special report. ♪ ♪ april 1917, the united states joins allies, france, britain and russia in their battle against germany. ♪ over there, over there >> they call it the great war. a war to end all wars. all over the united states

americans prepare to join the fight overseas. ♪ the yanks are coming ♪ the drums are coming everywhere ♪ >> but there was another fight about to take place right here on american soil. one that would eventually kill more people than the great war itself. it was the influenza pandemic of 1918 known back then as the spanish flu. ♪ >> you said you can't understand how america dealt with the influenza pandemic in 1918 without understanding world war i. >> because everything about the pandemic was related to the war and everything about the war at that time was related in a sense to the pandemic. >> historian kenneth davis says an early outbreak of flu was reported at camp fundston, part

of fort riley in kansas. young men arriving for training and deployment were suddenly becoming sick. >> the outbreak in kansas in march of 1918. >> march 4th, we know the date. doctors are noticing a strange influenza that doesn't look like anything else they have ever seen. >> what were the first symptoms they started to see? >> very high fever. tremendous body aches, like back-breaking body aches. then as it progressed these otherwise healthy young men who had just reported for duty were on their backs in tremendous pain. people would talk about it like being hit by bats or something. that's how bad it was. >> within weeks, more than 1,000 soldiers were in the hospital. at least 38 died. these were men who should have recovered, if it was a normal flu. dr. anthony fauci says that's when doctors began to realize this was a new path again.

>> the fact that it was young healthy people who early on were getting it, was that a sign that this was a new influenza? >> this was devastating even to young people. so quantitatively and who it affected was really extraordinary and unprecedented. this was something very special. it occurred in a way that crept up on us. >> you called the 1918 pandemic the mother of all pandemics. >> the global impact it had was unprecedented in recognizable history. it was a pandemic that gripped the planet. it was truly an enormously devastating pandemic. >> in 1918, the cdc didn't exist and there were no requirements for doctors to report flu outbreaks to any officials. but by the end of march the cases in kansas were so unusual, a local doctor decided to report

what he called an influenza of severe type to the u.s. public health service. the virus quickly spread. historian and author john barry says it was traced to other army camps where it flourished among the men housed in close quarters and also spread on to troop trips heading to europe. >> roughly half the military camps did have significant outbreaks. and according to nobel laureate who sfent most of his life studying influenza, you could follow the disease with american troops crossing the ocean and arriving in france. ♪ >> over there, that was what everyone was singing. ♪ the yanks are coming ♪ the yanks are coming >> by way of 1918, 1 million young men, doughboys as they

were called, land in france. that's when the flu really exploded. >> looking back, historians can trace the spread of the flu to the movement of troops? >> absolutely. and the port in france, where most of the american troops landed, became like a ground zero for the spread of this. and the speed with which it spread was breathtaking. the reason why what would have been a localized epidemic perhaps became truly a worldwide pandemic was because the war was going on. millions of soldiers going from the united states to europe carrying the infection. >> this would turn out to be just the first wave of the influenza and it would last through the beginning of the summer of 1918. where this outbreak originated is still unknown, though it wasn't in spain. how it started is more clear. >> was it a zoo notic virus? did it cross from animals to humans? >> very extensive sequencing of

the genetic makeup of the virus indicate very, very clearly that it is of avian origin. it's a bird-like flu, likely from a wild water fowl. but the sequences clearly indicate that it was zoo notic and jumped species. >> in a sense, all influenza viruses are bird flu. sometime prior to the march of 1918 it might have been a few months, it may have been a couple of years, a virus jumped species from animals to humans and it spread very rapidly and created pandemic. it certainly wasn't the first influenza pandemic in history, and it's not going to be the last influenza pandemic. >> troops overseas were getting infected as well on all sides of the conflict, though the death rate was relatively low, and

most who got it recovered. >> it wasn't particularly lethal. people who did experience it as a general rule treated it with a shrug. the army even on the front lines in april, troops referred to it as three-day fever. they had a very different attitude when the virus turned much more virl lent a few months later. >> even though the infected were likely to survive, the huge numbers of sick soldiers began to impact the war. >> it really did affect what was going on, on the battlefield, in germany and in france. there was a major german offensive, for instance, that was supposed to take place in 1918. half a million german soldiers were sick with the flu. they couldn't do it. so it didn't change the outcome of the war, but it certainly affected it. >> in fact, ludendorff, the german commander, blamed the outbreak for the failure of the last german offensive, the last effort that the germans thought

might win the war. >> the full impact of this first wave wouldn't be understood until much later. countries involved in the war were sensoring news about the influenza. >> nobody was actually talking about it. the newspapers weren't talking about it. >> spain was neutral in the war and their newspapers were allowed to report on this fast-spreading virus. it had even infected their king. that is how the influenza became known as the spanish flu. >> the first report of an epidemic comes out of madrid. it's published as a mysterious disease strikes spain, the spain king was sick. that news report went to england and then from there on that's about may of 1918, it becomes the spanish flu at least in the english-speaking world. >> historian doris kearns goodwin says president woodrow wilson was concerned about anything that would hurt the war effort.

>> you talked about how the influenza is barely mentioned when you read about woodrow wilson as president. why is that? >> it's extraordinary when you read about wilson's presidency the way he handled the flu is hardly mentioned. historians who studied the flu epidemic argue that he had two crises to face. the first was the flu and the second was the war. and that the war went first. and so that anything that he would say about the problem of the flu and the soldiers getting it in great numbers ain the barracks would hurt recruitment and hurt the war effort. >> wilson wanted nothing to distract from the war effort or in any way hurt morale. therefore, national public health leaders said things like this is ordinary influenza by another name, or you have nothing to fear if proper precautions are taken. >> so there was no motivation for the president back then to

get america focused on fighting this flu? >> president woodrow wilson never mentioned the spanish flu. >> never mentioned it? >> never mentioned it during his presidency. >> for president wilson, the war was all that mattered. and for most americans, the war was all that mattered. now, the war effort doesn't just mean sending troops over. it also means keeping factories going really around the clock, making uniforms, making tanks, making airplanes. >> and raising money for the war? >> and raising money. and that's where this question of misplaced priorities is so posh. there were michigan placed priorities in 1918. the war was the priority and that took precedence over everything. >> the war and the influenza would later directly impact wilson personally in way that may have changed the course of history. with summer and warmer weather, the new influenza seemed to die down. a british medical journal even declared the epidemic over in august of 1918.

they were wrong. the death and misery had barely begun. did people know there was going to be a second wave? >> they did not. the force with which it came just took everyone by surprise. and it was just totally devastating. the virulence of the virus, the capability of the virus to cause devastating disease, was really unprecedented. >> in september an article in the journal "journal of the ame medical association" warped of a rapidly spreading influenza. it said it was undoubtedly the spanish influenza but warned of the new outbreak saying it's often more severe, the complications are more frequent and serious and it shows an extraordinary degree of contagiousness. they concluded, therefore, we have every indication that this outbreak will soon spread all over the united states. the second wave had arrived.

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where something takes us to a place where we need to ask for help; and that's what food banks are here for. i asked dale if walmart would partner with us and he said, "absolutely, let's figure out how to get this done." when you start working in an area and you're out in the stores, and in the community, you see the need. it was just the right thing to do. ♪ ♪ the great war, is in its final months. but the second wave of the influenza is just beginning, and now it's spreading faster and is far more deadly. historian john barry says the virus may have mutated into a

new strain. >> the 1918 virus could bind to cells in the upper respiratory tract that made it easily transmissable, but it could also bind to cells deep in the lung. many reports of people dying 24 hours after the first symptoms appeared. some of the symptoms could be very unusual and very frightening. >> whether it was a new strain or a new virus all together, the effects were terrifying. >> well, the second wave so deadly, it's interesting, we talk about the first and the second wave. we were presuming that the virus that hit us in the spring of 1918 was essentially the same virus that accounted for the so-called second wave. we knew there was disease in the spring of 1918. we knew there was a lull in the summer. and then we got hit very, very badly in october and november of

1918. call it a second wave or what, it was a devastating wave of infection. >> in early september an outbreak at camp devens outside of boston is reported. young, healthy soldiers were getting infected and dying fast. scientists went to investigate. >> and that's where four doctors, probably the best virologists, epidemiologists in america at the time, go up and they are seeing these men being brought in by the dozens and then by the hundreds. that's when one of the doctors says, i think this might be a new plague. >> by the end of september, more than 14,000 flu cases were reported from camp devens. 757 people had died. the deaths were gruesome. victims turned purple and black from scioneauxis, a lack of oxygen. >> to give you a accepts of what it was like, i would like to read a letter that a physician at camp devens wrote to a

colleagues. these men start with an ordinary tap of the grip or influenza, but when brought to the hospital they very rapidly develop the most vicious type of pneumonia that has ever been seen. it is only a matter of a few hours until death comes. it is horrible. it takes special trains to carry away the dead. for several days there were no coffins and the bodies piled up something fierce. it beats any sight they had in france after a battle. good-bye, old pal. good be with you until we meet again. >> despite the alarming number of case, servicemen from the boston naval yard continued to deploy around the country. >> those same ships from boston also went to new orleans, chicago. they went out to the west coast. every one of these port cities where boats from boston docked, the flu exploded very quickly. it was extremely, extremely

virulent. the infection rate was very high and the mortality rate was very high. >> on september 7th, 1918, a navy ship from boston arrived in philadelphia. public health officials there had downplayed the seriousness of the influenza. the city would soon pay the price for that. >> philadelphia was one of the hardest hit cities in the country. i think that was closely related to the political and public health leadership. >> philadelphia leaders had organized a liberty loan parade scheduled for september 28, 1918. it was an effort to boost morale, but also a way to raise money for the war effort by encouraging americans to buy war bonds. parades like these were drawing large crowds throughout the war. americans were eager to show their patriotism. >> the medical community was very, very concerned by that. urged the public health director to call the parade off. he r. >> he allowed the parade to go

on? >> that's correct. he had been specifically told in a meeting two days before by other doctors not to allow it to go on. he was a political appointee. philadelphia had at that time a notoriously rather corrupt government and he was not willing to go up against the bosses. so he went ahead with this. >> there were hundreds of thousands of people in the street packed close together shouting and singing songs. and like clockwork, 48, 72 hours later, the disease exploded in philadelphia. >> 200,000 people are in the streets. days later every hospital bed in philadelphia was filled. and philadelphia had a lot of hospitals. >> it became a superspreader event? >> the mother of all super spreader events in 1918. and philadelphia was probably the hardest hit. they knew it was coming. they should have seen it coming.

they shouldn't allowed the parade. they did because, again, priorities. what were the priorities? the war effort and selling these war bonds. >> when i was reading about the parade in philadelphia, this huge liberty loan parade that was going to be in 1918, i was thinking to myself, don't do the parade, don't do the parade! then a week later, i think it's thousands of people die, perhaps 14,000 people, and then you go to st. louis, another city also had prepared a parade, they listened to the medical authorities, and the next week only 700 people died. so when you are reading this as an historian and you know the end of the story, you want to say, stop, do the right thing >> the day after the parade, "the philadelphia enquirer" printed this picture. the caption "fighting men of navy fill vast crowds as they march along broad street." no mention of the influenza. less than a week later the board of health finally began shutting down the city.

>> in the streets of philadelphia people were actually dropping dead in the streets. >> there was stories rather well documented, anderson, of people who would wake up in the morning feeling maybe a little bit under the weather, get up and go to work, starting to feel really very, very sick, and by the time the end of the day dame thcame were dying in bed and would die in a 24-hour period. >> it was that fast? >> oh, absolutely. >> the situation was so dire it coming ignored any longer. this issue in the philadelphia evening bulletin dated october 15, 1918, reports entire families dying from the flu. it reads "husbands and wives, mothers and children, brothers and sisters have died within a few hours of one another". >> they were using steam shovels to dig mass graves at one point.

you had priests literally driving horse-drawn cars down the street calling on people to bring out their dead. it sometimes would be a couple of days before a body could be disposed of, and you had to live with the body in your home. and the fear really emptied the streets. >> there were empty streets in cities across the country. all were experiencing the same fear and panic as philadelphia. in the month of october, more than 195,000 americans died from the virus. many of them in excruciating pain. >> it was a terrible way to die. you can picture these young men and eventually young women and nurses, family members, literally choking to death on their own body fluids, turning blue and dying. one of the doctors in one of the hospitals in new york said they are coming in by the hundreds. they are turning blue and they are dying. one doctor says, i see them twice. once when they check in, and once when i sign their death certificate. >> this is rare footage of an

influenza patient being brought in for treatment. but there was little doctors could do. there was no way to treat the influenza. doctors and nurses just had to watch their patients die. this letter was written by a volunteer nurse in washington, d.c. when i was in the officer's barracks, she wrote, four of the officers of whom i had charge died. two of them were married and called for their wife nearly all the time. it was sure pitiful to see them die. i had to go to the nurses quarters and cry it out. they couldn't treat the dying in 1918 because they didn't know what they were fighting. they didn't even know what an influenza virus was. >> the doctors at the time, scientists did not know what the pathogen was because the virus itself, influenza, was not discovered until more than a decade and a half, two decades later in the 1930s. so what was likely going on, and

again we didn't recognize it because we did not have antibiotics, is that it was not only the primary virus itself, unrecognized at the time, which turned out to be influenza a, that it was causing devastating viral pneumonias, but superimposed upon it now when you went back and did autopsy examinations retrospectively, you found that very many of the people died from secondary bacterial infections. in other words, they had a primary viral pneumonia and superimposed upon that was a bacterial pneumonia that could have been, had we had antibiotics at the time, which we did not, that could have been treated with common antibiotics. >> so how do you treat a virus you don't understand?

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♪ this fox movie news reel from the pandemic era shows two men walking to greet each other not with a handshake, but with a salute in order to avoid touching hands. though they do walk away arm in arm.

it was an effort to educate the public on safety behavior during an outbreak. but these recommended measures couldn't stop the spread of the virus because not everyone would listen. >> the virus was spread clearly by the respiratory route. i think just even rudimentary m epidemiology would tell you that, that the close contact with people. there was congregate settings, people crowding together indoors and in many respects sometimes even outdoors. it was very clear that this was person-to-person spread. >> pretty much everything was tried. even to the extent that one report in the "journal of the american medical association" of a doctor who injected hydrogen peroxide intravenously thinking that the oxygen would help the patient, and roughly half of his patients died. he actually claimed that that

was successful. so people were quite desperate in trying absolutely everything. >> there was no federal plan and no real strong federal public health service in the u.s. at the time. so local states and cities took it upon themselves to fight a pandemic they didn't really understand. new york made it a misdemeanor to cough or sneeze without covering your mouth or nose in public. in philadelphia, spitters were fined $2.30 for jeopardizing health. open-air courts in san francisco dealt with people who didn't wear masks in public. they were fined and, in some cases, thrown in jail. back then masks were not quite as controversial as they are now, but they also may not have been as effective. these nurses were making masks out of gauze, which they fold over four times. but gauze is porous, even with the layers, and in some cases didn't protect people from getting the virus.

the "journal of the american medical association" in september of 1918 said the virus was infecting doctors and nurses in hospitals in spite of the use of gauze masks and other precautions by all those in contact with the patients. watch this one group of nurses as they demonstrate how to wear the masks. first they wrap them around their mouths, but then fold them down to expose their noses. the virus can infect through the nasal cavity. but still a properly worn mask back then was better than no mask at all. >> we know now from our analysis that masks are effective. they are not 100% effective. they likely are more effective in preventing a person from transmitting it versus someone protecting themselves from getting infected. even the recent data indicate there is some degree of protection both ways. the fact that back then individuals who were wearing masks, and even now with

covid-19, some people who wear masks can get infected. that doesn't mean that masks are not helpful. >> despite tease attemphese att public health and safety, people kept dying. cities around the country hit later with the virus were learning the lessons of boston and philadelphia. >> it's interesting when you look at president wilson, there was a war going on. so there wasn't a lot of talk by wilson about the pandemic. >> no, there was not. and that was the point. it was left up in many respects to the individual states, cities, and locations, and there wasn't that uniform type of coordination and communication about what worked or did not work in one city versus the other. they essentially were left on their own to do what it was that they wanted to do, and there was some stark failures and there were some really notable successes. >> there were other cities which

didn't even print the names of the dead. they were trying to pretend that this thing wasn't happening. and that wasn't reassuring people because they knew it was happening. it increased the level of fear, increased the alienation. there were very few places where they did tell the truth. one was san francisco. and san francisco, the mayor, the public health leaders, the leaders of the business community, leaders of trade unions all jointly signed a statement, and this was printed in huge type in the newspaper. it said "wear a mask and save your life." and that was a very, very different message than this is ordinary influenza by another name. >> san francisco shut the city down. they banned mass gathering, closed schools and movie theaters and it worked, at least in the beginning.

>> they have great success initially in the fall of 1918. they relaxed too soon. >> in november, they got rid of the mask mandate and reopened businesses. >> san francisco went like this, down and then up, and then when it started to go up, they tried to put the mask law back into effect, but the people weren't having it the second time around. the same arguments we're hearing today about wearing mask. infringement on freedom, infringement on liberty. all of the arguments we have heard today about non-mask-wearing, they argued in san francisco and it was bad. >> go back 102 years to what happened in san francisco to try and reopen maybe a bit too early or not without the kind of constraints that should essentially guide you as you try to reopen. yet again another example of lessons that could have been translated across more than a century. >> the war is over.

into market street are the men and women of the city to celebrate. >> on november 11 the war came to an end. all over the country americans were celebrating and hoping for a new era of peace. they were also hopeful that the second wave was coming to an end. like the first wave, it seemed to have burned quickly through the population, only to die down as winter approached. >> one of the key questions is, is what happened to the virus. i think two things ended the pandemic really. number one, people's immune systems became used to the virus. they were much better able to deal with it than they were. remember, this caused the pandemic, it was a brand-new virus that people had never experienced before. once the immune system recognized it, it was much better able to fight it. in addition, i think the virus itself probably continued its mutations and mutated in a direction of mildness.

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♪ march 1919, the move in paris is joyful. world leaders, including president woodrow wilson are meeting in france to negotiate a peace treaty. the war is finally over. but the pandemic is not. it's now in its third wave, and spreading in france. this warning printed in the journal of the american medical association states "the epidemic of influenza, which had declined, has broken ought anew in a most disquieting manner." that was overshad owed. they were trying to negotiate how to settle peace terms with germany. >> when the war ended and peace talks were approaching, what was wilson's stance on the germans going into these talks?

he famously talked about peace without victory. >> woodrow wilson talked continually about peace without victory. he wanted no real retribution against germany, no humiliation against germany. he just thut that that would just set off perhaps as somebody said a century of war. so he went into those peace talks hoping he could persuade the european nations of moving in that direction. it would have been a hard job to do so because the war had been fought on european soil. millions of europeans had been hurt by it, and that desire for exacting retribution was already there. so he was already coming up against a difficulty when he came there, but he was hoping he would get it through. >> on april 3rd as the peace talks continued, president wilson collapsed. he was so severely ill, so suddenly, that his doctors suspected he may have been poisoned. but it turns out it was likely the influenza. and it may have affected him both mentally and physically. this is a private letter from

wilson's doctor in paris dated april 14th, 1919. he wrote, the president was suddenly taken violently sick with the influenza at a time when the whole of civilization seemed to be in the balance. >> he had a temperature of 103, violent coughing, standard symptoms of influenza, and as he started to recover, everybody around him from irwin hoover, who was the white house usher, to herbert hoover, the later president, commented his mind simply didn't work. he couldn't remember things that had happened a few hours earlier. he got paranoid, thought there were french spies behind the furniture, you know. some very, very strange things. and he insisted on returning to the negotiations and physically weakened, and while his mind was still not working. >> doctors and historians believe the influenza may have

had a profound affect on patients' brains. >> just like covid-19, the 1918 virus had very significant neurological manifestations. >> certainly there were neurological sequella in some individuals that could possibly have been due to infection with this pandemic flu. again, not completely proven, but suggest i have. >> after wilson recovered from the worst of his illness, he went back to the talks. but observers said he was changed and he caved in on what he was fighting for before he had been infected. >> the result was a peace treaty that again violated the principles that he said the u.s. had gone to war over. it was a long way from a peace without victory. germany was blamed for the war. reparations were demanded. there were deals made between countries trading territories. all of these things that wilson

had stood up against, he just caved in. he, himself, told someone that if he was a german, he wasn't sure he would sign the treaty. essentially, every historian of the 20th century believes and has said that the peace treaty agreed to in versailles in 1919 was a significant contributor to the rise of the nazis because it gave the germans good reason to feel that they then had taken advantage of unfairly. >> it is a fascinating idea that whether something like the flu changed the course of history in terms of the rise of nazism. if germany hadn't been punished so punitively, would there have been such dissatisfaction and anger in germany? >> history is something that is a cycle of events. so the fact that the treaty of

versaill versailles had such draconian provisions, it demanded so many economic sanctions and humiliation for germany, they argue, historians do, it contributed to the rise of nationalism and the rise of adolf hitler. if you unroll that and make some new arguments about whether the flu and its impact on wilson affected the treaty of versailles, if you go back and look at wilson and argue maybe having his flu affected his behavior, it unrolls even more. i think that's something that historians will be studying for many decades to come. >> some historians say wilson may have experienced a different strain of flu. not the strain that caused the pandemic back then. but there is no dispute that president wilson's behavior changed after his illness. >> people who knew wilson then and had been with him for a long time said he was never the same after that flu. there is a suggestion by quite a few historians that the flu

might have affected wilson's judgment, his reasoning, his will power. >> we'll never know for sure what was going on inside president wilson's mind. historian john barry puts it this way. >> i am not a real believer in alternative histories. so it's, you could argue that wilson would have given in on all of these things even if he had stayed healthy. can't be certain. all you can be certain of is that he did have influenza. his mind and spirit were seriously impacted by the disease. he did cave in. the nazis did rise.

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lingered on until 1920 before finally going away. by the end an estimated one-third of the world's population had been infected by the virus and the death toll in america and across the globe was stunning.

>> 675,000 americans in the space of a year. that's more than all of the men who have died in world war i, world war ii, korea and vietnam put together. >> the numbers around the world are even more astonishing. >> within the realm of recorded history, there were anywhere from 50 to 100 million people died, and in a population of the world, that was at that time in 1918 about one-third of what the population of the world is today. you could just imagine and do the math of in today's time what that would have meant. that would have meant anywhere from 150 to 300 million people dying from this. >> so even the worst, worst case projections for covid-19 are absolutely nothing like what occurred in 1918. fortunately. >> the death toll in this

current pandemic may never reach the levels of the influenza of 1918 partly because in this outbreak there is the promise of a vaccine. >> that's going to be the game changer and that's going to be the difference that separates us from the 1918 ultimate impact to the ultimate impact of what we're seeing now. as bad as it is right now, we have within our power the capability to turn it around. that does not lessen the fact that we are going through an extraordinary challenge with this outbreak. the thing that i believe, anderson, is going to prevent us from creeping up on the numbers of 1918 with correction for population numbers is the vaccine that we now have that our counterparts in 1918 did not have.

>> it's been 102 years since that pandemic started. and more than a century later, there are still many similarities between then and now. many of the same mistakes were repeated. in 1918 and in 2020, we saw crowds gather when they shouldn't. only to lead to more infections and deaths. in 1918 and in 2020, we saw cities shut down early, only to reopen too soon. in 1918 and in 2020, we saw people refusing to wear masks, even though it would protect others. in 1918 and 2020, we saw leaders ignoring the science, downplaying the severity of the virus because they wanted the public's attention focused elsewhere. >> were the lessons of the 1918

pandemic, were they forgotten? >> in some respects, they were. and again when the historians write about this and juxtapose 2020 with 1918, they are going to see that there were things that should have been learned in 1918 that 102 years later somehow corporate memory got lost and things were not used in the sense of a storing of knowledge from back then that could have been applied today. >> i think the chief lessons from 1918 are pretty clear. the first is to tell the truth. >> if you don't tell people the truth, you are going to cost lives. it happened in 1918. i believe it happened again to us in this pandemic. >> leadership is central in a crisis. there is a saying from robert sherwood who worked for fdr that most of the time you can keep

the president in a little portrait on your desk, you don't have to worry about what he is doing. in a time of crisis, when people need somebody in leadership other than themselves, they need to banned together, that's when leadership is crucial. the war was a crisis. we are having a crisis right now and leadership is essential. >> these are some of the lessons that can and should be remembered from these two global pandemics. lessons that can be applied to help fight the next pandemic. >> without a doubt the future will also hold for us pandemics. exactly what that will be or whether it will occur is without a doubt unclear right now, but it will occur. ♪ ♪

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♪ hey, i am brian stelter and this is "reliable sources." our weekly look at theto