Eerie Parallels To A Previous Pandemic

By ROBERT H. REID

It was first spotted by a country doctor in Haskell County, Kansas, in early 1918. It looked like influenza, but struck with speed and lethality not seen before.

Within months, the disease had swept the planet. By the time it had run its course about three years later, more than 50 million people were dead worldwide. Some estimates place the real global death toll as high as 100 million.

The story of history’s deadliest pandemic is told in rich detail by author and historian John M. Barry in “The Great Influenza/The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

Barry’s well-researched account was first published in 2004 by Penguin Books and was updated on the 100th anniversary of what became popularly known as the “Spanish Flu” pandemic.

His work is well worth reading today in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, may not be influenza, even though the two diseases produce similar symptoms. However, the impact on society — the dislocation, fear, conflicting information and uncertainty — are much the same.

Many of the details from 1918 sound ominously familiar: government denials and misinformation; churches, theaters and stores closed; public resistance to protective face masks; economic catastrophe; overcrowded hospitals, and doctors touting unproven cures.

According to Barry, the U.S. Armed Forces played a major albeit unintentional role in spreading the virus around the world.

Newly drafted soldiers from Haskell County in southwestern Kansas carried the virus to Camp Funston, now Fort Riley, where troops were preparing to deploy to France in World War One.

Infected soldiers traveling by train from training camps to East Coast ports and then by ship to France spread the disease throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Public health officials figured out what was happening, and some of them suggested suspending troop deployments to France until the virus could be brought under control.

However, President Woodrow Wilson was insisting that as many soldiers as possible be rushed to Europe, and the government was drawing up plans to expand — not slow down — the draft and deployments.

Suspending troop movements was out of the question, even as the disease was exploding at major French ports, aboard crowded troop ships and in the trenches at the front.

Both sides were affected. The German commander, Erich von Ludendorff, blamed the pandemic for the failure of Germany’s spring offensive of 1918.

“It was a grievous business having to listen every morning to the chief of staff’s recital of the number of influenza cases, and their complaints about the weakness of their troops,” Barry quotes von Ludendorff as writing after the war.

The public in Europe and the United States knew little of the scope of the outbreak until the pace of death could no longer be hidden. Wartime censorship and appeals to patriotism kept the press from reporting details for fear they would destroy morale.

“Newspapers reported on the disease with the same mixture of truth and half-truth, truth and distortion, truth and lies with which they reported everything else,” Barry writes. “And no national official ever publicly acknowledged the danger of influenza.”

The exception was Spain, which was neutral in the conflict. Newspapers there were free to report on the pandemic, and the press elsewhere could pick up Spanish news stories without penalties.

“The disease soon became known as “Spanish influenza’ or ‘Spanish flu,’ very likely because only Spanish newspapers were publishing accounts of the spread of the disease that were picked up in other countries,” Barry writes.

A word of caution. This book is not a quick and easy read, especially for non-medical professionals. The work includes lengthy portions about the nature of viruses and the history of American medicine, which was woefully inadequate when the 20th century began.

However, the book offers fascinating insights into the vulnerability of modern society to the rapid spread of new and deadly diseases — valuable lessons in the Age of the Coronavirus.