habits—recedes. In other words, most of us will probably revert to our old ways—except for when, through awful circumstances, we stumbled upon new ones that work better.

JOE PINSKER

 is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers families and relationships.

2

1

How the Pandemic Has Changed Us Already

The Great Depression permanently altered many people’s behavior. Could

COVID
–

19 do the same?

JOE PINSKER

AUGUST 15, 2020

f
rom
The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/08/pandemic
–
habits
–
behaviors
–
great
–
depression
–
wash
–
hands/615283/

During the past five months, many prognosticators have prognosticated about how the
coronavirus pandemic will transform

politics

,

work

,

travel

,

education

, and other
domains. Less sweepingly, but jus
t as powerfully, it will also transform the people
who are living through it, rearranging the furniture of their inner life. When this is all
over
—
and perhaps even long after that
—
how will we be different?

For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands. When I
interviewed roughly 20 people from across the country about their pandemic
–
era
habits, most of them planned to keep aspects of their new hygiene regimen long into
the future
, even after the threat of the coronavirus passes. “I will more regularly wash
my hands throughout my life and I will never be anywhere without hand sanitizer and
a mask,” Leah Burbach, a 27
–
year
–
old high
–
school teacher in Omaha, Nebraska, told
me.

Those I interviewed said they imagine they’ll continue to be conscientious about how
viruses

spread and what they can do to protect themselves and others. “I think I’ll
wear a mask if I’ve got a cold, now that I understand it’s most effective in keeping me
from spreading germs,” said Josh Jackson, a 48
–
year
–
old in Decatur, Georgia, and the
editor

in chief of the culture magazine

Paste
.

Others foresaw themselves avoiding many activities that are currently risky, possibly
for the rest of their life. “I’ve heard wonderful things about Alaskan cruises and had
always hoped to go on one someday. No more,” said Jaclyn Reiswig, a 39
–
year
–
old
hom
emaker in Aurora, Colorado. “Packing so many strangers together just gives me
the germ creeps now.” Also on the list of destinations that made people wary were
gyms, indoor concerts, public pools, and restaurant buffets.

Though people may feel as if their
habits have been changed forever, these careful
behaviors may not persist once they’re less urgently necessary. Katy Milkman, a
behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told me that

1

How the Pandemic Has Changed Us Already

The Great Depression permanently altered many people’s behavior. Could

COVID-19 do the same?

JOE PINSKER

AUGUST 15, 2020

from The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/08/pandemic-habits-behaviors-great-

depression-wash-hands/615283/

During the past five months, many prognosticators have prognosticated about how the

coronavirus pandemic will transform politics, work, travel, education, and other

domains. Less sweepingly, but just as powerfully, it will also transform the people

who are living through it, rearranging the furniture of their inner life. When this is all

over—and perhaps even long after that—how will we be different?

For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands. When I

interviewed roughly 20 people from across the country about their pandemic-era

habits, most of them planned to keep aspects of their new hygiene regimen long into

the future, even after the threat of the coronavirus passes. “I will more regularly wash

my hands throughout my life and I will never be anywhere without hand sanitizer and

a mask,” Leah Burbach, a 27-year-old high-school teacher in Omaha, Nebraska, told

me.
Those I interviewed said they imagine they’ll continue to be conscientious about how

viruses spread and what they can do to protect themselves and others. “I think I’ll

wear a mask if I’ve got a cold, now that I understand it’s most effective in keeping me

from spreading germs,” said Josh Jackson, a 48-year-old in Decatur, Georgia, and the

editor in chief of the culture magazine Paste.

Others foresaw themselves avoiding many activities that are currently risky, possibly
for the rest of their life. “I’ve heard wonderful things about Alaskan cruises and had

always hoped to go on one someday. No more,” said Jaclyn Reiswig, a 39-year-old

homemaker in Aurora, Colorado. “Packing so many strangers together just gives me

the germ creeps now.” Also on the list of destinations that made people wary were

gyms, indoor concerts, public pools, and restaurant buffets.

Though people may feel as if their habits have been changed forever, these careful

behaviors may not persist once they’re less urgently necessary. Katy Milkman, a
behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told me that

Lessons

from

the

past

: How the

deadly

second

wave

of

the

1

918 ‘Spanish

flu

’

caught

Dallas

and

the U.S.

by

surprise

Health concerns about the

2

020 coronavir

us

pandemic are rooted in the

catastrophic second wave of the

1918

pandemic, which hit between

September and November of that year.

By

 

David Tarrant

9:00 AM on Jul 3, 2020

https://www.

dallas

news.com/news/2020/07/03/lessons

–

from-the-past-

how

-the-deadly-second-wave-of-the-1918-

spanish

-flu-caught-dallas-and-the-us-by-

surprise/

Illustration by staff artist Michael Hogue.

(Michael Hogue / Michael Hogue illustration)

As August gave way to September of 1918, few people were thinking about the

influenza that would soon sweep across Texas and the rest of the country with the speed and

deadly ferocity of a firestorm.

There had been a relatively mild version of the viru

s in the spring of that year, mostly

affecting troops mobilizing to go off to World War I over in Europe. But by summer the disease

known at the time as the Spanish flu had been largely forgotten.

The front pages of

 

The Dallas Morning News

 

were dominated b

y news of American troops

pouring into Europe for what would come to be known as World War I.

But that would quickly change. By the end of September, a second wave of the flu, far

deadlier, would sweep across the country, hitting Dallas and other large cit

ies hard.

When health experts worry about the course of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, they

often look back at the second wave of the 1918 pandemic, between September and November,

when influenza cases overwhelmed hospitals and medical staffs across the country and the dead piled up faster than they could be buried.

In Dallas that year, the city’s chief health officer, A.W. Carnes, waved off the fast-approaching pandemic as not much more than the common cold. In a major blunder, he permitted a patriotic parade in late September that attracted a cheering crowd of thousands jammed together downtown.

Cases of influenza promptly spiked.

The second wave would produce most of the deaths of the pandemic, which experts now estimate at 50 million to 100 million worldwide. In the United States, 675,000 people died from the virus.

The Dallas Morning News on Sept. 27, 1918, reported the rapid spread of the Spanish flu. Despite the worsening conditions, Dallas medical officials hesitated to impose restrictions on public gatherings for more than two weeks.

As it did then, the world is struggling with a virus for which there is no vaccine. COVID-19, the sickness caused by the new coronavirus, has advanced unabated around the world since it first appeared in China late last year. By the end of June, the number of deaths worldwide exceeded 500,000.

Like the Spanish flu in 1918, the new coronavirus isn’t showing signs of fading away anytime soon. Texas ended June with alarm lights flashing as new COVID-19 cases set records daily and hospitalizations spiked from the new coronavirus surge in North Texas and across the state. This week, new cases reported statewide hit a peak of around 8,000 in a single day.

“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over,” said World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Those who thought the 1918 influenza was over after its appearance that spring would be in for a huge shock. In just one month, October 1918, almost 200,000 Americans died from the virus.

The 1918 influenza was “the greatest, most destructive pandemic in the history of the world,” Dr. Robert Haley, an epidemiologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said in a recent live video chat.

The seasonal flu typically affects the sick, the very young and the very old. The 1918 version attacked healthy young adults the hardest, with the highest mortality rate among those ages 20 to 40, 

according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What made the 1918 flu so destructive was its ability to mutate to new forms and continue its deadly path, Haley said. In the worst cases, “you’d get sick in the morning, become deathly ill in the afternoon and be dead in the evening.”

The flu caused many to die of pneumonia. But the virus, like the one linked to COVID-19, also sometimes triggered a deadly “cytokine storm,” causing a massive overproduction of the cells used to fight off infections, resulting in organ failure when the cells attacked healthy tissues, Haley said.

With no cure at hand, authorities ordered preventive measures in 1918 that sound eerily familiar today: wear masks; wash hands; avoid crowds.

Schools and movie theaters closed. So did pool rooms and dance halls.

Posters and newspaper ads urged people to cover their mouths and noses when coughing or sneezing. Spitting on the street was banned.

“It’s amazing how little difference there is in the advice for avoiding getting sick,” said Dr. Peggy Redshaw, an expert on the Spanish flu and a professor emeritus of biology at Sherman’s Austin College.

“The whole point is to buy us time for the scientists to figure out what we can do,” Redshaw said. “That’s all we can do is buy time.”

Mild first wave

Experts believe the 1918 pandemic originated in rural Haskell County, Kan., and quickly infiltrated nearby Camp Funston, a training center for Army draftees at Fort Riley. That spring, young men surged into such camps all over the country, training, eating and sleeping in close quarters as they prepared for war.

Soldiers carried the virus with them as they transferred from base to base and boarded ships for the war in Europe. The virus triggered outbreaks at dozens of posts around the country and spread to the war in Europe, cutting down troops on both sides. Some historians even believe the influenza forced an early end of the war.

Victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza crowded into an emergency hospital at Fort Riley, Kan. The 1918 pandemic is believed to have killed more than 50 million people worldwide. The virus strain had been mild in the spring but turned deadly that fall. In Dallas and elsewhere, entire families were wiped out and many children were orphaned.(AP)

“Spanish flu” was a misnomer arising from censorship of news that could hurt soldiers’ morale in the countries involved in World War I. Newspapers in Spain, which was neutral, freely published accounts of the deadly flu, making it appear as if the disease started there.

That spring, the influenza was a milder version that mostly affected troops. Civilians largely had not been exposed to the virus and therefore had little, if any, immunity.

Initially, “most of the country didn’t get hit at all,” said John Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague in History.

The flu hit about half of the military camps in the United States “but significantly fewer civilian areas,” he said.

Come fall, that would change.

Second wave

The flu returned in September 1918 primarily because a large percentage of the population hadn’t been exposed to the virus, Barry said.

Exposure during the first wave offered protection against the second wave of the virus, reducing the risk of illness by almost 90%.

“The best vaccine we’ve ever produced against the flu was 62% effective,” Barry said.

But that kind of protection also showed that the first wave of influenza had not been at all widespread, “because if it had been you would have had a much diminished second wave,” he said.

The American Red Cross sprayed soldiers’ throats at Love Field on Nov. 6, 1918. The spray typically consisted of an antiseptic. (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine)

Dallas had about 150,000 residents in September 1918, or about 10% of the current population.

In September, the State Fair was canceled so the land could be used to train new soldiers. Camp Dick, located at Fair Park, began to quarantine new men arriving at the post to ensure they weren’t infected with the flu.

Dallas health officials didn’t seem worried. In late September, The News carried an article, “Influenza Scare is Rapidly Subsiding,” and cited “sporadic cases of Spanish influenza” that had been reported to the City Emergency Hospital.

Dr. A.W. Carnes, the city’s health officer, said the local cases resembled the old-fashioned grippe, or cold, and did not seem to portend an epidemic.

But Fort Worth’s Camp Bowie had already reported 40 cases of the flu, and Army leaders imposed a ban on soldiers coming together for dances or for watching movies, playing pool and the like.

Despite the risk, Dallas went ahead with one popular gathering: the

Liberty Loan parade

.

Liberty Loan parade

As war raged in Europe, Americans were asked to contribute to the effort by buying war bonds, a way the public could lend money to the government to pay for the war. Cities across the country staged huge rallies and parades to promote the buying of these bonds.

The morning of Sept. 28, thousands flocked downtown to see 5,000 civilians and 2,500 soldiers march in a parade as part of the Fourth Liberty Loan campaign to sell bonds to fund the war effort.

The patriotic Victory Liberty Loan Parade in downtown Dallas in 1917 was similar to one the following year that led to rapid spread of the Spanish flu. (Courtesy DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.)(unknown / Courtesy of the DeGolyer Library)

As the band played “For Your Boy and My Boy” and other patriotic songs, huge crowds jammed Main and Elm streets.

“Seldom has Dallas seen such a parade,” The News gushed. “By tens of thousands the citizenship participated in the celebration and by scores of thousands the remainder of the citizenship watched and cheered and applauded.”

After the parade, flu cases increased exponentially, according to a report in The News on Oct. 4, 1918. A total of 76 cases were reported on Oct. 3, twice as many as in the previous two days. The News also reported the city’s first flu death that day. Pierpont Balderson, 15, died at St. Paul’s Hospital. After being stricken with the flu, he had come down with pneumonia.

The Liberty Loan parades turned out to be “a disaster everywhere they had it,” Redshaw said.

Carnes hesitated to impose a quarantine, though other city leaders urged him to do so and nearby military camps were already isolating the sick.

On Oct. 12, Mayor Joseph Lawther took matters into his own hands, ordering a temporary halt of all public gatherings, including the closing of schools and churches, according to an article in The News.

That day, 725 more cases were reported to the City Emergency Hospital, bringing the city’s overall total to 3,444. That was almost 20 times more than the 185 total cases reported just nine days earlier on Oct. 3.

The Dallas mayor ordered streets cleaned every night because residents were spitting in gutters; he asked store owners to flush their sidewalks.

Just nine days after Fort Worth’s Camp Bowie reported 40 cases of the flu on Sept. 27, the Army post recorded nearly 2,000 cases and four deaths on Oct. 6.

The flu attacked the well off and the poor alike, along with nurses and doctors. Entire families were sickened.

An Oct. 26 story in The News quoted a nurse as saying that a family of nine people of Mexican heritage had all been stricken by the flu, including three in the last stages of pneumonia. When a landlord threatened to evict a sick family, United Charities stepped in to pay the rent. The group also purchased groceries and medication for those too sick to work.

The virus continued to wreak havoc into December before finally winding down in the spring of 1919 after a brief third wave.

It is difficult to determine the full impact of the pandemic in North Texas. On Dec. 13, 1918, The News reported that 456 residents had died from the flu or pneumonia since Oct.

1

of that year.

But experts believe many cases of the flu were never officially recorded. “The record-keeping was terrible,” said Redshaw, the Spanish flu expert at Austin College.

“They couldn’t keep track of the numbers. The cases were overwhelming,” she said. “A lot of people lived in rural areas and didn’t get counted at all.”

According to a history of the Dallas County Health Department, written in 1941, more people died than were born in the city from October through December of 1918.

“This had never happened before and has not happened since,” the account said.

Parallels with today

Because the 1918 flu subsided after the first wave that spring before roaring back in the fall, it was once thought that higher summer temperatures affected it.

In fact, susceptibility trumped seasonality, said Barry, the author and expert on the 1918 pandemic. The spring outbreak had left most of the country unaffected.

“I do see a parallel with today,” Barry said. “In both cases, you had an overwhelming part of the population that was susceptible.”

He pointed out that places like Florida, Arizona, Texas and Brazil are all seeing cases of coronavirus rise sharply even as temperatures spike.

“Temperature is a factor,” he said, but “susceptibility is much more important.”

Another parallel can be found in the public’s reaction to health directives. Pushback against the wearing of masks and restrictions on public worship happened in 1918 just as today.

“There was plenty of pushback, especially if a city lifted restrictions and then reimposed them,” Barry said.

In San Francisco, someone even sent a bomb to public health authorities when they reimposed a mask ordinance, he said.

The new virus is spreading almost as fast as the 1918 flu did. And because there is no vaccine or widespread immunity, it will likely “run unrestrained and kill many people,” said Haley, the UT Southwestern epidemiologist.

In the end, the reason flu pandemics come in waves is that they find new places where people are vulnerable, Redshaw said.

“Until it runs out of people who are vulnerable to that virus, it’s going to keep on coming back.”

2

1

Lessons from the past: How the deadly

second wave of the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’

caught Dallas and the U.S. by surprise

Health concerns about the 2020 coronavirus pandemic are rooted in the

catastrophic second wave of the 1918 pandemic, which hit between

September and November of that year.

By

David Tarrant

9:00 AM on Jul 3, 2020

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2020/07/03/lessons
–
from
–
the
–
past
–
how
–
the
–
deadly
–
second
–
wave
–
of
–
the
–
1918
–
spanish
–
flu
–
caught
–
dallas
–
and
–
the
–
us
–
by
–
surprise/

Illustration by staff artist Michael Hogue.
(Michael Hogue / Michael Hogue illustration)

As August gave way to September of 1918, few people were thinking about the
influenza that would soon sweep across Texas and the rest of the country with the speed and
deadly ferocity of a firestorm.

There had been a relatively mild version of the viru
s in the spring of that year, mostly
affecting troops mobilizing to go off to World War I over in Europe. But by summer the disease
known at the time as the Spanish flu had been largely forgotten.

The front pages of

The Dallas Morning News

were dominated b
y news of American troops
pouring into Europe for what would come to be known as World War I.

But that would quickly change. By the end of September, a second wave of the flu, far
deadlier, would sweep across the country, hitting Dallas and other large cit
ies hard.

When health experts worry about the course of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, they
often look back at the second wave of the 1918 pandemic, between September and November,
1

Lessons from the past: How the deadly
second wave of the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’

caught Dallas and the U.S. by surprise

Health concerns about the 2020 coronavirus pandemic are rooted in the
catastrophic second wave of the 1918 pandemic, which hit between

September and November of that year.

By David Tarrant

9:00 AM on Jul 3, 2020

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2020/07/03/lessons-from-the-past-how-the-deadly-second-

wave-of-the-1918-spanish-flu-caught-dallas-and-the-us-by-surprise/

Illustration by staff artist Michael Hogue.(Michael Hogue / Michael Hogue illustration)

As August gave way to September of 1918, few people were thinking about the
influenza that would soon sweep across Texas and the rest of the country with the speed and

deadly ferocity of a firestorm.

There had been a relatively mild version of the virus in the spring of that year, mostly

affecting troops mobilizing to go off to World War I over in Europe. But by summer the disease

known at the time as the Spanish flu had been largely forgotten.

The front pages of The Dallas Morning News were dominated by news of American troops

pouring into Europe for what would come to be known as World War I.

But that would quickly change. By the end of September, a second wave of the flu, far

deadlier, would sweep across the country, hitting Dallas and other large cities hard.

When health experts worry about the course of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, they
often look back at the second wave of the 1918 pandemic, between September and November,