>> excellent. thank you so much for joining us. this is great. good luck with the rest of your virtual book tour. dr. gorra: and i hope my mouse comes back. >> good night, everybody. announcer: american history tv is on social media. follow us @c-span history. announcer: 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, masks were challenged as un-american, and fines imposed on those who refuse to wear them. next, christopher mcknight nichols recounts how the country experienced the events of a century ago and the lessons we might learn. he directs the oregon university -- oregon state university's

center for the humanities. event occurred in dallas. >> since the pandemic has begun, for our purposes, since we shut down in march, they thing that 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 than my friend christopher nichols. he's an associate professor of history at oregon state. he is also the director of the oregon state center for humanities and the founder of their citizenship and crisis initiative. he also studied at harvard and wesleyan, and got his ma and phd from a good friend of ours at the university of virginia. chris is an expert on i would say the early parts of the 20th century.

that is what his previous work was on. 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 is 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. so, he is going to be talking to us about the 1918 pandemic. i would encourage you, as you look at your zoom screen, you'll see a q and a button. please hit that button and , submit your questions. in fact 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 actually will be helpful because it 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 also remind you that there is no chat function here. we want people to focus on the q&a.

please note that one of the great benefits of 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 buddy? , i just gave you the intro. looks like a sunny day in corvallis, so i'm going to turn things over to you. chris is going to show us some images and walk us through and . going, send us questions. and we 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.

but let's see if we can't make it exciting. a special thank you to brian franklin who helped organize this and is behind the scenes running the webinar and zoom web functions. and also, of course, most importantly, many thank you's to professor jeffrey engle. jeff is a fantastic collaborator and friend. 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 today is a few things 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 domestic 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 previous, sort of 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. differences and similarities. recently, 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 brief 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 vaughn. vaughn was a fascinating figure, a distinguished leader of american medicine in 1918, the dean of the university of medicine, in charge of the army medical services, founding editor of the journal of laboratory and clinical medicine served as a colonel in the army, , led the division of communicable diseases. here is a guy that 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. september 20 3, 1918, he travels 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. camp devens. he could not believe what he was seeing. it was far worse than any other

communicable disease he had been involved with. they are placed on the cots until every bed is full yet , others crowd in. a distressing 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 barracks throughout the fall of 1918. because those barracks were so integrally connected to nearby almost medially got to the civilian population, despite what public health officials and army medical officials often said. in terms of the human costs and suffering, the numbers are somewhat staggering. and of this is one of the things we also need to think about when we think of the u.s. case. and 1919ened in 1918

in the pandemic, the u.s. lost 675,000 people. on the order of 50 million around the world died, although there are some differences in terms of the estimates between and 100 million. 20 millionthe common estimates by historians and public-health scholars. in the u.s., 20% to 30% of the population was infected. in fact, the u.s. lost more soldiers to flu and pneumonia and other diseases than in combat in world war i. all of this, in part, was integrally connected to the war effort. that's the other piece to understand and think about. here we are. how did it begin? what happened? it all began in u.s. contact in context in winter, 1918. in march of 1918 in kansas. it begins as the widespread

illness of a seemingly new type. in american troops mustering there, newly drafted or enlisted. john berry writes, is soldier recalled of the 12 men who slept in my squadron seven were ill at , one time. something like 24 of the 30 army bases were overwhelmed in the spring of 1918. you know 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. but the version we think of when

we think of it spreading around the world in 1918 comes out of kansas. 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 have got amazing data on who got sick, when and why, and that's largely because of army data. and the u.s. government census data. if somebody says, we do not have good information on how the flu spread, they are not looking the right places because we historians know exactly where to look. and you can get very fine-grained analysis. so one of the things i note when talks on the flu of 1918 and why it is so comparable to today, is it went around the world. a lot of historians have made different arguments related to this, emily rosenberg and others, that the world is effectively globalized before world war i. you see that playing out in terms of how this virus spreads. in a globalized world u.s.

, troops in particular arriving in france are conduits of transmission. they are vectors of disease. the 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, and 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. we know exactly when the flu arrives in cities like portland here or philadelphia or dallas , because it almost always arrives with u.s. soldiers, troop transmissions, civilian workers and that sort of thing. a 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.

if you are looking around the world in 1918, what happened? it starts in march in kansas, 1918. by may, it is in shanghai. it is in algeria by australia june. 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, again, to think about what happened from the disease outbreak in china to a worldwide pandemic declaration from the who in march of this year. so, the great war helps to explain the way the virus was transmitted. as i said, globally. it also helps us understand a bit more about why the disease was discussed and how what was

discussed and reported, and what were the major concerns talking about the virus or treating it or thinking more fully about the possibilities for taking informed public health measures. so as the u.s. enters the war in april, 1917 -- here you can look at french forces near the western front. one thing that should stand out is this is the opposite of social distancing, the opposite of the social distancing being impressed upon all of us today as an essential way to stop the virus spread. 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 of the things that should also state out to us, as we think about the comparison back and forth, is between the 1918 epidemic and today, one real significant contract is the overwhelming majority of those

who died in 1918 through 1920, from that deadly influenza the , overwhelming majority, something like one half or one third were in the 18-45 age bracket. the influenza of that era disproportionally hit young and healthy people. their immune systems overrespond, damaging their lungs and frankly having them drown with fluid in their lungs. in a really horrific way. the sort of thing dr. vaughn 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. we can talk about that more. but again, remember i'm a , historian, not an epidemiologist. pleaser member a lot of the -- remember 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 countries, but particularly the u.s. was patriotism. this may strike you as a contrast today or continuity and i welcome talking about this in the q&a. we see the red cross women volunteers and workers making masks -- if i fail, he dies. it's a war kind of sign, but also 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. that is the kind of language we heard operationalized, the fight against the virus, the terming of the nationstate concept, spain or spanish flu. trying to make visible the invisible virus, so people would take it seriously washing hands, , closure policies, and even wearing masks.

but there is another piece perhaps a more insidious peace iece 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 archives says -- i think it is a new york times headline -- sedition bill has been signed, one of the most drastic measures of her enacted to catch and punish enemy agents. but it was to eliminate anything that might undermine the war

effort. so i am i mentioning this as a social history or political history? it also meant journalists couldn't talk about these outbreaks at the bases very much. or they had to minimize what was going on at the bases. 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. you understand better how this possible communication about the ways of the virus and its infectiousness and its fatalities might undermine the war efforts. so you saw a censoring of the press, limiting information and a speech about the outbreak themselves. that's one of the huge problems in 1918, a lack of rapid, honest, continually updated

leadership from nationstates, not just the u.s. and u.k. but nations as well, germany, austria, hungary. think about it in this context -- don't talk. that includes not just talking about elements of the war effort itself, but the draft, another thing many 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 socialist candidate eugene debs spoke out against the draft, saying 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 of the way the war limited speech both about about health issues and dissent in the time of war. another limitation worth us thinking about, we hear this again today and have heard it in a lot of countries and the u.s., ways of minimizing the virus. this was more true in march or april than it is today, but as the virus spread even into the middle of october when that deadly second wave where 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 outbreak in 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. one thing that lots of us historians have had to talk about lately is should we call flus by their nation of origin 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. what does that mean for other countries? spain was neutral in the war.

king alfonso the 13th kept the nation out of the war effort, though they had some direct ties to austro hungary in their aristocracy. lots of nations in europe did. but they kept out of the war effort. in may of 1918, the king, a 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. so, the spanish press covering this when it came out, you saw first the british press covered this and they used terms like the 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. these subtle racist, heavily racialized terms. you can google it yourself. look at some of the british press about this. it gets adopted 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. and before long, by the fall of 1918, much less around the world, they understood the origins of the flu were not in spain.

they no longer said that, but the term had caught on. that racialized, nationalist version of this group caught on. another thing worth noting is the spanish called it french flu. because they blamed french workers coming for the war effort for it. the germans called the russian past. russians called by several other names, including a chinese flu. so you see something we have seen today, this urge to weaponize and nationalize a flu or virus. perhaps to diminish it or perhaps to better operationalize a way forward to fight the virus. as we are thinking through the conflict, you also find on the front, a number of french and british posts do have significant flu outbreaks

throughout spring into the summer of 1918. but 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. there are a few posts of the french where everyone is sick, but very few die. and then all of a sudden 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 back on now. it changes, most importantly in , the virulence of the virus. by late summer 1918, in places known to the u.s. and at the british to have a very good medical care, you found widespread disease. it was knocking out more people , not just from combat effectiveness, but from life itself.

they either recovered, but they -- 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 plague or influenza, and we must deal with this now. the affliction has resurfaced in a significant form. what they are worried about is the combat effectiveness of troops and they take the virus seriously. but, anyone who knows anything about this story, the wartime imperative, as you might imagine or understand triumphed over , that. so you saw in the u.s., as

troops 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 in lots of cities and states going ahead with major events, , going ahead with business as usual. so, september 28, 1918, 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. this was an era when the u.s. attempted to finance its conflicts 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 hull traveling down a parade route in philadelphia. what you may know about what comes next is how horrific that super spreader event was.

doctors urged public health officials and the mayor to cancel the parade. they were really fearful that hundreds of thousands of people jammed onto the route would be a problem. and of course it was a huge one. 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 of flu, but let's not be panic stricken over exaggerated reports. on the other hand, you look at details like this -- the philadelphia evening bulletin in little bit later reported some families, there 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. it was really horrific. after the parade, it got much worse. the hospitals quickly fill up.

they build supplemental hospitals, they fill up. at one point, 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 worry about when we think about football games parades, , large-scale activities. we worry about this kind of moment: because philadelphia could not keep up. in the modern parlance, the curve could not be flattened and the city was utterly devastated. across the country, public health officials continued along those lines, however, and that is one thing we learned. here is one thing about philadelphia and at the ambiguity of that moment. the surgeon general said there's no cause for alarm if cautions are observed.

as i have here, the president elect of the west philadelphia medical association began -- how an anti-scare campaign. but you look at the image of the young girl with the mortally ill sister, in that case. the editors of the philly inquirer wrote orders went too far. this is eerily reminiscent of in that caseoment, shutting down schools largely promoting an unreasonable amount of fear. here you see an anti-spitting campaign, among others, but they do not have a mask or social distancing campaign. in thelower part, later pandemic, you see someone being brought into the hospital by police who are masked. so you saw a lot of conflicting information and you saw people worried about similar things to do today, the question about

whether or not the measures to stop the virus were worse itself. philadelphia seemingly was proven that the virus was terrible and even within philadelphia, you see this kind of information. i am often asked, what about the economy? october, 1918, the height of 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 reported even 60% of folks not showing up to work. they were making a risk calculation about whether it was worth it to go into work in 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. louis 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. in cities like philadelphia, those were overwhelmed in many of these groups -- if you look here, you can surmise -- these are probably women 18-45, a demographic likely to be hit hardest. you had a lot of medical professionals and volunteers getting sick, further exacerbating the problem that was there. and historians have documented, this led to a loneliness, alienation, and fear by other people. as the pandemic goes on, the

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. one story that comes out is a common one, from the midwest, 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. another example, if i kept 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 of the virus 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 later, scientific nursing halts 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, it attracts -- tracks pretty 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. there is usually three waves to 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. new york, big events, not as big as the philadelphia one, but a comparable moments. what happens in denver, we will talk about any moments. another piece of the puzzle is what happened in pittsburgh with its peak in one element to that 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. these are clear lessons, a piece 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. what they are operating on is 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 ended, they had parties and they 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. another thing to think about, think about what happened over these different periods.

the 10 week. the first 10 weeks from september 8 through november 23, adopted 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 have second peaks or are 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. here, on the left, a machine you 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 in texas, we know september 24, 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 to home, 700 cases were reported 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. trips regularly left t -- troops 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 this closely suggest that 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 dallas was in the range of 250 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. these are, at the time, healthy

individuals, more prone to get this. in 1919, were joe wilson got it. -- woodrow wilson got its. -- got it. there is a hypothesis that 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. no rooters 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. the stanley cup was another example. stanley cup ended in a draw and that is because most of the communities in the midst of this, they were too sick to play. officially, series not completed 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. 1919, on a big baseball fan. by the time the season started officially, they were not playing in masks. a couple more images and global takeaways as we get to the q&a. as we think about some of the 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. here is another 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, they built the javits center. that nurse on that porch, that is what ray medical hospital. on the right, weaponization of the flu. spanish influenza has endangered 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.

tense 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. you see masks, medical 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 spaces to try to get less height dosage 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. you 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. you 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. court cases, 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. classes were being held outside 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. this was an important moment, 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. for on, we find in their 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. 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. 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. in montana, one third to half of the county came down 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 , a lot ofreopening's 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 phased reopening's, gradual

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. there were midterm elections in 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. most did, relatively few turnout 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 arguing which areas should get close first or reopen first. saloons and gambling houses versus churches and in some cases that mapped onto religious sentiment or anti-semitism or anti-catholic sentiments some.

remember this was rising temperance and we were about to get prohibition. politics of parties in different regions, related to a gut privileged with the virus but not reaction to the virus itself. there is the suffragette handing out bonbons at 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 restrictive to immigration, return to normalcy and return to society as we know it. 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 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. there was at least one shooting, 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 did. 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, 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. and in 1919, arise of social 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. 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. a final bit of data, thinking

global and thinking this moment. this was mid-august, 2020 data. if you look at total deaths and total population. a much lower percentage of the population has been killed lately, .05% in the u.s., 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. you saw a kind of global fatalities in the 2.7% range, and we have .01% globally now, 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. that is really striking, and 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. - and this 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. cancellations and postponements of large gatherings, school closures, anti-crowded, they worked well. they slow the spread. as we see today. 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 sentence. obviously, this year i'm going to 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

-- why don't we talk about this more? christopher: that is a great question. historians often talk about this is the forgotten virus. 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. a lot of these references to long issues or family members departed too soon, they are not necessarily lost generation references to the war but there about the flu. i succumbed to that myself sometimes. it is there. it is not totally forgotten. unlike the war, they are not

memorials built. 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 and 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 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 said. 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. all the images i did, i give a 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 remember 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 1918 and 1919. 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 localized. it is interesting about 1918 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 to

casese, one of the worst is aleutian islanders and eskimos in alaska were horribly hit. a village of 80 people, 72 were dead. when the red cross workers got there, they were not sure who was alive and who was dead. many of the red cross workers then got terrible viruses coming out of the they were also sick. it is a story, terrible story that is only in red cross history. it is not in your typical history of the flu pandemic, to some extent. a long-winded 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 research science and development, and then production.

something we do not anticipate. billions of doses as fast as ever in history, and the heroes being whoever invents that if -- that and who can do the production. i can imagine those people things celebrated. jeff: i can imagine. we have a whole bunch of questions. been alluding to disparate death and lethality of the 1918 pandemic compared to ours. how should we understand that? had antibiotics and ventilators? how many people would have died?

can we really say that covid-19 is less lethal than the influenza of 1918, or that we are better at dealing with it? christopher: my answer as an historian, i cannot say. think our medical establishment can until we see this out farther. there is a good history of medicine accounts that explain the viral changes and mutations about the deadly second wave, which is so much worse. all of the british soldiers and sailors are sick, but very few die. the second wave, when it comes back across the atlantic, much worse. i think -- at first, i thought to myself, we are using the same medical treatment strategy.

medicine and1920, public health measures. closure policies, and no good treatment strategies. they were throwing everything at covid and nothing seemed to work. my sense of the data for 1980 is the disproportionate deaths of healthy people versus our ability to cordon off are most at risk people is the biggest difference. should a large society in the world today not be able to cordon off its most at risk people, you might see much higherfor tally -- much fatality rates. story, if allia of your hospitals are full, you will have more deaths. and sure enough, they did. the other questions have

to do with the politics of this. two questions. you mentioned this does not become a partisan issue in 1918 in the same way it does today. explain. secondly, i want you to say more about trying to interpret the 1918 election in this context. story, i tell the woodrow wilson campaigns, vote for me the congressional election in order to ratify my views on foreign policy -- and loses. from being -- judging from our own experience, people are not happy right now. and when they are not happy, they take it out on the incumbent. absent the flu, is there a chance wilson is able to do different things? christopher: that is interesting.

one of the things that surprised me the most in this moment, although it should not, is how partisan this public health moment has become. the history of public health is .ot particularly partisan some agencies are -- we can think about fema, political appointees. individuale at the level, my decision to socially distance or deny that that would have any close correlation to my party affiliation or voting patterns seems to me is not necessarily logical. indicative --t is public-health expectations of citizens were much lower. they were not thinking the wilson administration would be the leader on this.

people were worried and they were uncertain about how to respond because they got such different information. and they were suffering and places where it was worse before the election. the main piece of the puzzle is what you said, which is the war. inously, wilson campaign 1916 and he kept us out of war. world war i was not popular in the u.s. roughly 11 states, the national guard was called out because there was that much draft dodging going on. which is why you get that draft slacker concept. popularity, the war was not over, november 11 was armistice. absent the pandemic, i wonder. depressing turnout,

depending on which political science analysis you look at. you see a depressed turnout between 10% and 40%, very significant. not that remarkable because of the midterm election. by 1920, you're about to pretty normal turnout to spite the fact that there is still lingering flu in that season. that is usually thought of as the first continual wave of this version of the flu as opposed to another wave in and of itself. part?as the second partisanpivot from mapping? jeff: it's not even a counterfactual, it is so ridiculous to postulate. 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. 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 -- they are on their way back to taking over with harding in 1920. i deal with ideas and u.s. foreign policy, one of the reasons i got interested in this topic because i was writing on dissent politics in the south. and the interesting overlap between socialists in the south rejecting the war effort, and antiwar 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. they have a hard time reconciling that kind of martial sensibility that is there -- that sort of southern honor culture that also comes out with the civil war. so it was very odd to me to see one problem was you could not hold as many rallies, late into the fall. the kinds of campaigning at the grassroots level that you need -- presidents did 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 moreu see republicans win and you seeealing

democrats lose and be less appealing because of disillusionment with the war, 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 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. once americans hear more about that, and wilson cannot campaign on that, they reject it. the flu is a piece of that. the war and american reluctance to take leadership role in the inld and be embroiled foreign conflict is a bigger piece of that story. jeff: let's talk about wilson a little more. 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 -- federal response today and an opinion about what goes on in every locality today no matter what state constitutions say, is that a growth of our, will only tell us 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 arguably 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 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 and useful. coming out of the pandemic, internationally, canada developed public health infrastructure. the u.s. does not. that is how fast the u.s. immobilizes. that small federal government continues inethos 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. only 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 absolutely can't 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 from france, coming back from decommissioned or

getting leave. you see it, in. something gets leave and a couple of mps come from the night suddenly the virus is everywhere. that is a place where you can that is a place where you can judge harshly the wilson administration and that is all for the war effort. one thing that is surprising, one reason i emphasize the war. in martial language, it into the does eventually get imported into the public health response. but it surprisingly wilson administration does not more rapidly pivot and say it's your patriotic duty to socially distance. to close your business, to pay your employees as much as you can. 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 ravaged 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 historian and citizen. regardless of politics. jeffrey: it has made me reconsider how i understand time itself. you and i can have a conversation and say the pandemic in 1918, 1919, four 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. big picture question, then -- it 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 becauseit 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. is there anything particular to that 1918 pandemic that left its mark on how we are affecting things today? christopher: one thing that was speculated about in 1918, that i reflect on a lot and i would encourage everyone who is watching and thinking about this to do the same. 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. so 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.

so what in the u.s. or broader western society is likely to endure now having come through this? if you look back to 1918 and 1919, one thing i alluded to but did not mention -- i'm a sports fan, but because it reflects cultural patterns and behaviors that are international or transnational, the king of spain, alfonso the 13th, one of the things he missed most was soccer. so he commissioned in 1920 a new football club that becomes real madrid. you see coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people with -- miss collective, large gatherings and they want to create a space for that. coliseums, football teams are a product of that experience of sheltering and working, thinking -- worrying about crowds and then thinking about what is the , leisure and pattern behaviors

we want to have? including being outside. appreciationind of 1921 from 1918 in 1990, which also maps onto the war and having to sacrifice for the war effort. in some ways, everything in my talk is the foundation for every federal government's response around the world. nonpharmaceutical interventions we know thatnonpharmaceutical interventions work. if you clamp them on fast. 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 behaviors in combating germs and infectious diseases. so you are right to say what is new from 1918. it's hard to say what's new for sure, but in some ways, everything we have done is part

of that matrix. and the reason historians in this moment are shocked is that it is so eerily similar, and the responses in 2020 mirror 1918, especially in the u.s., that pushes back the lack of federal leadership. the nonpharmaceutical the gradual nature of this, the -- nonpharmaceutical interventions, the gradual nature of this, the lobby groups that push for things, one thing i was studying was religious groups and the ways they advocated for exemptions, saying this was a first amendment, several liberties question. and then the public health conundrum, but we want to make sure you live. we also want to make sure people who don't worship where you do or in the way you do are not exposed to what you transmit . and that is something they debate back then quite a bit. it's interesting as a comparison between then and now, there was

more reverence and trust in experts and hierarchy. so what is striking is there was push in 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. they said ok, these mds and politicians have said we need to do this for the public good. we will do it. what we have seen in the u.s. has been a much more scattered sense. and in some ways, if you compare the two, an emancipation of individual rights by politicians, 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.

in you see far fewer accounts of 1918, people not doing that. by no means is that universal. plenty of people push back. but that does strike me as something different that there , would be a referendum on dr. fauci and there's , distrust of him, not just because of partisanship questions but an expert who might be having his own agenda. the 1918-1919 moment was not one where public health officials were dismissed because of their own agendas. jeffrey: i think this is why the comparison is doubly painful for we historians. because 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 -- the real lesson for historians is no one is going to , listen to you. so why bother? [laughter]

one last question because i have to be cognizant of the time. you showed a remarkable picture from love field in dallas, antiseptic being sprayed into the mouth and noses of children. i have to ask was that bleach? , christopher: it was not bleach, sir. [laughter] no. it is antiseptic that 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 moment. the army tried really hard -- that they were combat effective. 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 worked. but they produce several million doses of vaccines, rush them across the country to try and

get them to bases where there were outbreaks. or where they thought outbreaks were going to happen. they use gargling and saline solutions and sanitizing procedures which seem to have very little effect, knowing what we now know about viruses. they pioneered military public -- they pioneered medical 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 or other diseases 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 broadly that u.s. troops can be vectors of disease in the u.s., which is a weird way to think about it. when i came into this research i , never thought about that, that the military would be concerned about its own transmission in the country. and they do wind up worrying. that's why we have these incredible records. u.s. military doctors are copious notetakers. like other bureaucrats, right?

also because they care so much about the people who are suffering. and, as i started this talk, so many troops were coming down and dying. lungs filling up with fluid, their immune systems are going nuts, they're turning blue, they were asphyxiating fast and it's really terrible. another piece of that puzzle is what's going on at love field and other places. they tried to quarantine them but they had imperfect quarantines. 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. we can look at that in the records of to show how u.s. 1918, 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 from the civilians. nope.

they cannot do that. but dallas took proactive action. the cities and mayors that took proactive action and kept strictures on longer did better, bottom line. that is one of my main lessons from this moment. jeffrey: thinking about the fact 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. just leave it out there. listen this has been wonderful. ,this has been amazing and really enlightening and you could not have kicked off our season better. i wish we didn't have to about -- to talk about the i don't know how we get people to applaud you, but i will. [applause] well done, sir. >> you're watching american history tv, all we can, every week and come on c-span3. the u.s. postal service first

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