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>> the 1918 flu pandemic altered american life in ways that are familiar to those living through the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. conflicting information left people wary and fearful. college classes were held outside, sports were canceled, asks or challenged as un-american, and fines imposed on those who refuse to wear them. next, christopher mcknight countryrecounts how the experienced the events of a century ago and the lessons we might learn. he directs the oregon university center for humanities. cracks since the pandemic has begun, for our purposes, since we shut down in march, they thing that has been driving our analysis here as historians is what is the historical precedent? obviously, 1918 is the one that comes to mind and we have nobody better to tell us about 1918 christophernd

nichols. he's an associate professor of history at oregon state. he's the director of the oregon state center for humanities and the founder of their citizenship and crisis initiative. harvard andied at wesley in and got his ma and phd from a good friend of ours at the university of virginia. he is an expert on i would say the early parts of the 20th century. he is expanding out and he and i, before we came on, we were chatting about new work on ideologies in u.s. foreign policy, which that book itself was a seminal book in the field in 1987 and i'm glad someone has decided to go in and update it. there's no better person to do it than chris. he's going to be talking to us about the 1918 pandemic.

i would encourage you as you look at your zoom creek -- zoom screen, you'll see a q and a button. hit that button and submit your questions. you can see other people's questions as they come in, and if you like their question or if you were going to ask a similar question, hit the thumbs up button. that will be helpful because that will move it up the queue. the more people who like something, the higher it gets, just like anything else on the web. i will remind you there is no chat function here. we want people to focus on the q&a. and day and -- on the one of the great benefits to doing this on the web is it is much easier to kick out anyone who is unruly, so keep it civil, people. without further ado, i'm going to ask brian franklin to turn on chris'camera. there he is. how are you doing him a buddy? i just gave you the intro.

looks like a sunny day in corvallis, so i'm going to turn things over to you. some is going to show us images and walk us through and then he and i will come back and have this discussion when he's done with the presentation. christopher: thank you so much. first of all, i want to say thank you to everyone who is here with us. we had record turnout for registration. i hope i can keep you interested. this topic is inherently interesting, so you don't need too much. a special thank you to brian franklin who helped organize this and is behind the scenes running the webinar and zoom web functions. mostlso, of course, important, many thank you's to professor jeffrey angle -- jeffrey angle. we worked on a project that will be out next year, look for

rethinking america, grand strategy. jeff wrote a great chapter in that book. what i want to do things is i'm going to give you a march through what happened in the pandemic of 1918. this is something i started studying years ago when i was studying world war i and international and mystic politics. when i taught it to my survey students, they were much more interested in world war i. but now, with no such thing. we are attuned to the historical lessons we can learn from the most significant global pandemic comparable to our current one in 2020. i will give you a brief and hopefully compelling talk about that history. then, i'm going to telescope out and make comparisons to 2020 and think more globally. i will give you the u.s. story with international dimensions and we will pause to reflect on questions and historical comparisons. there was a roundtable

working on this subject. we don't always agree, but i'm surprised at how much consensus there is about the lessons you can learn from this. i'm going to give you this reef rundown of what happened in the pandemic of 1918 and then we will telescope in and out, so please keep your questions coming. one of the things i think is most important to consider when we go back to the 1918 moment, and here's where we need to look at social history -- the human suffering and human cost. i will talk a little bit about the numbers but one of the crucial things to understand is the story of people like victor von. figure, aascinating distinguished leader of american medicine, the dean of the university of medicine, in charge of the army medical services, founding editor of the journal of laboratory and medicine, served as a colonel in

the army, led the division of communicable diseases. here's a guy who has seen a lot of disease and death and he gets involved leading that division when the worst deadly second wave of the pandemic began in the fall of 1918. he traveled to massachusetts as part of a team appointed by the army surgeon general. he got there and was devastated by what he saw. this was a little outside of boston. it was far worse than any other communicable disease he had been involved with. they are placed on the cots until every bed is, yet others crowd in. cough brings up the blood. in the morning, the dead bodies are stacked at the morgue like cordwood. this is the sort of thing medical doctors were seeing at eric's throughout the fall of 1918 -- at barracks throughout

the fall of 2018. because the eric's were so ly connected to nearby committees, it almost medially got to the civilian population, despite what public health officials and army medical fissions awful said. -- often said. in terms of the human costs and suffering, the numbers are somewhat staggering. this is one of the things we need to think about when we think about the u.s. case. if we think about 1918, 1919 and the pandemic, the u.s. lost 675,000 people. order of 50 million around the world died, although there are some differences in terms of the estimates between 20 and 100 million. u.s., 20% to 30% of the population was infected.

the u.s. lost more soldiers to flu and pneumonia and other diseases than in combat in world war i. this was integrally connected to the war effort. that's the other piece to understand and think about. how did it begin? what happened? it all began in u.s. contact in winter, 1918. in march of 19 18 in kansas. you began to see widespread illness of a seemingly new type. in american troops mustering there, newly drafted or enlisted. recalled 12 men who left in my squadron, seven were ill at one time. like 24 of the 30 army overwhelmed in the spring of 1918.

there are a couple of different origin stories about the influenza virus and i will talk a little later about the spanish flu as it is sometimes called and what that meant. in the u.s. context, a lot of scholars now believe the viral version we think of as a pandemic version originated in kansas in february and march of 1918. there is an epidemiologist and others who track the virus to vietnam, china and france. of whenversion we think it spreads around the world comes out of kansas. and you can watch that move. for those of us who study presidential and u.s. history, you can watch this move through army records in particular. we've got amazing data on who got sick, when and why, and that's largely because of army data. if anyone says we don't have good information about how the flu spread, they are not looking the right places because we

historians know exactly where to look. you can get very fine-grained analysis. one of the things i note when we whyon the flu of 1918 and it is so comparable to today is it went around the world. a lot of historians have made different arguments related to that the world is effectively globalized before world war i. you see that playing out in terms of how this virus spreads. u.s. troops in particular are conduitsrance of transmission. they are vectors of disease. u.s. soldiers first begin arriving well before the pandemic in june of 1917, but the u.s. does not get its mobilization ramped up until 1918 in that roughly coincides with the spread of the flu. u.s. troops on railroads crisscross the nation, they brought the flu with them.

you can see it in local newspapers and i will show you a few as a we go. you can see the flu arrive in cities like portland here or philadelphia or dallas because it almost arrives with -- almost always arrives with u.s. soldiers, troop transmissions, civilian workers and that sort of thing. so i globalized world spread the pandemic in a way that previous ones did not. transmission of people and goods across borders, including for war, even in neutral countries spread the disease as well. looking around the world, what happened? kansas,s in march in 1918. by may, it is in shanghai. it is in algeria i june. australia issued strict quarantine policies but by 1919, australia has it as well. sydney was particularly hard-hit. it goes around the world within a year which is an amazing fact. it used to be very striking to

those of us who studied the pandemic but as we look at our current moment, it is remarkably similar to think about what happened from the disease outbreak in china to a worldwide declaration from the who in march of this year. war helps to explain the way the virus was transmitted. it also helps us understand a disease about why the was discussed and how what was discussed and recorded. major -- what some of the concerns were about talking about the virus or treating it or thinking more fully about the possibilities for taking informed public health measures. the u.s. enters the war in april, 1917. you can look at french forces near the western front. one thing that should stand out is this is the opposite of

social distancing being impressed upon all of us today as an essential way to stop the virus spread. the camps, trenches on the western front, if you can conjure images like that up, they absolutely were prone to spreader and a super spreader events. one thing that should stand out is that between the 1918 epidemic and today, one real significant contract is the overwhelming majority of those who died in 1918 through 1920, the overwhelming majority, something like one half or one third were in the eight teen to 45 age bracket. the influenza of that era disproportionally hit young and healthy people. their immune systems over respond, damaging their lungs and having them drown with fluid in their lungs. in a really horrific way.

the sort of thing dr. von embodied so well -- people were just dropping dead awfully fast. unlike our current pandemic which does not target the most healthy in terms of fatality rate. i'm a historian, not an epidemiologist. pleaser member a lot of the information i'm conveying realize on the great histories of others. i have a page of resources i will share at the end and we can share after the talk. another thing that is important to think about the wartime consequences and shaping of the flu response in lots of thetries, but particularly u.s. was patriotism. this may strike you as a contrast today or continuity and i welcome talking about this in the queue and day. we see the red cross women volunteers and workers making -- if i fail he dies.

also a martial language used to defeat the virus. we have heard some of that from president trump in terms of his invocation of the invisible enemy. language wekind of heard operationalize -- the fight against the virus, the terming of the nationstate concept, spain or spanish flu. trying to make visible the virus, washing hands, closure policies, and even wearing masks. perhaps a more insidious peace to that wartime story is nations like the united kingdom had passed legislation, in this case, the defense of the realm act in 1914, that censored the mail, that censored what the press could say and what was distributed in terms of information about a wide array of topics that might pertain to the war.

one of the key elements, communication in this case, is about limiting access to anything that might undermine the war effort. in the u.s. context, there were the espionage and sedition acts -- these were very famous in 1917, 1918. this headline from the national is aves says -- i think it new york times headline -- sedition bill has been signed, one of the most drastic measures ever to punish enemy agents. to eliminate anything that might undermine the war effort. so i am i mentioning this as a social history or political history? it meant journalists cannot talk about these outbreaks at the bases very much. they had to minimize what was going on at the aces. if you think of 24 of the 36 largest bases having a large-scale outbreak of viruses, that meant the troops were not combat effective.

how thisstand better possible communication about the ways of the virus and its fatalities might undermine the war efforts. so you saw a censoring of the press, limiting information about the outbreaks themselves. huge problemsthe in 1918, a lack of rapid, honest , continually updated leadership from nationstates, not just the u.s. and u.k. but combat and nations as well. this contextt in -- don't talk. that includes not just talking about elements of the war effort itself, but the draft, another

talked about, whether or not the draft was constitutional. it had not really been tested. mobilizing millions of people for the war, many folks, including socialists -- socialist candidate eugene debs spoke out against the draft, say not everyone should have to serve, it might not even be constitutional to force them to serve. he was thrown in jail for a speech he gave saying that. that's another example the way the war limited speech both about about health issues and dissent in the time of war. another limitation worth us thinking about and we hear this again today and have heard it in a lot of countries and the u.s., our ways of minimizing the virus. this was more true in march or asil than it is today, but the virus spread even into the middle of october when that deadly second wave when the

plurality of american deaths happened, into the fall's deadly second wave in the u.s., you saw documents like this -- spanish influenza is a three-day fever. a new name for an old disease. there had been previously a big 1889, and here you see widely distributed information coming from the department of public health, the surgeon general, where he says the same old grip that swept over the world time and again, don't worry about it. modern medical care will help handle this. you see this well into the fall and that creates a lot of problems in the u.s. because americans don't know what to do, which policies to adopt at the local, state, and federal level even. but they also don't know what information to trust. i will show you some more images

from the era about that. another piece of the puzzle is about where it came from. lots of us historians have had to talk about lately is should we call flus by their nation or city of origin and what does that mean since viruses are global or not limited to nationstates? why was it called the spanish flu? some of you may know this, but the main reason is the wartime nations were censoring their presses. the war. neutral in king alfonso the 13th at the nation out of the war effort, though they had some direct ties in austro hungary in their aristocracy. lots of nations in europe did. they kept out of the war effort, king, aay of 1918, the number of other major figures in elite circles in spain came down

with the flu and the spanish press started treating this with coverage. there are accounts where man is walking down the street and felt congested in his chest, falls down and is dead within a day. though that sounds sensational, very similar accounts we have from the u.s. of incredibly strong people, men, all american football players, one of the strongest lumberjacks in the pacific northwest, cutting down trees for the war effort, they would just fall down dead. the spanish press covering this when it came out, you saw first the british press covered this thethey use terms like hygiene and environment in spain were giving rise to this flu or the spanish were not able to deal with it because of their society. racist, heavily

racialized terms. you can google it yourself. more widely in the anglo american press. you wind up seeing u.s. and british spending a lot more time calling it the spanish flu. it has become the spanish flu. 1918, much less around the world, they understood the origins of the flu were not in spain. a racialized, nationalist version of this group caught on. another thing worth noting is the spanish called it french flu. they blamed french workers coming from the war effort. the germans called the russian past. russians called by several other names, including a chinese flu. so you see something we have urge toay, this

weaponize and nationalize a flu or virus. perhaps to diminish it or perhaps to better operationalize a way forward despite -- to fight the virus. as we are thinking through the find on theu also french andmber of british posts do have significant flu outbreaks throughout springs into the -- spring into the summer of 1918. what most of them note is the british navy, some 10,000 troops , sailors go down with the flu, but only something like four or five die. posts of theew french where everyone is sick but very few die. then in late summer, something seems to change. it changes in the reporting and the intelligence we get from

u.s. and british sources that we can look at -- look back on now. and it changes in the virulence of the virus. by late summer 1918, in places known to u.s. and the dish to have good medical care, you found widespread disease. it was knocking out more people not just from combat effectiveness but they were either recovered but they had such lung damage they could not live very well or they were for tallies to the disease. what you see in this moment, what is interesting to look on his british and american intelligence officers are reporting back in documents marked secret and confidential, saying things like the disease that is now epidemic throughout switzerland is what is commonly known as the black flag or --

black plague or influenza and we must deal with this now. the affliction has resurfaced in a significant form. they are worried about the combat effectiveness of troops and to take the virus seriously. but, anyone who knows anything story, the wartime imperatives come as you might imagine and may well understand triumphed over that. troops in the u.s. as bring back from france that verlander form to east coast port cities involved in the war, new york, philadelphia, boston, you see americans taking the advice of the surgeon general and public health officials, despite warnings and lots of states, going ahead with major events, going ahead with business as usual. september 20 8, 19 18, the philadelphia liberty loan

parade. the largest parade to date in philadelphia history. this was a moment to sell liberty loan funds to support the war. the u.s. attempted to finance its conflict on the back of it citizens through things like bonds. we no longer do that, which is an interesting thing to think about as well. here's the image of an aircraft whole traveling down a parade route in phil adelphia. what you may know about what comes next is how horrific that super spreader event was. doctors urge public health officials and the mayor to cancel the parade. they are fearful that hundreds of thousands of people jammed onto the route would be a problem. huge one.rse it was a two days after the parade the director of public health said something as follows -- i will paraphrase -- now present in the civilian population is some type

be panicut let's not stricken over exaggerated reports. on the other hand, you look at details like this -- the philadelphia evening bulletin reported in some families are none left to take care of burying their dead and others are unable to bury them or cannot get undertakers. cousin and infant dead in a few hours. really horrific. the parade, it got much worse. hospitals quickly fill up. they built up hospitals and you are getting 700 plus people dying in one day at its worst. priests who drove horse-drawn carriages and horses to pick up the bodies could not keep up. that's how bad it got. what historians had been hollering about since march and public health officials had also. there is a report on the cdc website about the history of the pandemic -- this is what we think about when we think about

foot all games, parades, large-scale activities. philadelphia could not keep up. in the modern parlance, the curve could not be flattened and the city was early -- was utterly devastated. across the country, public health officials continued along those lines and that is one thing we learned. the surgeon general said there's no cause for alarm if cautions are observed. president of the west philadelphia medical association it ---- how could the image of the young girl with the mortally ill sister, in that case. the editors of the philly inquirer say orders went too far.

this is eerily reminiscent of our current moment -- shutting down schools largely promoting an unreasonable amount of fear. see an anti-spitting campaign. on the lower part, later in the pandemic, someone being brought into the hospital by police who are police who are masked toward you saw conflicting information and people worrying about similar things to today. the question of whether the measures to stop the virus where worst than the virus itself. wasadelphia seemingly proven that the virus was terrible and even within philadelphia, you see this kind of information. i am often asked, what about the economy? height of the the deadliest wave of the pandemic, several hundred thousand died in six weeks, as bad as it gets. here is the wall street journal.

some parts of the country, a decrease in production of 50% and almost everywhere is falling off. loss of trade in which retail merchants have met with very large. impairment has been noticeable. the war does not end until november. there has never been such domination by an epidemic as has been the case with this one. at this point, most cities had closure orders, but not all and essential activity was still war work. industrial plans were open making munitions, tanks, all sorts of things. in those industries, you sought of folks not 60% showing up to work. making a risk calculation about whether it was inth it to go into work

those essential industries. you can imagine how other industries that were less essential where having significant problems. one of the lessons historians take from this moment -- you can see this in other countries, not just the u.s. -- there is no such thing as business as usual during a pandemic. almost regardless of what public health measures are undertaken, whether they are voluntary or mandatory, people make choices about their lives, loved ones who may be prone to being sick, people who are fearful. some people needed to work and that is another reason why in this moment, the pandemic fell disproportionately on people of lower socioeconomic status, often people of color and indigenous communities. we will talk about that as well. these are the folks that you saw showing up, here is the st. ,ouis red cross motor core

ambulance teams getting ready for their work. another piece of the puzzle was that most male doctors had been drafted during the war effort and there were lots of nurses as well overseas, so there was a nursing shortage and a medical staff shortage that was part of that moment, there were lots of calls for more nurses and medical care in that era. another thing to think about, you see so many images of the red cross and voluntary organizations, though the red cross emerges as a public-private hybrid. american expectations were different in this era. citizens around the world did not think the government would necessarily provide for their medical care, they fell back on community resources, church groups, other organizations in state and local ones like the red cross to help out in times like this. ,n cities like philadelphia

those were overwhelmed in many of these groups -- if you look here, you can surmise -- these 18-45, ably women demographic likely to be hit hardest. you had a lot of medical professionals and volunteers getting sick, further exacerbating the problem that was there. documented,ns have this led to a loneliness, alienation, and fear by other people. thehe pandemic goes on, beginning of 1919, you have relatively healthy people no longer being willing to help their older relatives or neighbors because they have seen how many young people have been killed very fast. there was less volunteering. is atory that comes out the midwest,rom

southwest, east coast, west coast, people being so fearful and challenged by this moment that they say things like -- here is an account -- we were almost afraid to breathe, we were afraid to go out. people were actually afraid to leave their homes, afraid to talk to one another. i kept example, if people apart, you had no school life, no church life, you have nothing, it destroyed all family and community life. when each day dawned, you did not know whether you would be there when the sunset that day. internal reports from organizations amplify this. the american red cross concluded that fear and panic akin to terror of the middle ages regarding the black plague has been prevalent in virtually every community in the u.s. and

that is another element that is interesting and i think global and human. i have talked with psychologists and one thing people are seeing in other countries is this fear has been effected itself in social relations around the world and it is a kind of unique thing that we rarely see, everyone around the world would be experiencing something pretty much in real time and that is something we have not paused to reflect on much and there may be longer consequences. let's talk about nonpharmaceutical intervention. this is a term for social distancing and all that sort of stuff. on the left, the philadelphia inquirer after that parade, virtually nothing there about the disease. a few days later, two weeks nursing haltsfic during the epidemic, deaths now

on decreasing scale. an enormous number. what happened? you have probably thought about this. in cities like philadelphia where you had that parade, you can see the first case arrives 11 days before the parade in the port of philadelphia and then you see that a spreader event, prettyacts -- tracks neatly, how horrific the case is, versus other cities that did better. st. louis, their chief medical officer was upset with infectious diseases and had been following what had been going on in the east coast, empowered by the mayor, and puts on significant closure policies rapidly and keep that on for a while. the rapid, complete closure policies that happen in st. louis and the long-duration help

explain the difference in these two curves. here is another way of looking at it. september 28, when that parade happens, the norm is uptick that comes after that -- enormous uptick that comes after that. st. louis has a prolonged duration but it is so much lower and considered a success. one of the things to think about, the way this will operate for us all in the fall when there is likely to be a second wave, which is just around the corner, or perhaps in the winter or spring. three waves toy the influenza pandemic and we are looking at going into a second wave now, you might argue, assuming we have ended the first. what happened in other cities? what can we learn? there is st. louis. denver, pittsburgh, similar

phenomenons. events, not as big as the philadelphia one, but a comparable moments. we willpens in denver, talk about any moments. another piece of the puzzle is what happened in pittsburgh with thateak in one element to which is useful to think about is that they closed in a layered strategy. there was a powerful catholic lobby in the city and they wanted to keep the parochial schools open, so public schools close but not parochial schools. they had more exemptions for masses and other activities, sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. the argument by public health scholars is that is partly why you saw the first peak at a second in october, the layered strategy of closing was not a

good one. the lesson historians note is if you are going to close, close completely and keep that on. if you are going to open, open in a phased strategy, don't open completely. , a piece clear lessons on this, you can see comparative cities. let's talk about denver. what happened in denver? this is what we are seeing in the u.s. today. there was a premature reopening, instead of lobby groups, we now call them the amusement lobby like billiard halls, theaters, restaurants. they pushed hard to reopen. as they saw some disease going down, as demonstrated in the hospitalizations and what doctors are reporting, they thought they could, so they start to reopen.

as they reopen at the end of october, what you find is they have not done enough to get rid of -- they are not fully following data. ist they are operating on market logic, hoping to get businesses back up and running. that is what we have seen in the u.s. and other parts of the world, that combined with one other factor that no one knew was coming, armistice day, lots of people went out into the streets, whether or not they were allowed, and when the war and theyey had parties met with other people in places where they were wearing masks, they threw them off, and in lots of cities, but especially places like denver that had begun reopening, you see a second peak. this is part and parcel of the lessons public health scholars take from this moment. don't prematurely reopen.

you are never going to know for sure but this data suggests you need to get to lower numbers and as you have probably been following, there are recommended thresholds for reopening in cities like denver in 1918 did not follow them in part because they did not know them but in part because they were led by folks who hoped to get back to business as usual. it did not work out. about, thing to think think about what happened over these different periods. the 10 week. period, the10 week first 10 weeks from september 8 adoptednovember 23, nonpharmaceutical interventions, closing schools, businesses, limiting people on public transit, practicing hand hygiene, using ventilation tactics, opening windows, cleaning spaces, then

eventually, into the fall, you begin to see the mask mandates. what you see our cities that or arecond peaks particularly hard hit philadelphia, pittsburgh, and what you want to see is dallas. i will tell you about that shortly. let me lead into that story for you. a machine youeft, disinfect nasal passages. these were used in military camps. there is a picture of that happening there. these are some of the bits of information that were suggested by the surgeon general presented on the front page in october of 1918. we know what happened in dallas 24,exas, we know september

the national press was covering escalating influenza on the east coast, dallas' main health official warned his community to expect that it was coming. he was not wrong because closer were reportedases among soldiers at camp logan near houston, you saw outbreaks in san antonio which was slow to react. in an attend to contain these epidemics, medical officials try to quarantine camps. another thing we saw was quarantining camps did not work well. t -- tegularly left roops regularly left or got unlucky with you they encountered and that went into civilian populations. if you think about sports, bubbles work, but anything short of that, even a 99% quarantine does not work and that is what

happened in a lot of these camps. the case in dallas, by december, there were three days of -- in dallas and as you go one, by october 3, dallas had 119 cases including some young folks like a 15-year-old who died at st. paul's hospital. you had hospitals beginning to isolate cases and physicians are adopting strategies from the east coast like ventilation, trying to keep people apart. they worked rapidly, called special meetings to close schools. by the middle of october, public health officials in dallas like in other places were divided on how rapidly to close things. as cases mounted in schools and hospitals in social settings, that is when they started that.

we can talk more about it but the point is that actually, ultimately, historians who study thatclosely suggest despite very our agents -- variations in figures, it is hard to know what the cases where because the flu was not a reportable disease. some people would die of something called a heavy cold or have it reported as the grip and not influenza. it is clear that dallas fared better than most cities at the time in part because of that -- september 24 is when they start talking about this, that parade in philadelphia is september 28. dallas officials were thinking about this more rapidly than others. the epidemic death rate in 250as was in the range of to 511 per 1000, lightly closer

to the low number. dallas weathers the epidemic better than other cities. better than new orleans, birmingham, most midwestern communities, st. louis even. some people ask, who got the flu? babe ruth got the flow, among others. the world series ended early because of the flu. he cut it, came back from its pretty rapidly. franklin roosevelt got the flu on a ship in september. time, healthythe individuals, more prone to get this. it.919, were joe wilson got -- woodrow wilson got its. -- got it.

that is a hypothesis wilson's stroke, if it was that, was related to the flu, which, as we know now, some of the cardiovascular problems can lead to strokes and blood clots. you are probably thinking about sports. university of oregon football star, so many of the football starts of that era had been drafted, went off to fight in the war, and that was a big piece of that moment, there was no professional football, so college football was the main thing. the baseball season concluded and many people wanted to see football games. unlike now, they could not go. to see the game. a fair number of colleges did play. games were canceled in cities with big outbreaks, so lots of teams did not have full records.

many conferences canceled, but they did play. they often played without fans, though in some cases, they played with fans wearing masks. cup was another example. draw andup ended in a that is because most of the communities in the midst of this , they were too sick to play. completed, series not because of the flu. this is one of the things we worry about when we think about soccer or football, baseball, all the sports out there, what will happen if a number of players get the virus? can they continue? baseball played some games in masks. , on a big baseball fan. baseball players played en masse

-- in masks. season started officially, they were not playing in masks. a couple more images and global takeaways as we get to the q&a. some of theabout other comparisons, flu causes and cures, how to make your own masks, this is similar to our current ways in which we have tried to personalize and individualize how this is done, how the press talks about what we can do to make agency in a moment of uncertainty. example of the ways in which ways things work them. one thing in the u.s., large-scale facilities full of people who were sick. new york's, -- new york, they

built the javits center. thatnurse on that porch, is what ray medical hospital. , weaponization of the flu. has endangeredza the prosecution of the war in europe. this kind of injunction against that. i did mention the techniques happening in that moment, we can talk more about it later. inpatients taken outside -- patients taken outside. if you think about how we are being encouraged to go outdoors, do socially distant barbecues or have our kids play, that is a piece of this puzzle that they knew about then. medicalmasks, officials, people staying outside. you see another set, a way to grapple with it. a world war i era tenement.

one thing that happened in a lot of cities, seattle is an example, when schools were closed, teachers were sent out to teach home economics, to teach ventilation strategies and hygiene. they knew the disease could be spread on door handles and surfaces. open windows and ventilate less heighty to get --age in the way we we would the way we would think about it. staffing crises, this is a big problem. spanish influenza hampering operations. we can't even call out groups of people, agricultural workers and folks to talk about what is going on because there is so much disease in the community from oklahoma, philadelphia, a similar phenomenon related to

the government and the role of the flu. saw this sort of framing, the police and military providing the optics of mask wearing in a patriotic push forward. you saw this in other walks of life, civil servants and other workers, and something similar to what we see today, mask mandates and other mandates. see a conductor telling someone not wearing a mask they cannot ride on public transit and that is a piece of the story from that era that resonates with us today. lots of what happens that is comparable happened on the west coast and is well documented. san francisco is a great case study, they had courts outside. we think social distancing but they thought, at least they are outside and did not know about viral transmission the way we do today. barbershops, they

have masks. masks inside for barbershops in cincinnati. farther in the fall, people don't want to be outside in the cold and that is part of why we worry about what a second wave will look like, but masks and other distancing can help in that is something they were pursuing. outsidewere being held in 1919, that is a physics class being held adjacent to a football stadium or outdoor sports and rec facility. i can't imagine we professors want to do outdoor classes but anything is possible to minimize the spread in that is what you saw in trying to get back to some level of normalcy in 1918. trips on a ship watching a staged boxing match, also all in masks. moment, an important

there was buy-in from the armed forces and other agents of the government. there was lots about information that i would love to talk about, i'm trying to give you a quick walk through this. one of my favorites is this, the flu travels to the mouthpiece of the telephone. not me so much. continuous smoking ought to start the flu. this gets to a more serious point, big take away, the surgeon general argued there is no cause for alarm if precautions are observed. their, we find in writings, personal letters, memoirs, they did not know which advice to heed. you see you should not talk on the phone, you should smoke constantly, which one, is it vicks vapor rub, is it gargling saltwater, is it getting a vaccine which did not work? which one is it? is it all of the above? proactive policies where the keys to thinking about that

moment and that is why historians say it is similar to today. nonpharmaceutical interventions, closing schools, churches, theaters. health commissioners making sure communities practice social distancing. those sort of operations. trying to communicate what the risks were. that came too late for a lot of the u.s., but it is never too late is one lesson. here is what is was -- here is what was going on in oregon, one terrible example. you can watch the first disorders from seattle bring the disease down to oregon through the camps and on the coast, 120 cases at fort stevens, it got to other coastal towns. when undertaker got sick and was unable to take care of the bodies. as bodies mounted up, it seemed to hit children disproportionately hard and in

particular, the city cried out that they were unable to build enough child-sized coffins. when historians, public health officials look at this moment, medical facilities overwhelmed, this is what we think of, civilians succumbing to the disease in numbers that was impossible to carry on. third to half of the county came down with the fall -- with the flu in the fall. how do you carry on? that is what we see account after accounts. one of my favorite things they said was it is easier to prevent than to cure. if you follow that nonpharmaceutical intervention, if you are distant, if you do hand hygiene, you can prevent it. it is harder to cure. a little more on faith to be opening, lifting closure orders,

embargoes,, a lot of cities were eager to do this, and this is how we contract the data related to that phase to be opening, following data and not our desire to go out to restaurants, seemed to minimize spread and allowed places that did that more slow, phase 3 opening after a longer closure -- phased reopening after a longer closure, cities like philadelphia come out ok after finally closing fully. here are more examples, the , gradualopening's reopenings taking place, including sports. here are other examples. no reason to believe it originated in spain, sometimes people think that is true, this is coming from the primary sources of that era. i will conclude with some

takeaway remarks. you are probably thinking about it. november is coming fast, what happens if you have an election in a pandemic? is that possible? sure is, we have done it before. inre were midterm elections 1918, woodrow wilson never mentioned the pandemic, no speeches about the pandemic at all. he made the war the key to what he hoped the democratic party would do in that election cycle, his prosecution of the war and bring it almost to conclusion, it bound up in a lost referendum, republicans get a bunch of seats. there is a low turnout. polling places where the quietus within memory. some places did not open at all. turnout, relatively few is one key. the election did not map on as neatly to partisan perspectives

on the virus as we see today. what you see is the saloon versus the church and the ways in which the two parties were geting which areas should close first or reopen first. some religious sentiment or anti-semitism or anti-conflict sentiment,i-catholic you are about to get prohibition coming out of this. politics of parties in different regions, what got provigil with the virus asked what got privileged with the virus. out bonbons in a polling place in new york. warren harding ran on an america first platform coming out of the pandemic and out of world war i, pushing a kind of restriction to

immigration, return to normalcy, return to normalcy, returned to society. we also saw pushback, protest and reemergence in that area. you may have heard about the anti-mask leak, and organize league in san francisco in 1919 that pushback against mask requirements that were mandatory. the anti-mask leak was the only real organized one in the u.s.. we see 4500 listed. you see the mayor of san francisco saying no, we are convinced it is working and we are not taking off the mask ordinance. if you look at the data death and disease go down after the mask ordinances were put on. but it is unclear whether and how much the masks matter. the key argument for the anti-masters much like today was that their liberty was at stake and this was a liberty -- abridgment of liberty to be forced to wear anything at any time, and they questioned

whether they were really doing the sanitary work that they supposedly did. and there was pushback and there was pushback to the pushback. if you have an ordinance as a requirement there were fines and at some cases there were fines of significant jail time, several weeks, a significant dollar amount. and there were a number of accounts which i can talk about of mask slackers being held on charges of disturbing the peace because they refused to wear masks. shooting,at least one there were several times weapons were discharged in attempted apprehension of the people who would not wear masks and insisted on writing public transit or going into businesses , going into court facilities was another thing people dead. the mask slacker language is something worth noting. the same as the wartime concept of draft slackers. those who do not do their wartime duty who do not go into the draft or join the military were thought of as slackers, to their patriotic duty. and the press took that same

language. and many americans talked about it in terms of mask slacking, that your duty was to wear your mask and keep your community safe, not just yourself. this was similarly seen in lots of great cartoons of the era, try to normalize that behavior. there's a great one and we can come back to this. even the horses are wearing them, says the kid as they're walking with her mask and this is from fort wayne indiana. trying to teach people and regular and normalize even kissing through masks, other behaviors to best. or trying to teach your father or grandparents, another similar thing we see a lot in the cartoons of the era. you're probably familiar with this. the phenomenon of people who will not take precautions. the mask is one example. again, very similar in that 1918 moment. bosch, you will not catch me wearing one.

and then the urgency to go ahead and wear masks. another element if you think about going ahead through the christmas season, in december you see all the shoppers out wearing masks and again this is from indiana and you also see the germs, the microbes. i threat this holiday shopping will be our chance to get them, but these infernal masks spoil at all. you see germ theory. see mask concepts. to some extent martial language being manifested in this moment. finally, economic and political effects. there is not that much data but as i mentioned before, merchants and the city suggested that their businesses declined 40% to 70%. there's a big decrease in mind and a steel output, 50% or more. i need saw significant recession. there was a readjustment after the war, 1990. -- 1919.

one of the largest recessions in history where there was rampant inflation, 1919-1921. the roaring 20's this an allusion and there are episodic downturns. there was some reference to the pandemic and the election of 1920, a return to normalcy, immigration restriction, xenophobia, more isolationist turn in american politics and society. of social9, arise tumult. people who had bought into the war effort, african-american soldiers, white laborers, poles, irish and italians, they wanted what they were promised when they took lower wages and works more hours. see you get the biggest field strikes in u.s. history. in this area you see the boston police go on strike, and get fired by calvin coolidge, all of them. is he rides and race riots. you see african american strike breakers called in to beat up

white strikers in places like syracuse, turning into racial lines. up through 1921, the tulsa massacre. historians expect there is a relationship between the social tumult of influenza which killed .6% of u.s. population, 675,000 americans, and the wartime experience with things that came after. so we wonder how similar is this moment? how can we get past that? without succumbing towards. data, thinking global and thinking this moment. 2020 data.d-august, if you look at total deaths and total population. a much lower percentage of the population has been killed u.s.,, .05% in the thankfully we have not suffer that much. yet we have suffered terribly. we are moving toward 200,000

deaths in the u.s.. if you look to the world population. global a kind of range,ies in the 2.7% now,e have .01% globally and this comfort my colleague thomas ewing. one thing that stands out is this one here. i want us to think about this. microscope and telescope the u.s. in 1918 and 2020. if you look at influenza deaths in the world and the u.s.. in the u.s. percent of world population versus covid. and is really striking, astounding frankly. when you look at the comparison. the u.s. percentage of world population is 4.2%, yet we were out 21.9% of world deaths -- and

yet we are at 21.9% of world deaths from covid. it is a staggering, striking change. i have more things and you have heard a lot for me. it is a sweeping set of comparisons to the present. and i think it is important for us to take account of the social history, the human suffering and the political and social public health questions and tells in that. falls disproportion on people of lower socioeconomic status, viral outbreaks, death and disease, even though viruses transcend all borders and peoples, groups, races and every thing else. may insight. -- main insights. whether cancellations and postponements of large gatherings, school closures, anti-crowded, they worked well. they slow the spread. as we see today.

that entered the war attempted to control information. woodrow wilson did not speak about the war and public information saw to minimize and hide infection and risk. in service of the war effort and the war was won, and that was a positive benefit but it came at the cost of more infection and death. that met citizens were ill-informed, right? the examples i gave about people being fearful dominated their social interactions and lives in ways we are seeing in some ways today's. but also left to destruction government and messaging from federal and other officials. there was more trust in local officials, public health officials and mayors in st. louis who did a good job against that of public health officials in philadelphia. lessons we can learn, honest information. rapid is important. layered closures do not work well. closing the door abruptly does. reopening more gradually.

tracking data and disease and being ready to close at any moment is most important. in the final thing, in the u.s., the main actions were local, by mayors, governors and health officials. there were not on the federal government. just like 2020, local government has been where the action has been. finally a set of recommended resources, lots of great stuff. i have some articles and there are amazing books and articles. the free influenza archives in the university of michigan. the library of congress, and a bunch of others. let's see if jeff and i can have a good conversation. >> i cannot allay talk, i can see myself. that was great. and distressing. so we have a ton of questions and i know i have a ton of questions myself but i'm go to

ask you first, big picture one historian to another. why do we talk about this? -- why don't we talk about this? i'm about to lecture toward world war i and i think maybe the word flu might come out of my mouth but it might be a sense. obviously this year i would talk about it more but if more people died from this little united states than the united states lost in world war i and in war were to? -- world war i and world war ii, why do we talk about this more? christopher: that is a great question. historians often talk about this is the forgotten virus. unforgotten moment in u.s. history. -- and a forgotten moment in u.s. history. first of all, they're wrong. you can look at literature. the article i put together shows how literature in the 1920's and 30's 1940's is full of references. you just need to look for.

people have trouble walking upstairs. people of memories of being locked inside homes. toot of these references long issues or family members departed too soon, they are not necessarily lost generation references to the war but there about the flu. we often poured into that the perspective that it must be door. i succumbed to that myself sometimes. it is there. it is not totally forgotten. unlike the war, they are not memorials for the. in the 1920's you see a lot of sports, under no fit is true in smu but i've been in dallas. i bet there's a memorial coliseum that has origins in world war i were playing sports. we see a lot of that coming out of the flu in the closure policies. memorializing the war. but actually doing something that was lost because of the pandemic, not the war. those war memorials sometimes have a direct reference to the pandemic, you just need to look

for it. why else did we talk about? some of the -- why else didn't we talk about it? you heard my historians heavily qualified language. due to the rise and tumble coming out of the work are they more attribute of two dislocations of the pandemic or the pandemic itself? how do you disaggregate the two? the simpler is your answer is always the war. but it may not be the right one. the reason you have to say flu even when you say readjustment or demobilization or the question of labor activism coming out of the war along the same lines. another thing that is interesting there is i wrote about this a few times was that my fellow historians of this era in the first half of the 20th century all say what you just set. why don't i talk more about the flu? one of the things as they did not have the resources, frankly. now so much has been scanned in the last decade or so. al the images i did, i give

long talk because it is amazing to look at this and track it over time. now you have the resources. i will send my files. you can do 20 minutes on the flip. jeff: forget it, i'm going to send them to you and i don't have to teach that day. great. let me drill down on the mobilization and i'm not quick to judge the answer to this which is whether or not you have been watching the democratic and republican convention. vice president pence said several times in his speech, something that i thought was patently obviously false. it was not what anyone else in the country was worried about except for historians. he said several times speaking to the relief workers, first responders of our day, 2020, we will not forget you. and i said, oh yes we will. there is no historic evidence we will room ever these people at all. i'm curious if the fact that we have, our interconnected world, if you think there's any reason

to think that is going to change from how we have prioritized or just over pandemic deaths? christopher: that is a really good insight. it is sharp. i wonder, there's a thing that has happened in a lot of cities where at 7:00 p.m. people applaud and thank medical workers. it is an international phenomenon. in a way that we do not see that related to medical workers in 1919.nd 1990-- 1918 adn i wonder if those practices will have a long echo, as we have been doing them electorally the way we do not. -- doing the collectively and away we did not do them in the past. but the incredible suffering and death is a must always glazed. -- localized. 1918 interesting about moment and today, is tragic. since i started getting talks on this to me i'll just have been

getting in touch -- epidemiologist having getting in touch. we talk about viral loads and that can mean you get a worst-case. medical foes tend to get worse, or are more likely to -- medical folks tend to get worse or are more likely to. and that seems to be the case in 1918. i wonder if memorializing medical deaths, pivoting as worktime, that marshall language, rather than the suffering of the men do of those who are dying at home. -- of the individuals who are dying at home. one of the worst cases, aleutian islanders and eskimos is were horribly - there is a village of 80 people and 72 are dead. when the red cross workers got their incomes of anybody's decomposing they were not sure was 11 he was dead. many of the red cross workers

then got terrible viruses coming out of the they were also sick. storya story, terrible that is only heard in red cross history. it is not even in your typical history of the flu pandemic to some extent. lot it in way of affirming your point. i cannot imagine memorializing frontline workers in this very long. on the other hand, an interesting narrative about this moment, is the most rapid global march to a vaccine in science development -- and research science and a velvet. -- research science and development. and then production. billions of doses as fast as ever in history, and the heroes being whoever invents that if you can do the production, maybe vigils or just vigils or businesses or university, i can imagine those people being celebrated, like soft and will

-- like salk and polio. jeff: yes himself or herself. you have a bunch of questions. you have been alluding to disparate deaths and lethality of the 1918 had something compared to ours -- pandemic compared to ours. as a historian i'm confused because i say to myself, what day had and to be on a and ventilators, how many people would have died -- what if they had antibiotics and ventilators? howdy people would have died? cannot just comedy people have say is morei really lethal or are we better at dealing with it? christopher: as a story and i cannot say and i don't think our medical establishment can come up with clear answer that. bubbly if we see the south are

there -- probably out farther. there are good medical account that slain the viral changes or mutations that talk about the deadly second wave which is so much worse. in the first wave all the british soldiers and ellis are sick if you die. desperate soldiers and sailors are sick but few die. and then when it comes back across the atlantic and atlantic rebound, much worst. at first i thought we are using the same medical treatment strategies. what is interesting is 1918 is -- 2020, closures and no good treatment strategies. first they were throwing every thing at covid and nothing to work in some exacerbated the disease. issense of the data for 1918 not the proportionate deaths of healthy people versus our

ability today to cordon off are most at risk people, is the biggest inference. -- the biggest difference. should a large society and the world today not be able to cordon off its most direct people, you might see much higher fertility rates than we are, since we do not yet -- much higher fatality rates, since we do not yet have treatment or vaccine. if all your hospitals are full you're going to have more deaths, and they did. jeff: interesting, what are the other questions has to do with politics of this. two questions. mentioned does not become a partisan issue in 1918 in the same way it does today. explain. i wanted to say more about trying to interpret the 1918 election in this context. the way i tell the story and think almost all of the foreign relations guys tell the story is

water wells and campaigns on vote for me -- woodrow wilson says vote for me the congressional election to ratify my views on foreign policy, and he loses. i'm thinking from judging from iona area, puke dust judging from iona arians -- i am thinking, judging on my own experiences people are not happy now. and when not happy they take it out on incumbents. do, ats wilson able to least in the senate? christopher: one of the things that surprised me the most though it should not as a student of foreign politics and policy is how partisan this public health moment has become, in part because the history of public health is not been particularly partisan. some agencies are, we can be about fema or political appointees being not up to the task. that is one thing. ont the response would map

to party politics at the individual level and my decision to socially distance or deny, that it would have any close correlation to my party affiliation or voting patterns? it is noto me necessarily logical. being diplomatic about it. indicative.ent is public-health expectations of citizens were lower than. they were not taking the wilson administration would be the leader on this. , they wereied uncertain about how to respond since i got different information. -- since they got different information. and they were suffering in places where it was worse before the election. the main piece of the puzzle is what you said, the war. famously, wilson campaigned in i was notworld war popular in the u.s..

in roughly 11 states the national guard was called out because was that much draft dodging going on, which is why you get that draft slacker concept which maps onto that mask slacker concept of doing your patriotic good. the war was not over by the 11 ison, november armistice. we finished the election cycle. absent the pandemic, i wonder. certainly it depressed turnout, depending on which clinical science outlet -- political science outlook you look at is the depressed turnout between 10% and 40%, very significant. not that remarkable because it is a midterm election. back to pretty normal turnout despite the fact that there is still lingering flu and that season. that is usually thought of as

the first continual wave of this version of the flu, as opposed to another wave in another itself, the first season if you will. what was the second part? how do i pivot from partisan mapping on? it's not even a counterfactual, it is so ridiculous. if the american people are not suffering through a flu and they are about to win a war, the war was in its final days or it seemed like it was going closer to the end than the beginning. that sounds like a recipe for voting for the party in power? and of course the party in power gets voted out for different purposes. is it just the misery of the american people that makes that critical delta? christopher: it is interesting. it is close. is not that many seats the republicans win, but there on

their way back to taking over with harding in 1920. deals with ideas and u.s. foreign policy. one reason i got interested in this topic was because i was writing on dissent politics in the south. and the interesting overlap between socialists in the south rejecting the war effort, and anti-work southern democrats, who are firebreathing segregationist, usually democrats, some republicans, who are also against the war. they think it is against american interests and they don't want to send their offspring, their constituents out. that a hard time reconciling that with the kind of martial sensibility that is there southern honor culture, that also comes out with the civil war. seet was very odd to me to

one problem was you could not hold as many rallies, late into the fall. the kinds of campaigning at the grassroots up level that you need, presidents do not campaign much back then, but lower-level politicians went out a lot, and you cannot do as much because of the influenza pandemic. it wound up being, easy republicans win, in my opinion when more and be less -- and more appealing end democrat be less appealing because of disillusionment with the war, and a broader set of leases -- a beliefs that does not tend to make it into our lectures. that, not only is the war really unpopular, but americans really question the role of the u.s. is a world leader. from my perspective, that helps explain why the u.s. or the senate rejects the treaty of versailles, doesn't want the u.s. to be in the league of nations, there is reason to think americans like the abstract idea of the lake --

the league, as written about in victory without power. but as americans hear more about that, and wilson cannot campaign on that, they rejected. the war and american reluctance to take leadership role in the world and be embroiled in four, flicked is a bigger -- foreign conflict is a bigger piece of that story. jeff: it is amazing he is not remembered for the flu. as you point out maybe we should not be surprised by that. it is something he does not mention. and something nobody expected him to mention. the fact that we expect fellow anponse today and we expect opinion on every locality today no matter what state constitutions say, is that a only tell us, will of the federal government and

president has become more powerful over time? and that federalism has changed in american perception? christopher: great question. what perplexed me bout this moment is this is the most powerful u.s. federal government has argued really ever been. you can say maybe the union in the civil war. the wilson administration has price controls, troops mobilized. the federal structures we think of of the imperial presidency are much more president -- much more present in the wilson administration than teddy roosevelt or mckinley, expand in the spanish-american war, etc. that they don't exercise that power, that wilson does not exercise the power is fascinating. that there was not an empowered surgeon general and public-health infrastructure at the federal level is also interesting. coming out of the pandemic, internationally, canada developed public health infrastructure. and public-health. the u.s. has not.

the u.s. developed so fast the classic anecdote is your calling the agricultural service sector in d.c. from nebraska, nobody picks up the phone because it has been disconnected, that is how fast the st mobilizes. federal government eat those continues in public health is asters and wars after and is indicative -- public health disasters and wars after and it is indicative of that moment. wilson did not issue a public speech about the pandemic. it is killing hundreds of thousands of americans. he is laser focused on world war i. he is the first president to travel abroad. he goes to paris and people come out. all he cares about is really the war at the point. and everything else falls to the wayside. so i think he deserves a lot of scorn frankly, if you want to judge harshly you can for not handling this better. in fact, here's a telling

detail. when u.s. troop ships arrive in france in late summer and fall, they are met by ambulances and hearses, because of the number of american troops who suffered and died on the course of going across the atlantic. that was never publicly reported, partly out of censorship, and partly out of patriotism, that you can understand why that would happen. that is how tragic it is. the same is true when they're coming back, and being debt commission or getting leave, and there -- or being decommissioned are getting leave their met by ambulances, or being quarantined outside the port, something gets leave and a couple of mps come from the night suddenly the virus is everywhere. that is a place where you can judge harshly. and that is all for the war effort. also the war effort. one reason i emphasize the war and marshall language so much as it does get imported into the public health response.

but it surprisingly wilson administration does not more rapidly pivot and say it's your patriotically duty -- patriotic duty to socially distance. the other thing that's amazing is the contrast -- and it leaves me devastated sometimes -- in six to eight weeks, a lot of the virus burned out because it just ravage the population or because they took good, proactive, preemptive measures. that we have not been able to accomplish that in this viral epidemic is disheartening to me. that's why you are depressed about hearing this history. it's way worse in terms of total deaths, per capita and total suffering, but we should know better. we have access to this history. that we have not acted on it in a more proactive way disappoints me, as a historic it -- historian and citizen. jeffrey: it has made me reconsider how i understand time itself. you and i can have a conversation and say the

1919, 14come in 1918, months, not that long, big deal. here we are month six and we are all tired of it. living through history is much less pleasant. -- itcture question, then has been 100 years. is there anything we have learned that's actually being usefully applied in the ways we are dealing with this today? it seems we are doing the same sorts of things. i don't see we are doing the same sorts of things, social distancing, wearing masks, because of the experience of the flu. it seems like we are doing it because that's how we think disease works. anything particular to that 1918 pandemic that left its mark on how we are affecting things today? that waser: one thing speculated about that i reflect on a lot and i would encourage everyone who is watching and

thinking about this, what practices that we had before the pandemic will endure after our return and which ones will go away or be harder to accomplish. just because of fear or new patterns or because of new behaviors based on what we think is possible. handshaking or masks -- if you look at the recent past, sars, mers, mostly asian countries that were hard hit and developed cultural patterns of mask wearing have done better in this current pandemic. broaderthe u.s. or western society is likely to endure now having come through this? 1918 andok back to 1919, 1 thing i alluded to but did not mention -- i'm a sports because it reflects cultural patterns of navy or that are international or transnational, the king of spain

, alfonso the 13th, one of the things he missed most was soccer. he commissioned in 1920 a new football club that becomes real madrid. you see coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people with collective, large gatherings and they want to create a space for that. teams are afootball product of that experience of sheltering and working, thinking about what is the leisure and pattern behaviors we want to have? pattern.nt kind of having a sacrifice for the war effort. ways, everything in my talk is the foundation for every federal government's response around the world. nonpharmaceutical interventions work. if you trace and track, this

goes way back in pandemic history. the term quarantine literally comes from the 40 days you are supposed to sit off the coast of ports, from latin and italian, venice was big on its quarantine policies to keep out the plague. these are long-standing germs andin combating infectious diseases. it's hard to say what's new for sure, but in some ways, everything we have done is part of that a tricks and the reason historians in this moment are shocked is that it is so eerily u.s.,r, especially in the that pushes back the lack of federal leadership. nonpharmaceutical intervention, the gradual nature of this, the lobby groups that things, one thing i was

studying was religious groups and the ways they advocated, first amendment, civil liberties. , butublic health conundrum we want to make sure you live. we also want to make sure people who don't worship where you do war in the way you do are not exposed to what you transmit that is something they debate quite a bit. it's interesting as a comparison between then and now, there was more reverence and trust in experts and hierarchy. what is striking is there was push and lots of cities and states that have ordinances of various types of closures, but at the end of the day, people tended to behave, tended to follow. these politicians have said we need to do this for the public good.

what we have seen in the u.s. has been a much more scattered sense and in some ways, if you emancipationto an byindividual rights it's up to you. we free you to take your individual concerns into your own accounts. maybe you wear the mask with a loved one who is immune compromised but maybe you don't wear it out when you go to the grocery store. you see far fewer accounts of people not doing that. by no means is that universal. strike me that there would be a referendum and there's distrust of him, not just because of partisanship questions but an expert who might be having his own agenda.

jeffrey: i think this is why the comparison is doubly painful for we historians. on the one hand, we like to think expertise should be respected on some level, but we always talk about ourselves as historians looking toward the goddess of history as cleo. sometimes we should look toward cassandra and say the real -- no one is going to listen to you. so why bother? one last question because i have to be cognizant of the time. you showed a remarkable picture from love field in dallas, antiseptic ring sprayed into the mouth and noses of children. was that bleach? christopher: it was not bleach, sir. it was often saline based or had alcohol in that. i did a little dallas research

to make sure we got texas in. i highly recommend different resources on that. one thing that's interesting about that is the army tried you could just guess that's true. they try a lot of different treatment strategies, including throwing everything at the wall in terms of different vaccines, none of which work. they produce several million doses of vaccines, rush them across the country to try and get them to places where there were outbreaks. they use gargling and saline solutions and sanitizing procedures which seem to have very little effect, knowing what we now know about viruses. pioneered military public health policies which were then the kinds of things you could see at the cdc much later, using as lessons for what they would try to do to vaccinate troops before they go to certain

places. we think about this in terms of malaria when they are deployed in the field but it is also true the army can take account of the fact or the u.s. military more can be that u.s. troops vectors of disease in the u.s., which is a weird way to think about it. i never thought about that, that the military would be concerned about its own transmission in the country. that's why we have these incredible records. u.s. military doctors are copious notetakers. they care about the people who are suffering and, as i started this talk, so many troops were coming down and dying. fluid,illing up with their immune systems are going nuts, they're turning blue, they were his fixie eating fast and it's really terrible. isther piece of that puzzle what's going on at love field and other things.

quarantineserfect and a lesson that has been learned is there are recent reports by other folks talking about whether or not quarantines work. you have to be so certain you have 100% and anything short of that does not work out. it's in the records to show how u.s. military quarantines almost never work. they almost never kept the flu from civilian populations despite the quotes of public health officials saying they can keep it away. but dallas took proactive action. the cities and mayors took proactive action and cap strictures on longer did better, bottom line. that is one of my main lessons from this moment. the factthinking about that quarantines for the army did not work, it's almost as if 18 to 20-year-olds don't do what we tell them to do. wonderful.en

really enlightening and you could not have kicked off our season better. i wish we didn't have to about this topic, but -- i don't know how we get people to applaud you, but i will. well done, sir. >> american history tv is on social media. follow us at c-span history. ♪ >> during a series of meetings, the final doom of japan is settled by the big three and their advisors, delivering an ultimatum of unconditional surrender. the prime minister suffers the consequences. swarms of b-29s and carrier task forces carry destruction to the japanese homeland. these are the following scenes of the final assault on japan. where they are photographed by a newsreel cameraman.