so the army knew the importance of helicopters transporting soldiers, supplies, evacuating wounded off the battlefield. that is a great example of how technology developed in the civilian world was used on the military side. >> learn more about the new national museum of the united states army sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern and 3:00 p.m. eastern on artifacts here in american history tv. in 1918, a flu virus infected one-third of the world's population. up next on american history tv lora vogt with the national , world war i museum and memorial museum, discusses the correlations between the 1918 pandemic and today's global crisis. she is joined by nancy bristow from the university of puget sound. this event was hosted in partnership with the northeast kansas library system and the world war i museum, which provided the video.

lora: now i would like to bring to the stage dr. nancy bristow for our conversation about the fact that we might have been here before. thank you to all of you who were part of the rsvp, you gave us 250 amazing questions. and we are going to do our best to address some of them in broad strokes to begin with, and then to really run through and do as many deep dive questions as we can at the end of our conversation.

again, i want to shout out, there are people from across the united states. from washington to pennsylvania. hello texas, virginia, brooklyn, nebraska, georgia, kansas city, olathe, reno, from everyone from the towns and libraries, delighted you are joining us. i think ramsey is working her way into the space and while she does i think i know what the first question is going to be, their ego. -- there we go. fantastic.

rimsye: we will start with the question when, where and how did the spanish flu began and what caused it? dr. bristow: i am going to jump into say the name spanish flu is a misnomer. this flu do not begin in spain. it was called the spanish flu by contemporaries because the nation and world was at war, world war i was underway. spain was not a belligerent nation. so they did not have wartime censorship. as country after country after country succumbed to this flu attack, they had the information and did not talk about how many citizens were sick because they wanted to look strong in the midst of conflict, except for flame -- except for spain. spain tell the story so they got blamed for the flu, when it was

far more likely we should call the american flu. in fact your neighbors there in kansas. lora: and many say it first reported case happened at cap funston, now known as fort riley in kansas. there are a lot of scholars who might disagree and say it is one of the first reported cases coming from this base you see in front of you. but there may be evidence that shows a could have started earlier, an earlier variant might have occurred in the u.k. or in france. there is one scholar who suggests china but the united states, this is a place we can look at. and i have to stay we just pulled us out of our archived at the national world war i museum and morrill and he gives me the heebie-jeebies right now. you can see how all of these people are really closely packed together, for a football game

and i believe that his 1918, right before you have this spread. so this is right before some of the or as it is starting to occur. you can see, we all know being in close proximity and the like you are sharing air and germs and all of that other sort of stuff that mayor may not have been as clear a hundred years ago. but you end up having really the first reported cases happening. in this was the picture from our event itself. this is the medical space at camp funston. we are in the midst of a war. you have these individuals who do not really understand the full extent to what is going to be happening, just how contagious it is, how quickly it is moving.

it is, in many ways, for us in the united states, the feeling of being the first couple of weeks in march or february, right? we don't necessarily know and people are packed together. and they're moving out from the middle of the midwest. again, you can see how all of a sudden, you have this transporting of a virus. you have americans landing in russia, american serving in china. so it is easy to see how it becomes this global very quickly becomes this global pandemic. it is, in many ways, similar to the type of travel we have had that we have in the modern era. it really is the type of mass movements occurring at the time. dr. bristow: one thing i would add to that, it may become relevant as we talk about it.

those first cases in kansas, people are not aware there is a global pandemic about to happen. this is not unlike how we were when he first heard about wuhan. but it is the mobilization of troops from the u.s. over to europe in the spring and summer. it is when it arrives at the western front people start really noticing something is happening. then come in late august, there's a shift in the virus, and that is when you get really explosive of this we associate with the pandemic. and it is almost as if it is already a second wave. but the first wave had moved through, without the same kind of severity. lora: ok. what were the public health measures back then and where they as politicized as they are today? lora: that is a great question and i saw a question some of you asked and they were poignant as

well. i think some of you asked, how did they cope with the stress? you have great questions. i am going to show some pictures of the era. nancy, if you want to speak to some of this. i want to start with a letter from the collection. we expected to be quarantined upon our arrival. it was unexpected they had as many deaths as they did on the ships on the way over. it was something that would not happen again. people did quickly learn about the disease. pardon me, about the virus. they tried to take measures. to the best knowledge they had at the time.

it is the same thing we have been experiencing as well, right? so they started off educating, with the best information they had available. sneeze but do not scatter, right? that is really not the same version as this at all. [laughter] but that is, that is the point, right? it is telling you not to scatter. so it almost 100 years ago the exact same thing we tell elementary school kids today. there are some not so great advice, things like onion soup. or other remedies that may not have been helpful. if you take a look in the second paragraph there seems to be no sure method of preventing influenza but there's no doubt overcrowding in stuffy billets, promiscuous coughing and sneezing, are two of the most important causes. feel free to use the word promiscuous coughing as often as you want over the next week.

and think fondly of us, and how the language was used back in the day. every man should see to it he has his allotted floorspace, plenty of ventilation. some of the questions we look to today. lastly, when you get ill, see the medical officer. this is one of my favorite photographs. this is courtesy of the national archives. that question many had about masks. this is the 39th regiment on its way to france going through seattle. each one of them had a mask provided by the seattle chapter of the red cross. folks are trying to figure out-i believe this is from kansas university hospital, their base hospital. they are trying to be brought what is causing this. we have a whole series of x-rays and the like.

i did not add those in specifically. but doctors are really trying their very best to get to the root causes. what is spreading it? and the like. you can come again, see some of those specific waves -- ways folks are trying to address the public health issue. nancy, do you want to add more? dr. bristow: i think you nailed what is so important here. that on the one hand they cannot see the virus. they do not have the technology. so we are in a much more advantaged position because we could identify the virus immediately. they did not have the technology. but they did understand a germ theory. so they were operating on faith, that these measures should help. but they cannot tell whether they were either, so it was a tough struggle, to get people to continue to follow these restrictions. but it was very much the same ones. closures, right?

not allowing public meetings. public masking. quarantining of the sick. educating of the public. more air circulation. down the line, almost identical to managers we are taking today -- to the measures we are taking today. it is just that we know because we have their data as well as data we produce this time around. we know that these measures work. where's their having to use them on faith and belief with the leadership is asking for. that is where the politicization part comes in that is so interesting here. which is, i would argue it is not in any way as politicized. because in this iteration of a terrible global pandemic, in our nation, it was politicized around party politics and around elections. so to wear a mask or not wear a mask was to make a political statement of sorts. there was nothing like that in 1918. what you do see though is public resistance nevertheless.

at the beginnings of the pandemic, people are anxious to do anything they are told in hopes of staying healthy. but, as they realize people around them are continuing to get sick and to die, there is a loss of faith in the leadership. because they cannot know, they do not have the idea of flatten the curve we can throw around. so when new ways come around in many communities, they go through a series wave in the fall of 1918, followed by another wave in winter and spring, it is much harder to get people to cooperate, in that nextwave. because, wait a minute, we did what you said and we are still getting sick, i am over the whole masking thing. so that is where you end up, with the anti-masking group in san francisco. lora: to the person who asked to the question, that the u.s. appellation behave themselves any better before, than they are this go around? i think dr. bristow answered your question, and thank you for writing it that way because it did make me laugh, and is part of our everyday experience.

and how do you address a person not wanting to wear ppe, about the importance of doing so based on past history? we have a little bit here and hopefully more for you in a moment. someone else asked a good question, did health-care workers where it? the answer is deftly, yes. off -- definitely, yes. also the death toll to health-care workers. take a look on the left side of your screen and see the woman with her arms crossed, you can see how thin the mask is. we benefit from that we know the importance of having a thicker mask. not being able to blow a candle out from behind it, and the like. a lot of masks provided and that people were working with, were made of a gauzy material, said they were not as effective as

they are today. it was a great question about the death toll for nurses. i can say that in our ecm memorial, the international world war i museum and memorial, there's a listing of the debt from kansas city in memory hall. it is of that greater kansas city area. and we do have one nurse, who we know died of the flu, who is listed on that wall. she was taking part in, and giving humanitarian aid, and did not dive combat. but because she was there -- it did not die of combat, but because she was there in the spaces. so those deaths are absolutely part of the sacrifice for the war effort. it also gets complicated for some questions that come later about death toll, as well.

rimsye: overall, how do you think the two pandemics compare, and was 1918 overall worse than 2020? dr. bristow: there is so much to be said here. first, you are dealing with two viruses. in 1918, you are dealing with a level of exposure and infection. the infection rates are a quarter of the population, or one third of the population worldwide, 500 million people are infected with this disease. it is an extraordinary number. it also has a high mortality rate at 2.5% in the united states, higher than what we seem to be suffering from covid though i think those statistics are unclear still, as are the statistics from 1918. one thing they had an advantage

in 1918, is that you did not, you were not able to infect others before you were symptomatic. there is none of this asy mptomatic problem we are wrestling with, which probably helped to keep those who are sick away from those who are healthy. in terms of the virus itself, you are dealing with something different. they lose 675,000 americans out of a population of 100 million. we are not at the same death toll as we are a much larger nation today. it was worse and compressed into a tighter time period, almost all of the debt takes place in a six-month period as opposed to our stretch over a longer period . but in terms of how people make their way through it, there are so many similarities it is awful, frankly, as a historian, to watch. a lack of federal leadership in

terms of a person in the white house in both cases. woodrow wilson never says a word about the pandemic, and we know that the former president of the white house in our own time you know give a lot of misleading and misinformation around the pandemic, that was not very helpful. in both cases, without that leadership from the very top, without any sort of federal program, you have a scattershot approach to both cases, where city to city, county to county, state to state, there's so much variation. what you want most of all in a pandemic is a unified approach. not to say each community would not be a different phases because we are dealing with different moments in the pandemic, but you should have a shared plan of attack. because viruses do not care about state lines. they do not care about county lines. we have a lack in both cases, the coordination from above. the other thing that i think is important to remember is, the most important thing is the same about both. the main story is trauma and suffering, and loss of life.

that is shared across the century. it was just as traumatic and horrific for people to lose love once that as now. and criminally, today as in those days, that is inequitably distributed in society. for me, that is criminal in 2021, that we could have been at a place 100 years later, for the same kinds of racial divides and the same costs of poverty, would still be so blatant. those are the things that immediately pop to mind for me in terms of similarities that are marked, despite differences in the virus itself. lora: ok, and i would say for me, being a curator at a museum. i go back to primary sources. i will read this out loud encase it is not clear on your screen. this is from the hass medical person in the land.

warning to the country that the influenza epidemic is by no wheat means ended and all possible precautions against the disease should be taken. it was issued by the surgeon general of the public health service. reports received by the office show the disease from one end of the country to the other. in his statement he advised the closing of public schools on the first sign of the reappearance of the epidemic. i feel like that is almost -- that is maybe not the exact words of dr. fauci, but there's a real sense of this exact same sentiment. that is also just happening right now. we are in a very similar place. you can see here, and a letter from walter shaw, to his mother, in bonner springs. he says, pardon me, it is vice versa.

the influenza is better, although quite a few just have occurred here. i think school will begin next week. also churches and picture shows. as everything has been closed for a month. now, we have this, this real similarity. this is not new, that question about, do we close schools? do a close churches? what happens economically to those picture shows and the like? nancy, i think you brought up earlier, when used to teach this before this year. it would say can you imagine closing a school for two weeks? [laughter] dr. bristow: and of course that is one of the differences we have -- it is so difficult to know what to do. because you do not know what is going to happen next. but this issue of closing schools, they were talking about something that might be in their community for four weeks. here we are almost on a year anniversary, of when my

university send me home and said, go learn how to use your computer because you are teaching virtually monday, which i found out on a saturday night. they were dealing with a more confined time period but did not have computers. we are able to state in touch by computer and i've been teaching online for almost a year. we were able to continue some education where they do not have that option. it sounds crazy to say i feel lucky but in some ways the technology we have has been a bonus. also, for those who are sequestered as individuals. my own mother, so she cannot be out and about and 91. but my next up is the family soon we do every night. i'm grateful for technology we have, they had to work without throughout the pandemic of 1918. i love your point this issue about churches and schools, these were absolutely hot issues then, just as they are today. there was disagreement about whether or not to close things.

there were disagreements about when you should open. it was often the same players that were taking the same positions. so there is so much residents it is fascinating sometimes to watch us. again, i do not to get was difficult to decide what to do in those days and it is difficult to decide what to do today as well. lora: it gives us a historic empathy. many of us, as a former classroom teacher, and you have her in a book on this. you can identify with this timeframe and a more visceral and empathetic way. because you can see where we do just make some of these same choices. for many of you joining us, you are asking the same question. what is that we can learn from history? some are these things of us trying to do our best. when and where do you wear masks? or how do you handle-one of the

sacrifices individuals and communities are willing to make? at the end of the day that comes down, that is one of the big questions we end up asking, that they were asking acton, and we are asking ourselves today. san francisco had one of the most stringent ordinances. their city board of health recommended against using streetcars at peak times to avoid crowds. rigorous personal hygiene, all services to be cancer held outside. wearing face masks -- all services to be canceled or held outside. wearing face masks. you can see a court held outdoors because they were encouraging folks to do that. it is also in san francisco, they had a scene that might significant anti-mask protest. so if you're looking for similar days, right here. rimsye: one thing interesting about san francisco as they had masks and things had gotten better and they quit wearing them at one point. but during that first time period, they still have the mask

ordinance in place and the mayor and people public health were spotted at a boxing match without masks on and it completely undercut the whole masking effort in the city. dr. bristow: it goes back to the ways in which modeling public health-if there are restrictions-having leadership model those, can make a difference in the public's response to whether they then feel compelled also to follow the roles. in san francisco it did not help them. -- to follow the rules. in san francisco, they went out to have a higher death rate in seattle had. lora: 100 years ago as today, on the left inside you see an advertisement, for what we would now refer to as bone broth, saying it is going to keep you from getting infected. so, certainly there is that element of capitalism we see in other aspects of our lives. and journalism as well. the image here courtesy of bonner springs library.

cannot say when schools will be opened up again, everything depends on what course the flu epidemic takes. new cases on decline. again, i feel that is a similar headline you might be seeing in other spaces today. so, those feelings, that intensity, trying to find that balance. that is exactly what people were doing 100 years ago, and are encountering again today. at the national world war i museum and memorial, we have a wonderful teacher resource put together by our school programs manager, sherry kelly, and we are showing you part of our answer got. -- guide. asking students to do a comparison between 1918, from the history books, and taking a look at whatever your current events say at the time you might

be using this. in doing this comparison between the past and present. the nice thing about really good teacher resources is, that they are helpful, no matter your age. so i'm going to quickly go through some of these comparisons. again, this was crafted prior to getting all of your questions here together. we will give you a link about where to grab this. nancy, i have a question for you about waves of infection later on, i think. whether or not you would say it is three or four? actually, i will ask you now. dr. bristow: i am not sure. i am not an epidemiologist and will not pretend to be one. i have family who are medical health professional so i have to be careful not to say anything silly. it is hard to know. what we do know is that there is a period in early 1920 when many

americans do die of influence and ammonia and two of my great grandparent's are among them. so i -- of influenza and ammonia pneumonia, and to my great grandparents are among them. howard at the university of michigan suggested there may be a fourth way that happens in the winter of 1919 or 1920, or does the first wave of seasonal flu. and one question is whatever happened to the spanish flu? it is still around. many of our seasonal flu's are descendants of that virus from 1918. what happens is, it shifts again as it had in the fall of 1918 and does it again so it becomes less deadly and less infectious and peters out. but it does not disappear. it continues to be part of the influenza world, so to speak. rimsye: ok, next question. how do the news report about the

1918-1919 influenza? how different was it then than now? lora: nancy gave one of the best examples. witches come again, that spain did wonderful german -- which is, that spain did some wonderful journalism. and they wanted to get the information out there. in spain, i think it was part of the royal family that had come down a bit and they felt it was imperative, that it was their moral responsibility, to let the rest of the world know that this thing was occurring. and that is not necessarily the case for other spaces that had greater censorship on their newspapers and the like. the united states does not have the same level of censorship as in britain or france, so that is

the first big answer on first b. dr. bristow: it's one of the things that is really remarkable and i'm often asked the question did they just not have as good as information? the news traveled more slowly. they didn't have the 24/7 new cycle. even the smallest town would have one or two weeklies. most americans in the contiguous states would have had access to a newspaper and it would include international news. it would tell about how money people are dying in germany and england, what happened to the queen's sister, and it would include what's happening in dear creek and white plane -- white plains, and it would have the localized stories about so-and-so's daughter who moved away from maryland seems to have passed from the flu. farmer jones was sick and his

three children are also ill. it was closely documented in the newspapers with a lot of terrific information before everything was digitized. newspapers were one of the most important aspects for gaining access into literally what happened. newspaper reporting has been important and influential in our understanding because people still had news, it just did not travel quite as quickly. but it was well done news. lora: these are images thanks to our library partners who are partners within this program this evening. really taking a look at the different levels of reporting

with regard to the number of claims. you can see the similarity just like we do today. december 2, december 3, 200 new cases reported yesterday. you have the same level of expensive amounts of information that you can get. having a day to be able to process that information is not necessarily a bad thing. to support what nancy said, there is a lot of importance and we are losing a real resource

and a loss of information we are losing our smaller papers. these are not all small newspapers by the way. in case you are joining us from outside the missouri and kansas area. dr. bristow: and you can notice -- a constant conversation and controversy about what public health measures should be taken and when they can be take -- lora: this is february of 1920 and still how it is affecting communities. some of you have asked questions about globally what did that look like -- here's another

example encouraging folks to do what they need to do to try to stop the spread of the pandemic. rimsie: how did the flu pandemic and in 1920? dr. bristow: as i mentioned before, influenza is a virus that moves very quickly. that's one of the reasons it so difficult to get the flu shot right because they have to decide ahead of time which will be most important so they can produce the vaccine by the time flu season comes around and by that time, the flu may have drifted into some other virus and the vaccine may not be effective at all. that is what happens -- it continues to change and at some point, even with the end of the winter wave in 1919 or the end of the winter wave in 1920, it

drifts enough to no longer be so infectious and so deadly. i'm often criticized for anthropomorphizing viruses. they did not have motivation. the one thing viruses need to do is replicate themselves. they don't care whether the victim gets really sick or dies, they just need to be able to reproduce themselves. at some point, it drifts enough it ceases to be a pandemic scale virus. but it did persist and there's a wonderful piece -- i can put it in the chat -- by one of the people who mapped the genome of the 1918 virus and he has a great piece called the once and future virus about the ways in which the 1918 flu virus is still with us. it never went away fully.

lora: we have a really nice quote here about the influenza waves in kansas. this comes from the kansas state board of health epidemiologist. but you can see how this contradicts some of the conversation we were seeing a little bit earlier in the year. in kansas, specifically, thanks to the kansas state library, we have a very specific outline of the deaths and death toll -- did you have more on that?

dr. bristow: there's a thing online called the influenza encyclopedia created by scholars at the university of michigan. they've done studies on 50 american cities and you may be interested in what happened in new york, louisiana or oregon -- 50 different cities, they have a multi-paragraph story, sort of an overview of what happened and then a timeline so you can look day by day. then they have links to lots of newspaper articles from that particular cities press. so depending on where you are from, you may find that a fun place to go to see what happened in your community. it's only 50 cities, but it is an incredible resource put together by really good scholars. they've done a lot of the work for you if you want to find out not about your hometown but may be a town somewhere near you. lora: i would be remiss if i

didn't also say depending on where you are joining us from, take a look your local libraries. there are a lot of incredible resources there. reach out to a librarian. they are superheroes of information and can point you to some good spaces. you can always reach out to us and our research center, but wherever you are located, there's likely a treasure trove of information and there may not be memorials. in fact, i'm sure there are not a lot of flu pandemic memorials around the united states. something that makes this unique is this pandemic is layered on top of this destructive, horrific, catastrophic global war. i will say this is a caveat for some of the questions that may come up, on the real specificity

on exact numbers, it's hard to tell sometimes where do you put a number when you are serving for your nation and you die of the flu? there's some difficulty with exact statistics and at the same time, there is a whole other layered or -- a whole other layered of loss that occurs. rimsie: what are the most important things we have learned since the 1918 pandemic? dr. bristow: that's such a rate question and i will admit my own biases here but i think we

haven't learned to take seriously prevention and preparation for this kind of thing. we knew there would be a pandemic of some sort and expected it to be influenza but we were not adequately prepared and we have not -- and this is my own opinion -- but my sense is we need to put more resources into preparation so for instance a more robust system for developing vaccines where you could use the national laboratories. a better preparation plan nationally, globally, and locally. that lesson went unlearned and it really didn't change our public health policies in the country. one of the things we did learn is all the scientific research that has been done since. so we can see viruses now and we know how the virus works and as a result, we have a vaccine, which is a stunning

accomplishment and how quickly it was done the aunt and humans guess -- how it was done is beyond anyone's guess. another thing that we learned is as a result of what they went through, we know some things about what to do. someone asked about taking care of patients. we are so much better prepared to manage the disease now and that's saving a lot of lives. we have antibiotics now which they did not have a 1918. many of the secondary infections people died from in 1918 like bacterial pneumonia, we can deal with now. scientifically, we've advanced so many stages beyond what they were hoping for and dreaming of, so much of that we have accomplished but we did not change a lot of other things related to how we provide health care and how we deal with the public health care system and

that's a very politically charged question, i recognize, so i will stop there. lora: i will pick it up by saying neither nancy nor i are medical professionals. someone asked the question what is the best advice for saying -- for staying healthy today, i would say it's listening to your medical professional, not your historian. as far as your health is concerned, though we are a lot of fun to listen to. a couple of folks you might be interested in following -- michael ulster honed from the university of -- michael ulster home from the university of missouri and there is a lecture recorded two years ago called "influences threat, then and now."

could not recommend it more highly. it's also terrifying when you get to the last part. you really appreciate how spot on he was. you can find that at our youtube channel, if you go to the world war, you can delve into what could we have learned from the science perspective at that particular lecture. if you go to our page, there's a youtube link, click on the youtube symbol and it will pop up. we spend a lot of times with letters. one of my favorites, and i'm afraid i'm not going to quote it correctly is -- i believe his

name is ernest mckay and it's a wonderful series of letters he is writing back and forth to his wife and daughter. he serves overseas and comes back and they are debating whether or not she should come and visit over the holidays. he literally starts off this letter saying i'm not sure you should do this. if you do, make sure you get the best car that you can, wear a veil -- it's just wonderful that we have these letters. i would say one of those key things we learn is how important it is to tell the people we love that we love them and be sure to engage in that. i would also say keeping those diaries, capturing your personal experiences, that is how all of

this informs all of these other books. all of this comes from these personal experiences and as we are losing some of our amazing local newspapers as they might be bought out by other spaces, we don't have the access to that. there are other spaces to be sharing that and take the time to share that information. that's another really important thing. dr. bristow: and if your local historical society or archive is doing a collection and invite you to tell your story of the pandemic, don't hesitate. that is one of the things that has been uplifting for me is seeing the attention to getting the story recorded precisely because we realize how many voices we didn't have in 1918, so my little island there, until

he got into the most recent spike, we were doing oral histories and trying to get medical providers and people doing testing -- who is working at the grocery stores -- try to get all of those voices that 100 years from now will be helpful as people are trying to make sense of it from the future. so tell your story. rimsie: are there any additional resources you would recommend for people who want to find out as much as possible about the pandemics? lora: absolutely. i'm going to kick this would often say -- if you are still watching this, thank you for telling us this was a great resource and watched it in preparation -- how world war i changed america.

we have a whole series of seven minute or less videos as well as teacher resources, videos, podcasts, primary source stuff you can assign for them to do from home if you would like. this was mentioned at the beginning -- there is a lovely resource list that includes fiction, nonfiction that is there on next kansas lifted under the we've been here before reading list. one of you asked did the flu influence the arts as much as the war did? really good question. it's difficult to pull apart because those two events layered on top of each other.

i would say certainly the war influenced some writers in a varied different way. we have winnie the pooh, j.r.r. tolkien -- their writing is in some way away to process their experiences, but you've got some wonderful things to be looking at in that spectacular reading list. if you are in and around the kansas area, and thank you for emailing me about this, take a look at pandemic on the prairie -- it is a podcast and you can see the web address there. you are one of the first episodes. dr. bristow: i believe john berry is part of it and some other scholars. they've been doing some very nice work. lora: take a look at nancy's

book -- american pandemic. we've talked about other things as well that i think have been lifted and we will try to fill that into chat. overly you are getting that in the facebook live chat. dr. bristow: my two favorite pieces, if you want to get a sense of the lived experience, there are two semi autobiographical novellas that are terrific and i put them in the chat. one is william maxwell's "they came like swallows." he would go on to be a very well-known editor and writer for the new yorker. he was a child when his family faced the pandemic and he tells that story from the perspective of different family members and it is a powerful, beautiful book. catherine and porter, who's a journalist living in denver at the time and she had influenza

and does an autobiographical novella about her illness and her beloved, adam. it's very effective on the mental, psychological complexity of how hard it was on the patient in terms of what it did to their minds. those are my two favorite pieces and great reads and not very long. there are a lot of good scholarly books if you are interested in the search for the virus itself, if you are interested in what happened in the military, the camps are really hard hit by it. gerald my early has a good book called fever of war that deals with the pandemic in the ranks of the military for the u.s. and pale horse, one of the newest books that came out for the 100th anniversary is an international history and beautifully done by a

well-known, international journalists that hails from england and lives in paris. that's one of the newest books on the pandemic. lora: i have not had the opportunity to read these but two other things that were suggested were marilyn holtz -- she wrote some great articles for kansas history. and someone asked some good questions about orphans in and around this time frame. we encourage you to look at ellie vance prosthesis on the spanish influenza and the defining characteristic in the history of the american family. in the kansas city area, take a look at the strawberry hill museum. they have some nice information about specific things, specific

to our region. dr. bristow: one thing to be said about the orphans, it's a wonderful question. we did not talk about -- it was in one of your charts, that covid is affecting the elderly, which is what we expect, influenza particularly affects the young and the old. but people between 20 and 40, parents -- huge numbers of orphaned children. my own grandfather lost his parents in a four-day span. a 15-year-old who goes from being a kid with the family and in less than a week, he becomes an orphan and an adult and he is one of literally thousands of children to him that happened.

somebody just put in the chat i talked to someone 104 years old who lost both of their parents on the same night. can you even? lora: you can see why i always enjoy having conversations with nancy. we have just a moment or two -- has anyone studied the transfer of property? there's a lot of good economic questions asked. do you by chance -- dr. bristow: i don't. the issues around the pandemic and economics and its aftermath are been studied with interest. some early studies suggested communities with low death rates recovered economically more quickly, but this was very preliminary work, so i don't know if that has been borne out with additional research or not.

but questions around the economics of this will be of even greater interest now. but i'm not well schooled in that. lora: what u.s. city fared the best? which bears liquid -- which begs the question is there one that did the worst? dr. bristow: the worst is probably pittsburgh or philadelphia. both had catastrophic experiences. philadelphia is always the story that gets told because they held the liberty parade just as the pandemic is hitting them. three days later, they have six hundred plus new cases and it's the beginning of a terrible experience with the pandemic in philadelphia. in part, that's not their fault. in general, western cities do better than eastern cities because they have more time and

they have the experiences of other cities to look at. some of the cities do well -- milwaukee does well. they had a progressive public health system and are really well prepared for it, they put a lot of measures in place and have a low death rate. seattle does very well and several other cities do reasonably well and several others in the east with just catastrophic experiences. lora: a couple of more questions if you're willing to stay on for a few more minutes. andrea asks how were individuals with severe respiratory conditions treated because they could not wear masks? i would say in many cases, the masks were not made of the same material that they are today, so they were not as effective. if someone had a significant

respiratory issue, that would not necessarily have been a problem. that's not semi who would be going out and about doing those other things -- they would not be out being in the spaces with some of those. i have not really delved into some of the protests of masks. do you have more? dr. bristow: because you were -- those who were really sick, you will see the caregivers are wearing masks and the patients are often not. i don't know the storyline behind that, but this is a respiratory illness, so the people who are literally dying from the spanish flu, you're drowning your own bodily fluids, so breathing is so belabored

that those people probably would not have been wearing masks, at least looking at the photographs, that is what the photographic record seems to say. lora: it would be lovely to have a list of all the recommended readings. we will do our best to get those together. we have several librarians who are part of this conversation, so i'm hopeful someone has been tracking all the different things we have thrown out along the way. it's somewhere between the county library which is showcasing this on facebook live and we will certainly do our best sometime soon to get that information. we want to officially thank all

of you for being part of the conversation. are you available for a few minutes for a few more questions? would you be willing? to all of you have joined us, thank you. the most valuable thing you can share with us is your time and we are so appreciative that you use your time to engage in conversations on the enduring impact of world war i. there are lessons we can learn because in some ways we have been here before and there are things that have occurred in the past that can help create gracious, interesting, funny conversations for the present and inform our science and how we keep moving forward.

i apologize, i keep hitting my keyboard. i want to say thank you to our libraries -- i will not name all of them but if you belong to one of the libraries, you've got to be so proud. it's such a delight to work with them all. they work together so very well. you are truly lucky and wherever you are, if you do not have your library card, go get it. you most likely have an incredible treasure right there. do renew that, check out dr. nancy bristow's book or any of the other resources that are available and feel free to stay on in the post conversation where we will address a couple more questions. thank you all very much for joining our conversation.

i think we do have a couple of more -- thank you to those of you staying on. there are a lot of you, 150 plus of you staying on. that is delightful. dean asks are there any records of mental health consequences? dr. bristow: such a great question and i think we know much less than i wish we did but it's very clear that mental health was often a consequence of this particular illness, it would lead to depression for many people. sometimes it was situational because terrible things were happening and we are in the midst of a war and a global pandemic and we know how difficult that is, but there also seem to be a physiological connection to mental health. a lot of mental health trouble

in the aftermath. one of the things we did not understand and was posttraumatic stress disorder. this was a very traumatic illness to witness. it was a very ugly disease. i won't go into it but it was an ugly thing to see. there's not a recording of that and one of the things i wish i could go back, it's one of the things i would like to know more about and i like the way you flank -- the way you framed it because it's one of the things you could be thinking about now. that's one of the things they did better, and that is to attend to people in the community who have gone through this and have been sick themselves and have the space to listen to them and feel for them will be a very important role all of us can play as we come into the aftermath of this. lora: were schools still in

session during the pandemic? they were in session and then at times they were not in session. we give the example with the kansas letters, it really does just depend on your different community. dr. bristow: chicago and new york did not close their schools . they believed given the large number of recently arrived immigrants that the best way to get public health information to the public was through the school children who were english speakers. so both of those large school districts decide to stay open because they thought they could do better health education through the school districts. very controversial and always a huge debate about whether to close or stay open.

the other thing is for many communities, it was during the winter holiday. that was when some of the worst waves or it could be extended a couple of weeks because they were on holiday. lora: a teacher asked about the resource and this is a copy of it right here. that -- we were prepared for a portion of this question and didn't have a chance to dig into that specifically. feel free to email. sharee kelly did some specific deep dives for you and we would love to share it with you. thank you for those questions. i think you had a couple of questions as well? rimsie: what was the overall

effect of the pandemic in 1918 on the u.s. economy? was it as bad as now? dr. bristow: such a hard one because you can't separate the war from the pandemic. we have what was always described as a postwar recession and now we are asking to an extent was it a postwar, post-pandemic recession? i don't think we know the answer yet but it is a really important one. one thing that is really different is things were not closed for as long a time, so the kinds of economic impacts were different than they are today and much more of a localized economy and less of an international economy, so it's a very different situation and one about which i know very little.

rimsie: did president wilson have any kind of medical expert like dr. fauci who he could get advice from or speak to journalists to try to explain what was going on? dr. bristow: dr. rupert blue, the surgeon general, he was instrumental. he was the primary voice for spreading public health information and that would be complemented by state and local public health leadership. the thing that is so strange about wilson that he never speaks about it to the american public. he may be getting information, but he is certainly not sharing it. he talks with people about whether to slow troop movements, but he is unwilling to slow down because the war is in its closing stages and he's determined to get the war done.

lora: here's a good example of how he does not necessarily use woodrow wilson as the speaking point. he's going straight to journalists to share this information. really good question. i would love to ask this question -- it's the very first question we got -- mary lancaster, i believe you are still on. she asked this very specific question. when we say 675,000 died then, that is just eight states. what about other u.s. territories? i assume those were added somewhere else. we did not have hawaii and alaska. we had the honor to work with the anchorage museum over the

summer and we had an expert who is from a tribe who spoke to this specifically. you can find out more about that lecture again by going to our youtube channel. type in flu and it will pop up and you can find out more about the alaska experience. that's a resource i can give that is a lot more comprehensive than i can speak to, but nancy knows a lot more about this than i do. dr. bristow: it's a great question and one of the things that's really hard as the record-keeping was different. you show where each committee is keeping track but influenza was not even a recordable disease when the pandemic begins. the 607 5000 was a complete

guess, but it is a guesstimate, as are the worldwide figures. we just don't know for sure. were talking about the united states as it was configured at that time. it doesn't include the philippines or cuba or these places that had been annexed. those are not included in the figures, but it is a great question and i'm not sure i know. the figure 670 5000 needs to be handled with care. in any traditionally are, more than 100,000 people would have died from influenza anyway, so 550,000 excess deaths. the numbers are really sketchy. they are best guesses and people have done hard work to make good guesses but we don't have information from a lot of places.

rimsie: as far as how covid-19 has affected different demographic groups as far as race, income level, and age, did the same thing happen in 1918? dr. bristow: that is one of the things that is hard to know because the record-keeping was problematic. depending on which record and public health department, you can get reports that say african americans died in higher numbers or african americans died in lower numbers. but we do know is access to health care was deeply influenced by the jim crow system, so we know people of color in general did not have the same access to emergency hospitals or public nurses that

would have been going door to door. we know poor families without a social safety net were more likely to end up hungry or homeless or had to put children into here orphanages, so we don't have data on death rates secure enough to trust. and yet there seem to be reports that the black community had a lower morbidity and mortality rate. but some people suggest maybe accurate enough to work with and then you have to ask what is that about? there are all kinds of guesses having to do with segregation, rural populations, having to do with people infected early in the cycle, we just don't know very much. we don't have the same good data. the experience was much harder if you are a person of color or a poor american or worst-case

scenario, both of those things. the tribal committees also suffered badly and that we know. lora: there's a great question from dan here about how did the rapid onset of the disease impact people's fear in 1918. that's difficult to address because like today, or we have the pandemic and a variety of other things, you have this pandemic but you also have this global catastrophic war, the rise of the red scare and all of these things intermingle. all of those things might be contribute into people's fear, so that's a really good question and a difficult one to answer. there is also a question from

will who said nursing, how did nursing change as a consequence of the pandemic and i'm going to say some of it is going to be because of all the tremendous changes that occur because of world war i. i'm going to expand that question a little bit because that is a moment that vastly changes the profession. we have i think two lectures on the youtube channel that looks at and impacts some of this. that is my short answer. there's another expert you can do a deep dive with on our youtube channel, but nancy bristow, you have more answers. dr. bristow: mine is a higher

level answer, so it's less about the practice than the status and women's experiences as nurses. one of the things important to remember is gender norms were much stricter. so nursing was almost exclusively a female profession and doctoring was almost exclusively a medical profession. so for physicians, this was a disastrous episode. because they can't do what they are supposed to do, which is fix-it, stop it, cure people. for many people, it is a disillusioning and depressing situation. it's fascinating to read letters, diaries where they will talk about it so awful to see the sick people but after work, we had jolly good times. or it was awful but it felt good to make good as a nurse. or i feel like a woman has

arrived. they could feel good about what they were doing and fulfilling their role as a nurse and as a woman through that nursing profession, it was a boost for them professionally and they had a very different overarching experience of what they did and i think they leave the war and pandemic combined with much higher status. they talk about nurses being just as brave as the soldiers in the trenches. so there's a public, cultural and political status gained. lora: was pandemic denial of thing in 1918 like covid denial is today? from a museum and memorial perspective, i don't have any archival sources that suggest

that. but you have resources that suggest people did not want to abide by ordinances and those same kind of tensions that arise about where are your priorities? where do you take the opportunity costs? dr. bristow: the one thing that you do see, there's one population for christian scientists, they believe it's not a hoax but they believe it is being caused -- i will be very careful because i'm not a christian scientists, but they use the language that christian science, it is cry scientists is the church's name, so the believe has to do with having the right relationship with god,

which is a very studied relationship to how one stays healthy. so it's because that relationship is flawed, people are not in the right mindset with god, that is what causes illness. so they believe all the public health measures are making people worse. wearing masks is causing people to get sick. i have letters published in the christian science monitor and local newspapers about the resistance of christian scientists to the restrictions in their beliefs that those restrictions were only making things worse. but that's a small population with a very distinctive theology that led to those perspectives. lora: alan asks the question -- at some point, we would like to hear what opinions are different from now? one that is effective --

effected that we have come back to is this desire to be back outside and be in open spaces. i think all of us have experienced a lot more time in our city, national, state parks recently and those were celebrated and new at the time, so there was a greater emphasis on being an outdoorsman or outdoors woman at the time, which we are coming back to. that is one of the few things -- there are some interesting things that may not have been quite as effective trying to prevent the flu. they encourage you not to overeat or over drink. both of those are probably sound . they did also suggest not to kiss people you didn't know all that well.

effective, but i don't know -- it's not really speaking to your question. dr. bristow: the other thing that is going on is this is the era of patent medicine. so something being sold as easier joint pain, when the flu hits, it's going to cure influence or make you get better quickly. there are just scads of these newspaper articles or advertisements about all these things that will save you from the flu, which of course, didn't. and then the full traditions, there's the largest array from breathing in the fumes of boiling red peppers to a diet filled with only onion and you could go on and on with that things -- i'm not in a position to know what did and didn't help because some will be

psychological in the fact you are able to do something, didn't make you feel better, i don't know. i won't pooh-pooh what people chose to do if it made them feel more hopeful and less depressed, go for that onion diet if you need to. now you can do that because without your sense of smell, you can eat an onion. my nephew had covid anil lost his sense of smell and sent a video of him eating a raw onion. he proved truly how sick he was just by sending this video. but they were doing that in 1918. lora: they were not sending videos, but eating onions, absolutely. if you want to find the onion soup recipe, that is in our database. all of the cookbooks and recipes, there's a great tamale recipe if you start digging in the online database. but the cook that the onion soup

comes from is really delightful. we have an exhibit called a culinary exhibit -- there's a chocolate cupcake recipe -- we have you covered. but it is almost 30 men it's past time. nancy, i cannot begin to thank you enough for sharing your expertise, your time and your humor with us this evening. dr. bristow: thank you. anything i can do for the public libraries, i'm always available. the public libraries and librarians that run them are a national and local treasure, as is the world war i memorial and museum. it's an honor and privilege to be with you and have a chance to talk about these things we are thinking about and worrying about together. thank you very much for including me. lora: and thank you so much for nunnally being part of the conversation and being the spine

of our questions but the work that you do as a journalist in the community. it is so important to have these stories, to have the facts and information published in communities around the nation. thank you very much for what you are doing as a platte county citizen. rimsie: thank you very much. lora: to all of you listening, thank you. i'm going to give the last word to an epidemiologist i know. so for those of you who have asked for other good information, the last word goes to an epidemiologist in cincinnati, ohio, who suggests these three things. avoid the three c's -- closed places with bad ventilation, crowded places, and close

contact settings like close range conversations. it is the type of thing you could have seen in a promo back in world war i, but good advice stands the test of time. ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us whether it's libor in the recording, we value being part of your lives and part of your conversation. -- whether it is live or in the recording. >> american history tv on c-span 3 -- every weekend, documenting america's story. funding comes from these companies who support c-span3 as a public service. >> each week, american history tv's "reel america" provides

films that provide context. >> we are going to tell you about our veins and arteries on how they are like the roads and highways of the bodies. it is through them the little workers get around to the different organs or factories and do their jobs. remember, we said your body is like a city, a model city in which everything runs smoothly and will continue to do so as long as it is left undisturbed -- undisturbed by the invader, disease. ♪ you see the wall around the city through which supplies of raw materials must be taken. suppose for example you are loading up a new stock of groceries, bread him a broader -- bread, butter, lots of jam. this peaceful city never heard of the invader.

but it is the invader -- a deadly disease germ. but it's only one. what harm could he do against the millions of little workers? just watch. suddenly there are two and four and eight and more to come. now we understand why diseases are so deadly -- it's because they have the power to transform themselves quickly into gigantic, menacing hordes. he doesn't look so harmless now, does he? for they know it, they have multiplied themselves into millions. invasion -- the alarm is sounded. the workers were in the civilians to supply themselves but there are not enough weapons and it's only with guns invaders can be conquered. there's nothing to stop them because the body is not prepared. frantically, the factories are converted to the all-important weapons and they are all too slow. as the ranks of the invader multiply with terrifying

rapidity, we see it is already too late. ♪ this city is blacked out forever , yet it could have been saved. you see, boys, this city or rather, this man died because his body did not have arms and ammunition. in other words, powers of resistance against disease. he was not prepared and he was not prepared simply because he failed to take advantage of the greatest weapon against disease medical science has to offer -- vaccination. great men and all the countries of the world have struggled year after year, even given their lives so that we might live. jenner, pastor and many others have worked to create this

harmless little fellow who will protect us. he doesn't look like much, desi? but wait until you see what he can do for us. first, we have to get him into the body and that is where vaccination plays its part. vaccination gene against the deadly smallpox, for example, an ordinary point presses sideways against the skin, letting in a few of the little helpers. but the lookouts inside the body don't know if they are helpers. they say they are being attacked and to them, it is a real invasion. the army marches forth to battle. but in this case, there is nothing to fear. nevertheless, the body factories go to an all-out war time basis and production assumes upward. they have all the planning for

bombs and ammunition. they work day and night, 24 hours a day, building weapons to fight disease. meanwhile, the soldiers are out running the artificial invaders and soon, the battle is completely one. but look at the tremendous supply of arms and ammunition the body has made for itself because of vaccination. ♪ we are ready for the invader. let him come. now suppose you should catch some deadly disease right out of the air itself because eating is not the only way the invaders can enter. they fly around on dust particles or drops of moisture. they are apt to be all around us anywhere, anytime. but if you have been vaccinated, you don't have to worry because your body is prepared against the invader no matter which way he chooses to enter. here they come, airborne troops

launching their deadly attack. they are sure of themselves and confident of their power. but, brother, they have a real surprise in store this time. ♪ [siren closing bracket -- [siren] ♪ here, we see a modern, mechanized army moving into battle equipped with the armaments for vaccination. ♪

the black horde continues its menacing advance. this is no false alarm. this is a real, full-scale invasion. but the army of the body has been prepared. look, they bodies are fighting through the invaders slashing them to ribbons. on every hand, we see brilliant examples of military strategy. >> nominees for this years academy awards were announced on march 15. oscars will be presented to the winners in late april. up next, three films nominated for or one academy awards. library of congress is a 1945 academy award-winning short documentary taking viewers on a

tour through the collections and operations, including field recordings of full commute. in 20 mitts, nominated for a 1950 award for document a feature, with these hands, a film made by the the dramatized story is told using the memories of an immigrant worker about to retire with a union pension after 40 years on the job. after that, why man creates, and academy award-winning short that uses animation, live action, narration, music and sound effects to ponder the creator process. the film was directed by graphic director saul bass, who created title sequences for many notable hollywood films, film posters, and corporate logos. ♪